Berlin

The church that was bombed in WWII. This is all that remains
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August 08 So this morning we got up and it was quite cloudy still from last night’s rain. We hopped in a cab to take us to the Hertz rental car place. The driver drove extremely fast, and at one point I swear he was gunning for some old lady crossing the street. When we got to the Hertz place we had to wait for dad to fill out paper work. It was really cold and I’m starting to get sick so I sat inside and looked at a hot guy for awhile. We then loaded up our rental car and started to head out of the city. We ended up sitting in traffic for quite awhile because it turned out the main highway was closed. Dad rerouted somehow, I wasn’t really paying attention because I didn’t feel like listening to him and Steph arguing. I just read and before I knew it I looked up and we were in the middle of the Dutch countryside. It’s extremely pretty, very green with the red tile roofs of the little houses contrasting nicely. I even saw an old fashioned windmill which was still working. There are way more of the new ones everywhere. They are the tall white ones which Mrs.Cameron showed us pictures of in science class. Now though they have red stripes painted on them for better visibility. I slept for awhile and when I woke up we were in Germany. It looks alot like Holland. Many cute hillside towns with the red tile roofs. For lunch we stopped at a McDonald’s. For some reason every McDonald’s in Europe is decorated very nicely. They are all very modern and chic. There are flat screen TVs and everything. The girl we were ordering from didn’t speak English but we finally got what we wanted and headed off again. We missed one of our exits twice but got on the right track. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. It just feels like we’re driving through Canada or the States, except for the fact that there’s no speed limit. This is quite scary especially when we are the slow ones going 180. Most cars are pushing 200. When we got to Berlin it took us a little while to find our hotel. This gave me a good chance to scope out the city. It certainly isn’t as pretty as Amsterdam, but it’s okay. Very gray looking, but that may only be because of the cloudiness. After we dropped our bags off at the hotel (which certainly isn’t as nice as the Amsterdam one) we went to look around a bit. We had gotten into the city later than expected so we just stayed close to our hotel. The walk/don't walk lights are those funny little men like the postcard Mrs. Cameron showed us. A couple blocks down there is a cathedral that got bombed in WWII. Only the front of it is still standing and there is a giant hole in the middle. The tops of the towers are also missing. On the ceiling there was a gorgeous mosaic with lots of gold. It seems like it would have been a grand place back in the day. We went into some shops afterwards, then for dinner. At another Italian place. There are certainly no shortages of them and every restaurant we come across is Italian. I have eaten pasta and pizza every night! The menus are kind of hard to read here though, because it’s not as English speaking as Amsterdam. We went back to our hotel then and went to bed.

Some of the mosaic that is on the ceiling.
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August 09 We got up bright and early to go on a walking tour through Berlin. There was a bit of trouble finding the meeting place but we found it eventually and joined the group. Then we hopped on a train to Hackescher Markt where our tour started. It turns out that it used to be an area where all the people living at the edge of society (poor, sick, blind, Jewish, dwarves, etc) lived in the 1930s. Hitler had decided he was going to round up all the people here and send them off to Concentration Camps. Many Berliners hid them though behind false partitions in closets and cellars and cupboards and saved many. I really wanted to go see a Concentration Camp but we didn’t have enough time. After Hackescher Markt we started off to an island in the middle of Berlin. There are many museums and old churches, and illegal immigrants. It is Imperial Berlin and there are many old buldings from the 1900s. On the bridge there were two little kids playing music for money. One was playing an accordion and the other was playing some weird instrument which was a cross between a flute and a piano. According to our tour guide they were part of the Mafia, and are in an agreement sort of like forced prostitution, which is also a problem in Berlin. They were very cute and played well so we gave them money. We continued onto the island and then back onto the mainland. We stopped many times at various historical sights. Some had to do with Hitler, others had to do with the Communists, and some with the royalty of Germany from long ago. Finally there was a stop for lunch and I was very hungry indeed. We were running behind schedule and what was supposed to be a four hour tour turned into six hours. Since we finished lunch early we went into a free internet cafe and I wrote a few quick emails before we started up again. After lunch we stopped at Checkpoint Charlie. It was Checkpoint C along the Berlin Wall, and it was the only checkpoint where you could cross between East and West Germany. The tour stopped and our guide explained all the politics that went along with the Berlin Wall and how the Soviets and the Americans had a stand off at Checkpoint Charlie that almost started WWIII. He also pointed out that along the line where the wall once stood there is a brick line with brass plates every so often stating the date when the wall was put up. It was put up during the night and many people woke up to find it there. It criss-crossed and went everywhere so it wasn’t a straight line. Many people died trying to cross as in some places where there was room, the wall stretched for 500 m. They had electrical fences and trenches and the wall so that people and tanks couldn’t cross. We moved on to various other buildings then to the site where Hitler’s bunker was. It was very large and he had many other people down there living with him. Our guide said he and others have a documentary coming out that there is evidence that Hitler had syphallis, Parkinson’s disease, Schizaphrenia, Male anorexia, and he was addicted to cocaine that was given to him through eye drops to cure his weepy eye due to his syphallis. When he knew the Soviets were coming for him he married his girlfriend Ava Brown and they decided to kill themselves with cyanide capsules. They didn’t believe the man who gave them to them so they tested to capsules on Hitler’s dog. It successfully killed the dog so they took them and then were partially burned because there wasn’t enough gasoline to fully cremate them. Them the Soviets dug them up and found the skull of Hitler. They took his ashes and his skull and jaw back to Moscow where the jaw and the skull are displayed in separate museums. His ashes were then flushed down the toilet. After Hitler’s bunker we went to the monument to all the Jews who were killed in the war. There were about 11 million and 6.5 million were successfully exterminated by the Nazis. The monument was a bunch of stone blocks of varying heights and sizes. It was meant to resemble a cornfield, and you were supposed to get confused and disoriented walking through it. I didn’t experience this phenomenon, but what I did find interesting was that the stones were sprayed with a material that resists graffiti so they can’t be damaged. We finished off the tour at the Brandenburg gate, which is the gate to the city. It is in the middle of the city but whatever. It is very large and is designed in the Roman fashion. It has Nike the goddess of victory riding a chariot on the top. When Steph was trying to take a picture of it someone bumped her and she dropped the camera on the cobblestones. The lens was out and bent, so now our camera is broken. We still don’t know what we’re going to do. You certainly can’t be on this kind of trip and not have a camera! It hasn’t even been a week yet! We did also got to see the balcony where Michael Jackson hung his baby out the window and shook it though. Since our tour ended up being six hours we were all quite tired so we went up a street to look for restaurants but no one was really hungry yet. We got back on the train and went for dinner closer to our hotel. Then went back to the hotel where I read for a bit then went to sleep.

I slept for awhile and when I woke up we were in Germany. It looks alot like Holland. Many cute hillside towns with the red tile roofs.