Weekend
10: October 17th – October 19th 2014
Friday, October 17th
Stevie
took a vacation day to fully enjoy her birthday weekend! Woo hoo! So Friday
morning, Rachel met us by the river and we took a taxi to the airport. We got
into Berlin pretty early so we left our stuff at the hostel then went shopping!
A mall was really close to the hostel and it was a chilly day so we (Stevie and
Rachel) decided to buy cute warm accessories! Stevie got herself a nice made-in-Germany
warm scarf. After that we got a quick pretzel snack and headed back to the
hostel for a free walking tour.
The tour guide was
a nice Romanian guy – currently a research assistant at the local university for
ecology of political science or something like that working on his PHD. In a
former life he studied at Berkeley and worked as a ‘carnie’ around the east
coast of the US. We were his first stop on the walking tour so we had to try
and find another hostel to get more people. It took us awhile… Finally we made
it and joined up with 18 other people and headed into Berlin. Our first stop
was walking by the “new” synagogue. It’s a really pretty Moorish styled
building that was saved from “Kristallnacht” because a police officer allowed
the fire brigade to extinguish a fire after disbanding a Nazi mob.
The next stop was
Brandenburger Tor – the most ‘souvenir’ shot of all Berlin. This gate was
built as a sign of peace by the King of Prussia in 1788. Apparently Napoleon
rode through the middle arch of the gate as a sign of rebellion to the King of
Prussia (only the King was allowed through the middle). Berlin and Paris never
got along real well. The gate is located on ‘Pariser Platz’ or Paris Plaza and
was named as such for the anti-Napoleon Allies occupation of Paris in 1814. The
tour guide also pointed out the silent memorial to the Berlin wall: 2 rows of
bricks in the streets where the wall once stood.
The next place we
saw was the Holocaust memorial: 2,711 slabs of concrete in the same direction,
but of varying sizes and slightly angled, looking like graves of varying height.
The memorial was very impressive. As you walked between the various slabs of
concrete towards the center, the ground dipped and the slabs made you feel
smaller and smaller. It was like a giant maze and you could have run into
anyone at any corner.
After some
reflection while walking through the memorial, we saw the location of Hitler’s
bunker where he and his bride committed suicide then were lit on fire. This was
not well marked at all (it was a parking lot with one small sign). The Germans
know how bad the holocaust was and our tour guide told us here that there are
certain phrases in German that are against the law (relating to the holocaust)
that will get you in jail faster than murdering someone.
After seeing the
old bunker location we moseyed over to the only Nazi architecture building that
Hitler successfully accomplished while in power. It housed the ministry of
aviation 1933-1945. It was nice, but had a prison like feel to it with a lot of
small windows and gray stone. Today it’s the national treasury building. The
tour guide told us that these big monuments (treasury building, Brandenburger
Tor, etc.) were not blow to complete pieces because pilots used them in WWII as
references to where they were to drop their bombs.
After the
treasury, we stopped by the “Topography of Terror”; a monumental piece of the
Berlin wall showing the story of the invasion of Poland and how it “rose from
its ashes”. 1933-1945 this location was the headquarters of the Gestapo and the
SS (Schutztaffel), or the paramilitary of Hitler. It was a very humbling piece of
the Wall.
After that, we
made our way to “Checkpoint Charlie”; one of the three checkpoints into West
Berlin when the city was split in half. Pretty touristy with food shacks and
sign boards, but still pretty neat to see a living piece of history.
After Charlie (and
grabbing some currywurst) we went to see the twin cathedrals of Berlin. There
was a French built cathedral that mirrored a German cathedral in the same plaza
as each other. The French Cathedral was built in 1705 by the Huguenot community
who were persecuted in France seeking refuge in protestant Berlin. The German
cathedral was built directly across from the French and mirrors its architecture.
It was built in 1708, and then added a dome in 1785 which was destroyed in a
fire in 1945. When they rebuilt the dome – they built it 7 meters taller than the
French cathedral. In this Gendarmenmarkt
plaza is also the Konzerthaus (concert house) - home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
After the
cathedrals we walked past the Bebelplatz of Humboldt University where 20,000
volumes of books were burned in the Nazi book burning of 1933. There is an
empty shelf room that you can see under the plaza to show people how much knowledge
was lost from the burning.
Then we walked
over to the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) to take in its architecture and see
the old palace for the King of Prussia getting rebuilt to the original design.
Finally (after
this 5 hours of walking), the tour was over. It really was a great tour and
didn’t seem like we walked all afternoon. We went back to the hostel to check
in and have a happy hour cocktail in the lounge then headed next door to the
Hofbräu München of Berlin where we enjoyed some HUGE portioned Bavarian
(southern German) food with a few pints of fresh beer and live music. This
place was hoppin’ on a Friday night! People were dressed up in their Oktoberfest/traditional
German costumes and partying the night away with friends and family. All the
tables were long picnic tables so you got to make friends while you ate. There
was also a band there playing what sounded like was traditional German music
because everyone kept chanting bar songs or cheers. It was a really fun and traditional
dinner.
In hopes of trying
to make it to midnight for Stevie’s birthday, we went up to the lounge of the hostel
for some cheap drinks. It was here where the bartender lit up some shots of
sambuca for us. That was quite the experience (see the pictures!). Then, it was
bedtime – we almost made it to midnight, but not quite.
Saturday, October 18th
Happy
birthday Stevie! J!
We slept in a little bit then headed out for some pastries for breakfast then
we were on our way! First stop of the day, wandering along the river while
searching for the Eastside Gallery. We stumbled upon a really cool statue of
St. George and the Dragon while we walked along the pretty riverside. Finally
we made it to the gallery. This 1.3 km part of the Berlin wall houses really
neat graffiti and art work reflecting on the times of the Wall.
After walking
along the wall, we took the train into the city a little bit then walked past
the Jewish Museum. We didn't go in, but the outside was very cold and modern
with the Star of David on the side of the steel walls. There were very little
windows and the aerial
view looks very bleak too – an exploding Star of David.
Then we made our
way back to Checkpoint Charlie for some pictures with the “American” soldiers.
We walked inside the fence of the small history museum devoted to the
checkpoint then got some lunch across the street.
After that we went
up in a ‘hot air balloon’ to see Berlin! It was just a helium balloon with a
cable connected to the ground. We went up 150 meters and got to see most of
Berlin. It was kind of a hazy day, but we still saw everything that we walked
on the tour the day before (A LOT OF WALKING).
When we got down
from the balloon we headed towards the Reichstagsgebäude or the Parliament building
of Berlin. It’s a neat old building with now a glass dome where people can go
up it and walk around it. Unfortunately we didn't know we needed tickets a day
in advance so we just looked at the building and moved on because we just saw
Berlin from the balloon.
We then walked
back to the hostel to get ready to party!!! Stevie had a nice google hangout
with her family then we all got ready to go out. Rachel found a nice pub crawl online
so we meet up with 120 other young adults to go celebrate the birthday! We made
our way to four different bars which had specials for our group. We met a nice
group of girls from University of Dallas who were studying in Rome and stuck
with them most of the night. We also met some nice Israeli boys who managed to
get half the bar to sing happy birthday to Stevie at 3 of the 4 bars (twice at
one bar – thanks Rachel). The whole group got on a metro then made their way
over to the other side of East Berlin to get free entrance into the Matrix
club. It was a pretty neat club considering it was built under the tram/metro
railway close to the very pretty Oberbaum Bridge. After the 7 hour
crawl/clubbing celebration, it was time to call the birthday festivities to an
end.
Sunday, October 19th
Sunday
morning we (Stevie and Stuart) got up to go to mass in the Berliner Dom
cathedral. However, we found out quickly (with the entrance of a female priest)
that this was not a Catholic cathedral. We stayed for the service though. This
service included 4 or 5 small readings, lots of singing, a sermon from what
seemed like the female bishop from a tall fancy enclosed podium that looked
like an egg, a communion service, and a really nice pieced played on the huge
organ.
After that we went
back to the hostel to pick up Rachel and made our way to the Mauerpark flea
market. This place was huge! Rows and rows of jewelry, bags, stuff, and more
old stuff. The center had a lot of food stands where we got some fresh juice,
fresh cut potato chips on a stick, and some lunch. We stayed there exploring
for a couple hours then headed back to the hostel to get our stuff. It was time
to leave Berlin L.
Overall, it was a very fun, sobering,
un-sobering, long weekend!
Up next: Paris for this weekend and
Madrid for the next!!! (<Stevie can’t wait to show Stuart Madrid J)
Gros bisous (big kisses),
Stevie and Stuart
What a great birthday weekend! Sounds like lots of fun with some serious history mixed in.
ReplyDelete