Checking out Berlin!

Today was our free day to explore Berlin! Started out with a Third Reich walking tour of the historical sites around Berlin. We all caught the U-Bahn to Mohrenstrafze and met our tour guide Jakob there. He started by pointing out the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and other historical buildings around Wilhelmplatz before walking us over to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. This memorial was designed by American architect Peter Eisenman and completed in 2005. The Germans rather than trying to forget the past have the attitude of wanting to accept responsibility as a nation for their history.

The memorial consisted of 2711 concrete rectangular blocks laid out over an entire town block. They stand at slightly different angles and heights, with the towering blocks concentrated in the centre. The idea is to walk through the memorial and as you reach the centre the blocks towering over you represent the peak of the Nazi oppression and persecution of the Jews.

Next Jakob led us a to the nearby site of Hitler’s underground bunker. It is no longer accessible today after collapsing but he described how it had super thick walls (3.6m concrete walls and 4.3m for the ceiling) and was where Hitler committed suicide on 30th April 1945. Now there’s an inconspicuous carpark situated over it so that people can’t make a shrine out of it.

We headed on to a remnant of the Berlin Wall and the Topography of Terrors outdoor exhibit. The exhibit basically details the operations of the SS and Gestapo security forces during WWII. We noticed that someone had graffitied Ben Lee on a part of the wall! Looks like I don’t have to do it myself!

Our final stop was checkpoint Charlie, one of the 3 main border crossings between East and West Berlin during the cold war. After the tour we were left to our own devices. Di and I checked out some of the info boards around Checkpoint Charlie before deciding to look for lunch.

We walked up Friedrich St towards Under den linten St where some markets were marked out on the map. We didn’t end up finding the markets but we did find a small German pub in a backstreet where we had a yummy pork schnitzel and meatball with potato salad!

After lunch we checked out the Brandenburg gate before heading to the Reichstag (German Parliament House). We had a 30min wait in the hot sun before passing through security checks and ascending in a lift to the terrace level of the Reichstag. Up here we had a 360 view of the city and there was this glass dome with ramps around its walls that you could walk up to the peak of dome for an even better view! Inside the dome there was also information about the German Parliament’s history and we read that before walking up to the peak. At the top the roof was open and there was this circular bench that we reclined on to rest our weary legs! After a while it was too hot and time to look for a drink!

We left the Reichstag around 4pm and decided to check out the activities in the nearby park where the finish line of a cycling marathon was. We found a range of stores selling Brauwurst, Currywurst and every type of wurst etc before spotting one that sold slurpees! We quickly grabbed two and enjoyed them on a park bench near the Brandenburg Gate!

After this refreshment we spent the next 3 hours checking out the information centre at the Memorial for Murdered Jews and then the Topography of Terrors exhibit! Tired of reading signboards and sobered at the stuff we were reading about, we decided to get dinner around 7:30pm.

We bumped into Jonathan and Erika at Checkpoint Charlie who had just had dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant that they recommended! Since we were running out of time before our 8:45pm pickup, we decided to just go with that! We ordered red chicken curry which looked more green than red, and spicy fried beef with garlic and chillis which turned out to be fried duck in sweet and sour sauce! We couldn’t be bothered correcting the order and both dishes tasted good anyhow! Somehow we managed to finish the huge portions and afterwards I was so full I couldn’t lie down for a few hours!

Matty and the coach picked us up at Checkpoint Charlie at 8:50pm. The whole tour group was on their way to a pubcrawl that Di and I passed on cause we were already exhausted and stuffed! Got back to the hotel around 9:30pm and found that most of our laundry had dried save my jeans. We also realised that one lock and one sock was missing!!! Searched the entire hotel room and our backpacks and everything and couldn’t find them!!! Oh well! That takes our lost items tally to one travel adapter, one wedding ring, one lock and one sock! We’ll see if we can find em tomorrow morning!