Berlin walking tour

We took a fantastic free walking tour that took up most of the day. We saw all the famous Berlin sites – the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, a piece of the Berlin wall, the Jewish Memorial, etc. I’m leaving a space here for Jeremy to fill in some interesting/historical tidbits from the tour, because he hasn’t written anything for awhile. If this remains blank, blame him.

Fine, fine, I’ll write something. The tour guide jumped around mostly between the Nazi and Stalinist eras of Berlin’s history. Regarding the former, the modern German government explicitly highlights the victims rather than a perpetrators of WWII and the Holocaust. The Jewish memorial is composed of thousands of concrete pillars, roughly the size of coffins, but ranging from just off the ground to several meters high, arranged in a large grid. While no official symbolism is present, walking through this provided an impressive feeling of disorientation (some of the blocks slant in, others out, and change hights sporatically), entering a dense, man-made forest, and being separated. Becky and I took different paths through and there was an interesting effect where you would see each other for a moment and then a turn would separate us and we would be alone again. This provoked thoughts of how loved ones were separated in the camps and would have only seen each other in glimpses if at all. It was a very well done memorial.

Below that architectural exhibit was a small museum highlighting families from all over Europe decimated by the holocaust along with post cards and letters written from within ghettos or, in one case, thrown off a train going to a death camp by Jewish people who did not survive. This provided a more personal look back at the individuals affected during this time that complimented our earlier visit to the Dachau concentration camp.In contrast to that large and very noticeable memorial, the place where Hilter’s bunkers were located was under a run-down parking lot with a small sign. Our guide said that Berliners often take their dogs on walks by this spot to “do their business.” A bit later, we passed by a building that had stood during the war which was pock-marked with bullet holes left over from the Soviet invasion of Berlin.

The Stalinist era was not much more pleasant for East Berlin, and there was an interesting set of murals showing the dichotomy of real life versus contemporary government propaganda. One original mural (on the side of the Luftwaffe building converted into an East German governmental ministry showed the German people happily going to the horse races, working in a factory, and generally enjoying life. On the square in front, a photograph of the same size (maybe 2x10 meters) shows people protesting in a failed uprising from the 50’s who were killed during the conflict.

After the tour, we contemplated going on a pub crawl, but determined that it wasn’t a very good deal (and that we didn’t really care). Instead, we went back to the hostel pretty early again to have dinner and try to do laundry. But, of course, the Laundromat was 30 minutes away from closing when I got there, so that got postponed until the next morning. We just sat around the hostel instead, reading and trying to plan.