Berlin
April 11-15
April 11
I landed in Berlin late Wednesday night in Tegel Airport. I took the bus to the main train station where I caught the S-Bahn train to my hostel. As soon I walked into the main train station, I was faced with the advanced transportation system that Berlin had to offer. For just one city they had FIVE different ways to get around: the S-Bahn (an above ground train), the U-Bahn (the underground), tramcars, the DB train (which is like a train that connects Berlin with other German cities), and buses. It took me around 20 minutes and directions from policemen to find the proper platform for me to be on to catch the correct train.
I arrived to the hostel and met up with my friend from high school, Marina. She is studying in the south of Germany for the year. Over the summer, we promised each other we would meet up in Berlin and I am so happy we made it happen! The hostel we were staying at was called “Plus Hostel.” It was the nicest hostel probably ever created. I originally thought I had the wrong place since I initially thought the place was a hotel. Marina and I booked a four bed, women-only suite. The suite had its own bathroom, which is always amazing, and really plush bunk beds. The best part was that I only paid 60 EURO for the FOUR NIGHTS! Wooo!!! I knew I would be sleeping well these four nights.
Along with meeting up with Marina, I also met her friends from her study abroad program in Germany. There were two girls studying at home at the University of Oregon and UNC. They were visiting Berlin the same weekend as Marina and I, so we just kind of joined forces. They were hilarious and nice. I figured that if they were good friends with Marina, they had to be chill. I was not let down. Ironically, the girls had been in Poland the same time as me too, except they were in Gdansk while I was in Krakow.
Since it was late, the group of us decided to get dinner. It turns out that they are all vegetarians, which is a Kosher girl’s best friend when traveling! We walked around our area a little bit to find ourselves in a really hip, artsy part of the city. We settled on eating at an Indian restaurant, which was delicious!
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| Berlin on my first night. |
April 12
The group of us started our day at the East Side Gallery. Our hostel was right next to it and the gallery led us right into the main part of the city, so we figured why not. We spent so much time walking up the gallery. It was truly awesome. The artists came from all over the world to paint their murals and there were messages in various languages. We were technically on the East side of Berlin as we toured the wall. Every time we walked around the city, we would try to guess if we were in East or West Berlin. It was actually much harder than we initially thought it would be and since the lines were so obscure you could really be anywhere. Marina and the other girls I was walking with speak and read German, so they were able to translate most of the writings we walked by.
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| The start of the East Side Gallery |
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| Kristallancht + The fall of the wall both happened November 9 |
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| We are bringing back the soviet kiss! |
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| "Everything is always okay" |
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| East Side Gallery |
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| This was my favorite section of the wall! |
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| Cue Beyonce's song "Single Ladies" |
From the Reichstag, we walked back to the Gate and made a left until we hit the Holocaust Memorial...or its official name of “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.” The Holocaust Memorial consists of a huge block in the middle of the city. The block is covered in huge cement squares that seem to be different heights, but when you walk through the blocks you realize that it is the ground that is uneven, not the blocks. To be honest, the memorial seriously confused me. I couldn’t see any big message or symbolism in it unless I made a huge stress. Later, I looked it up and read that the memorial is supposed to “produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.” I can totally understand the uneasy, confused feeling, but the second part lost me. When walking through the memorial, you can only see directly in front of you. When you look up, these overwhelming cement structures cover you and you always crash into people since you can’t see them coming. We ended up walking through the memorial again at night and it was slightly terrifying. It is not lit at all and you can't see or hear anyone around you until they pop up out of nowhere!
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| "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" |
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| You can kind of see how unleveled the ground is inside the memorial. |
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| The Holocaust Memorial |
Under the memorial is the Holocaust Museum. It was free (which did not surprise me in the least) and was relatively small. Even though it was only a couple rooms, it was very well done. It was based off Yad Vashem (the Holocause museum in Jerusalem). The first room took you year by year through the history of the Holocaust and rise of the Third Reich. From there, you then enter a room where on the floor are light up blocks that had personal accounts from Jew’s diaries and letters. The quote came with the person’s name, age, and back-story. The next room focused on the family. It had blurbs on around 10 families from all around Europe. Each blurb consisted of the family’s history before the war, during the war, and then after the war. While some families survived by hiding, other families were completely wiped out in the camps. The next room was completely dark except for the names that were projected on the walls. With the name, a voice on a loudspeaker read out the name of the victim, their birthdate, and location/date of death. The last room was dedicated to the camps. Each concentration camp had a description and personal accounts to accompany them. What I found the most important about the museum was its insistence on putting a name with a quote or a face with a name. Making these accounts personalized, the Holocaust becomes more real and understandable. The museum is always free and there never is a real long line for it, so I personally think it should be on everyone's list of 'to-do' when you visit Berlin.
After the Holocaust museum, we then walked to the DDR Museum on the Museum Island. The DDR museum was a hands-on, interactive one that was literally awesome. It gave an inside look into the lives of people in Eastern Berlin. They had the famous Trabant cars that you could pretend to drive. They had a fake apartment you can walk into that represents what an Eastern Berlin home would look like. The museum had clothing that Eastern Berliners had to wear, which were awful polyester fabrics. They had the foods that the Eastern Berliners were forced to eat. The museum had original radio stations, TV shows, and movies that were shown in Eastern Germany. It described the youth program that Eastern Berlin children were forced to join and looked into the counterculture that formed in response to the Socialist environment. I would recommend the DDR museum to anyone, who went to Berlin. It is a must go!
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| Learn how to live under communist rule! Yay! |
What I found unusual about the museum though was that as we walked through, we weren’t looking at ancient artifacts. We were observing and studying about a lifestyle that existed around 20-some-years-ago! A lot of people in Berlin had lived in East Germany and lived under the conditions that I was ‘learning about’ at the DDR museum. Imagine being an ex-Eastern Berliner and going to the museum? It would be like seeing your old life. When I asked Marina and her friends about Germany and the wall presently, they said the wall now existed more in the Berliner’s mind than anywhere else.
Moreover, I find it hard to wrap my mind around how
obscure the lines were drawn for the wall. When the allies decided to split up Berlin, it was almost like they closed their eyes and just drew a circle around areas. These obscure lines became more apparent as we walked more around the city. We would see memorials of where the wall used to be and observe that the wall would literally just go through a street. Like…instead of making a straight line, they just obscurely drew a line in the middle of the street! I wonder what the liberal countries were thinking when they willfully handed over East Germany to the Soviets knowing that the people there would be subjected to the socialist lifestyle! And isn’t it just pure luck if you were drawn onto the East or West side?! Like, some people were literally a block away from the West side, but were still forced to live in the East. It just makes little sense!
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Right next to the DDR museum is a statue of Marx
and Engles. The fathers of Communism! |
After the DDR museum, the group of us found a vegetarian Asian restaurant and dug in. We then headed back to our hostel area where we explored bars in the area. Berlin is known for its ‘clubbing scene,’ but since I am an old woman I just want none of that. Instead, I would rather just sit in a bar. We found some hipster place to plop down and relax. While we did have fun, I did not appreciate the cigarette smoke! In bars still, you can smoke inside, which is just brutal on my eyes/lungs/mouth ETC. I was crying by the time we left since my eyes were burning so badly.
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| The Brandenburg Gate at night. |
On a note about Berlin’s nightlife: So, in London the nightlife starts around 10 PM and ends by 2 AM. It is pretty tame and much more bearable (I think). On the other hand, Berlin’s nights do not start until 2 AM and they end at 8 AM. I laughed out loud to the thought of me doing that. The Berlin nightlife wouldn’t have been so annoying if our hostel wasn’t across the street from a club. So, the club’s music would start around midnight and END AT 7:30 AM. And the music was the type that shook your bed. IT WAS SO ANNOYING. Good thing I had my earplugs…
April 13
From there, we walked onto the Museum Island. We passed a funny cutout that Marina had to explain to me. When JFK visited Germany in 1963 he said the line “Ich bin ein Berliner!” JFK was trying to say to Germany, “I am a Berliner!” but instead he said, “I am a donut!” So it is an ongoing German joke. Coincidentally, we went to Dunkin Donuts before seeing the cutout, so we got some clutch photos with the quote and a donut!
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| On the way to museum island.... |
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| I'M A DONUT! |
Along with the wall, we got an outside exhibit on the wall’s history. It started with the barbed wire right after the end of the WWII, to 1961 when the actual wall started being built, and then its final fall in 1989. I found interesting how effort went into these walls. For example, by 1961 Eastern Berlin had lost more than half of its population due to the people escaping. So, they decided to build the wall. Even with the wall, people kept on escaping. So every time a person escaped, the Eastern Berliners would need to go out of their way to make leaving harder, IE making the no man’s land, putting mines in the no man’s land, or putting another wall in between the two walls! People wanted to leave so badly and East Germany had their work cut out for them in keeping their citizens IN!
The site also had a memorial to the Germans that lost their lives in trying to escape East Germany. The Eastern Berlin guards were given the order to shoot no matter what and that is exactly what they did. We also read about the success stories of the people who escaped- like the man who built a hot air balloon and flew it over the wall at night! Or the woman who crossed the border when she hid in a surfboard!
Next to the wall was a cemetery that we decided to walk through. It was a gorgeous cemetery. For some reason, we thought Bach was buried there, so we spent a while going through the place looking for him. Finally we asked this old couple if they knew where he was buried and it turned out that it was Bach’s UNCLE that was buried there! Go figure…
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| If you're ever looking for Bach's Uncle.... |
Finally we headed back to our hostel, got Indian food for dinner (yep, third night in a row), and called it a night.
April 14
It was a beautiful day out as we started our trek to the Soviet Solider Memorial. This was another ‘hidden find’ by Marina and her friends. Basically, we wandered off the map we had until we hit this HUGE park dedicated to the Soviet Soldiers that died during WWII. Well, it was a park that was built over a mass grave. There were some nice communist structures with the sickle and hammer plastered everywhere. It was eerie for two reasons
(1) There were families with small children there playing. Like, these little kids were rollerblading around a soviet memorial. I wonder if they knew where they were…
After the Soviet memorial, we all headed to Checkpoint Charlie. Here was the location where officials could cross from East to West Berlin and vice versa. It wasn’t anything big or impressive, just historical. There you could get your passport stamped like “East Berlin” or “USA Sector of Berlin.” I figured my parents/the American customs wouldn’t really appreciate that if I did it, so I held back.
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| Checkpoint Charlie |
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| Checkpoint Charlie. |
Afterwards, we headed to the Topography of Terror museum. Once again, it was free (as it should be). The museum is located on the site where the national SS headquarters, the Reich SS leadership, Security Service of the SS, and Reich Security Main Office was once located. So basically, any important part of the Nazi terror regime was found on this part of land. The museum was detailed and very well done. Once again, it took you all the way from the beginning of the Third Reich, to its rise, and its fall. Specifically, it looked into the Gestapo and SS. It talked about its leaders, its actions, and its effects. It had specific documents, pictures, and letters that the Nazis meticulously wrote. I was secretly happy that these museums existed, were free, and were well done. I was also very happy that most of the visitors there were Germans. It just means that this part of history is not ignored and instead drilled into one’s head. Making them free, people almost feel compelled to go. Education is the best tool in prevention and the Germans are taking full advantage of that.
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See, you don't have to go along with the crowd!
I LOVE this picture!!!! |
Walking through all these museums, it became strange to see places we had been. There were countless photos of Hitler standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate and you go like, “whoah…I was just there….and Hitler was once there….” Moreover, just being at Auschwitz, I could recognize so many photos and their significance. Traveling through Europe has just helped me put the bigger picture together.
We then moved onto the Stasi museum that looked into the GDR Secret Police. Most of the museum was in German, but I got the gist of it. It basically looked into the secret police and their jobs. The museum talked about the hours of secret footage the police took on people and the rooms of information the police had on people. Want to talk about Big Brother? Because that is EXACTLY what the Stasi was. Marina recommended that I watch the film “The Lives of Others” since it was about the Stasi. That is my next goal. The museum also described the actions undertaken by resistance fighters during the soviet times.
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| Watch out for the Stasi! They are watching you! |
April 15
I woke up early to catch my flight back to London! Two weeks left me tired and missing my new ‘home’ of London. I was so happy to land back in the UK and take the tube back to Borough.
Overall, I am slightly obsessed with Berlin. I felt the most relaxed in Berlin and really enjoyed the atmosphere. There was a real strong ‘counter-culture’ scene that had a strong vibe. I got to see the ultra artsy hipsters and the true Punk Berliners. Berlin is now one of the more liberal cities in the world, which is amazing if you think of where it was 70 years ago.
When I look back now on this two-week trip, I see how fluid each city led into each other. While almost country I visited had a common history, they each evolved to be their own unique separate entities. Also, I learned how comfortable you could become in a city. I was only in each city for no more than 3 days and by the end, I knew sites, directions, and roads. I loved just walking the streets and feeling confident in knowing where I was. A third thing I left this trip with was the knowledge that Spanish people travel A LOT. English was the minority in all the places I visited. Instead all the tours were given in Spanish! Now THAT was a first! Lastly, I learned how invaluable Rick Steves is! My dad has been right all along about this guy. He was a life savor. I even learned that his son does trips specifically for study abroad students, so I will look into that next time!
On a more serious note, this trip made me realize how little I saw of each country. I left each place wanting more: more history, more sites, more people. I never left feeling fully satisfied and it just confirms my thoughts that I need to go back! Furthermore, I am proud of myself for successfully planning and completing this trip. I can now appreciate the stress my parents feel when we travel and how expensive these things are! I am proud that I successfully navigated from airport to hostel, from hostel to the sites, and from country to country! I now feel more confident and comfortable with myself and traveling.
….Fast-forward to NOW! Finally most of my flat is back too from their Easter Breaks. We are super stressed about finals, but our procrastination is at its worst. IT’S GETTING REALLY DANGEROUS! Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh SCHOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
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| It was truly a trip of a lifetime! |
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