Rob’s European Vacation 2009

So today started out good, I had ordered breakfast for the two days I was here (apparently Germans don’t like to give out free breakfasts) and came down to see what they had.  It was a nice spread, some yogurt, fresh fruits (had a kiwi and banana), some bread and nutella, some assorted cereals and the most important thing…bacon and eggs!!  YUMMY…I’ve been missing a traditional American breakfast ever since I left…

After breakfast I grabbed my camera bag and headed out on the town.  I decided to go check out the remains of the Berlin wall and Checkpoint Charlie.  Checkpoint Charlie was cool only because they had a really good informational exhibit about the changes in buildings in the area and the structure of the wall prior to the actual Wall being there.  Not only that but they detailed the confortations between the two sides including one day in which American and Soviet tanks squared off on each other from across Friedstrasse.  Very cool stuff.  The actual Checkpoint Charlie was a huge tourist trap but neat nonetheless.  It’s still crazy to imagine the area, that’s now filled with shops and has BMW’s and Mercedes flying down the street used to be the divide of what was the Iron Curtain.  It was almost surreal.  After CC, I walked down towards Potsdamer Platz and saw a remaining chunk of the wall.  The piece of wall was actually only 1 of three sections still standing.  Even more interesting was that I learned behind the wall was where the old Nazi Gestapo building once stood and there still exits some prisoner cells that are below ground.  The Germans have decided that the best thing to do is never to build on that site and to leave it fenced up, a scar onto the landscape to represent the scar on the history of the country.

After going through Potsdamer Platz I made my way back to the Starbucks behind Bradenburg gate for my 3rd Reich tour that I was going to go on.  This is one thing that kind of killed me about the tour meetings.  One meeting place was at the Dunkin Donuts near Banhoff Zoo and the other was at the Starbucks on Under Der Linden which used to be on the East Germany side.  It’s almost comical how Americanism has crept into their society…

So I signed up and joined the tour (p.s. don’t tell them that I’m no longer a student, I got a 2 euro discount!) and we departed and had an amazing tour.  I love history for one but I especially love WW2 history.  To hear and see where these major sites were and rarely still are was AWESOME.  It really put a picture to all the newsreels I had seen and all the photos I’ve studies over the years.  I loved it..we got to walk through the Tiergarten, a huge part in Berlin that used to be the hunting grounds for Friedrich, the founder of the Prussian Holy Roman Empire, and saw some cool memorials, the most fascinating one being the Russian Soldier memorial.  So some quick history, the Allies allowed the Russians to take Berlin and as they did, pretty much every building was leveled to the ground and the populace remaining was starting and had no utilities to speak of… in roll the Soviets who in the three months before the Americans arrived decided not to build homes, or buildings or anything, instead the first thing they do is build a HUGE memorial to the fallen Soviet soldiers who took Berlin.  Not only did they build that first before anything else but they built it…in the American Zone!  I guess that was their way to say hey, we’re better than you…did I mention I think Stalin was nuts?  So anyways that was really interesting.  Besides that we toured the new monument to one of the forgotten groups the Nazis mass murdered, the homosexuals of Germany.  The memorial was kind of cool, a huge cement block with a window on one side and inside the window was  a film scene of two men kissing.  Simple, to the point and a powerful statement.  After that we crossed the street and saw the Memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  It’s a interesting memorial…and one of much debate.  You really have to see it to understand though..

After that we walked over to the only remaining Third Reich building, the Luftwaffe headquarters.   The building used to be where Hermann Goering worked!  So our tour guide said that the rumor on why this was the only building left standing was because all of central Berlin was so destroyed they needed a landmark to point to them where to bomb around, so they left one building standing and that was the Luftwaffe building.  very cool and very very Nazi like.  The architecture was quite unique.

After that we came to a parking lot next to some apartments.  Under the parking lot though was the final home to Adolf Hitler.  The Fuhrer bunkers were under there, with the walls still intact, however they demolished the roof and filled in the bunkers because the Germans feel like that is one part of history that doesn’t need to be remembered or potentially celebrated.  After the bunker site we went to the old Jewish section of Berlin and heard about the deportation of Jews in the city and the resistance.  We saw several brass squares in front of numerous buildings all designating that a Jew had lived in that building that was arrested and killed by the Nazi regime.  It really puts a name to the atrocities of the Nazis…very moving…

We ended the tour in a little park area that used to a Jewish cultural center that the Nazis took over and made a deportation center.  Nothing exists but a monument but again, it shows the impact on the land and the people.

I got an overwhelming feeling that German are actively trying to remember their troubled past yet trying to move past it as much as possible.  It’s a very interesting position that they are in, that they themselves are struggling with.  I almost feel sorry for the German people, but then I remember their victims.  It is good to remember, least we forget our past and make the same mistakes again…

So after a kind of long trip (6 hours) from Amsterdam to Berlin, I arrived and from the train station you can see the dome of the Reichstag.  Never being to Germany and being soo into history, it was so exciting to see the dome and know that I’m in the heart of Nazi Germany.  I was generally excited to start my trip here.

One mention I should make is that I’ve decided to shorten my journey to Berlin from 3 days to 2 for a couple of reasons.  One is that I may use that extra in either Munich or in Italy and either go see Castle Neuschwanstein with it or see Pompeii.  I’m still trying to get Pompeii in there somehow so that I can have a two night adventure south of Rome and enjoy the Amalfi coast and hit up Pompeii and maybe even Capri.  Anyways…back to Berlin!

So first thing first, I had to get on the S-bahn and find my hostel.  The main train station here is brand new and really nice, it actually reminds me of an airport more than a train station.  I quickly found my line and jumped on the S-bahn to get to my stop.  So my hostel is actually located really close to Alexanderplatz and Karl Marx Strasse which is pretty much the heart of the former East Berlin.  Karl Marx Strasse is this huge boulevard that runs pretty much as far as you can see with these huge apartment block style buildings straight out of Moscow.  You can definitely see the Soviet influence on the buildings as some of them even have hammer and sickles on them!!  It was very cool to walk down there.  After making my way to Alexanderplatz, which is now a huge shopping area (Capitalism 1 Communism 0), I started walking down Under Der Linden, the main street to the Bradenburg Gate.  Now this was not only one of the main areas of East Berlin but also THE main drag for Prussia and later the Third Reich.  Some great museums along the way but I didn’t have enough time to go to them, plus there isn’t any significant art there that I’m looking to see.  About the most notable thing in those is Nefertiti’s bust.  Anyways I continuted down UDL and came upon the Brandeburg Gate.  I’ve seen this gate so many times in old photos with Hitler riding through them and then later battle scarred with the Russian flag flying high on it.  It’s impressive even to this day.  And the great thing is that the sun was setting so I got some great pictures…but those will have to wait since I left my card in the camer.

After taking some pretty pictures of the Gate and admiring the atmosphere (with the guys selling America and Soviet flags and all) I turned right and headed for the Reichstag.  All of central Berlin is pretty accessible by foot, I’d say I’ve traveled all over the city and can easily get from one major site on one side to the other in about an hour with stops in between.  Anyways I got to the Reichstag and again took some gorgeous photos…love the warm color the sun puts out on these buildings.  The building stands tall with its newly retrofitted dome.  The building was practically unused until 1999 when it was redone and Berlin once again became the capital of the newly united Germany.  So the line was long but I patiently waited in there.  After a while I heard some girls just a few people back speaking English and immediately I turned to see if I could tell where they were from.. Being alone I tend to want to make quick friends with anyone who speaks English! lol.  Well they were actually from all over Europe…Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Hungary, etc.  So I made quick friends and we walked up to the top and the dome with the setting sun.  Berlin and the Tiergarten is GORGEOUS at sunset.

So once at the top one of the girls asked me if I had any plans later on because they were all going out to dinner.  I was hungry so I decided to join them.  We went to Hackescher Market area where they have some great outdoor dining places and I had a “traditional German meal” of german sausage, potatoes and kraut.  It was actually really good and a lot of food.  Oh and I had a half of litre of good German beer too.  The meal was done and I said goodbye to my new friends, headed back to the hostel and then headed to bed.  The funny thing is that once I was going to bed, my hostel roommates were leaving to go out..remind you, this is at one thirty in the morning!  Crazy!!

Anyways the day was a good one and the start of what I’m calling, “my fast itinerary”…2 days here and 2 days there till I get to Rome…Till next time!