Berlin: Weltstadt mit Herz

March 27-30

At least that's what all the kitschy little souvenirs say. Def my most interesting city visit so far. Berlin isn't really a beautiful city the way many other European cities are, but it has a ton of history. Most of the stuff that has happened in Germany in the past few centuries (good and bad, although obviously a lot of it bad) has centered around Berlin. I went with two other aupairs I know. It was kind of good, because our only common language was German (the one from South Africa speaks English of course, but the French one doesn't), so we had to speak in German. The only bad thing is--it kind of sucks speaking German with non-native speakers, at least for a long period of time. We all have fairly limited vocabularies so it kind of makes speaking a little uninteresting. I was sick of it by the end of the weekend.

Unfortunately my travel companions and I did not have similar traveling styles. Their main goal (they even expressed this out loud) was to visit famous stuff and get their pictures taken in front of it. I mean, I like taking pictures as much as the next person, but I also like actually seeing a city. One of them said she'd go in museums as long as it wasn't too expensive....expensive being 6 €. Um, 6 € isn't a lot. On the other hand, they were perfectly willing to buy chocolate and tacky souvenirs that cost that much or more. I had kind of had a feeling that maybe they wouldn't be the same kind of travelers I was (my first hint was when one of them showed up with a large, wheeled suitcase packed full for a 3-day trip), but this just proved it. Luckily the last day I was able to go off on my own and see the museums I was interested in.


Day 1
We got in super early in the morning from our night train, rode out to our hotel (which was farther than I thought it would be), and of course our room wasn't ready. We left our bags then rode into the city to go wait in the massive line for the Reichstag. After standing there for two hours in the cold, we finally got in. Unfortunately the only part open to the line is the cupola (I wanted to see the big room where they hold the parliamentary sessions, but you have to make a reservation to do that). The cupola was still cool. It's totally made of glass and you can walk up to the top. I remember from one of my previous trips to Berlin that the cupola is glass to allow anyone to see into the government. Almost the entire last century in German history was dominated by closed, secretive government, so it's a symbol to show that that will never happene again. The view was pretty good and there was a small exhibit with pictures showing German history since about 1920.


Afterwards we saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, ate lunch, then went to the Berliner Mauer Gedenkstätte. It has a set-up of how the wall used to look: eastern wall, no man's land, then western wall (those Commies weren't taking any chances). We looked at that for a little bit then rode down to Alexanderplatz to see the world clock and the TV tower (368 meters high!). There was some kind of festival going on, so of course we stopped and ate crepes. After that we went back to our hotel and crashed.

Day 2
We were gonna sleep in....except we went to bed so early that Carole and I both woke up super early (Vianca slept all the way to the alarm). We went on a free walking tour of the city at 11 that ended up lasting 4.5 hours...luckily it included a stop for lunch. We saw Pariser Platz (where the Brandenburg Gate is), the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, the site of Hitler's former bunker (where he killed himself at the end of WWII), Checkpoint Charlie, Topography of Terror, Bundesfinanzamt, Gendarmenmarkt, Bebelplatz, and the Berliner Dom. It was quite a good and informative tour. I learned quite a bit about the city.

After the tour we went to the East Side Gallery, which is a 1.3-km section of the wall that was left up so that commissioned artists could paint murals on it. It was really cool to see, but unfortunately most of it has been almost completely destroyed by idiots who spray paint over it and write stuff on it (one of my travel companions took it upon herself to write on one of the murals--horrible). The murals were originally painted in 1990, then a good chunk restored in 2000. It's pretty sad that it only took 10 years for them to almost completely deteriorate due to erosion and vandalism.

Day 3
I went off on my own to visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the Topography of Terror, and the DDR Museum. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum is (duh) right next to what used to be Checkpoint Charlie, the checkpoint between the DDR and the American sector, so named because it was the third checkpoint (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...). Most of the stuff in the museum was about the ingenious ways people managed to escape. The actual museum has quite an interesting history too--it's housed in a building that is just over the DDR border into the American sector, and was opened in 1962. It has been adding to its collection ever since.

My next stop was the Topography of Terror, an open-air exhibition located in the ruins of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. It's an exhibit detailing the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and what life was like under Hitler. It was a very good exhibit, but unfortunately it was just too long for me to be able to read it all. Plus it was outside and it was raining on an off. I read about half of it before giving up and heading to the DDR Museum.

The DDR Museum was a little bit disappointing, mostly because I had hoped it would be bigger! The museum is about what daily life was like in the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). It was really interactive and hands-on, and it had a lot of cool/weird facts--like how in kindergarten, all children were made to go to the bathroom together. They all had to sit down on a "potty bench" and relieve themselves at the same time. No one was allowed to stand up until the last person was finished. Also, apparently people were really into nude beaches and bathing! There were a ton of pictures of beaches and summer spots, and everyone was naked and hanging out (no pun intended, hahah).