~ Mike
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After an eventful New Years, we woke up at 6:30 in the morning to catch our 7-hour long train to Berlin. We all boarded a beautiful train that was like riding in first class - there was even an electronic sign above your seat with your name on it. The train ride was beautiful. On one side we saw rolling hills of Denmark covered in fresh snow, and on the other side we saw a beautiful coastline. We slept for a good amount of the ride as we were tired from the night before, until we were suddenly woken up at around 9:45. I will tell the story below, but please keep in mind that to get to Copenhagen, we had taken a 7-mile bridge and tunnel, so we expected to take a similar form of transportation leaving - not the case at all:
At 9:45, I was woken up by Alex shaking me frantically explaining that we were on a boat and needed to get off of the train. Certain
that we were indeed on a train, I assured him that this was not the case and went back to sleep. He persisted and shook me some more, so I told him if he really thought we had to get off, he should go ask the conductor. While Alex left, I woke up Pat and Ryan, figuring that we should put our shoes on just in case. As we were tying our shoes, we heard the conductor yell at Alex, "I said it three times in German, English, and Dutch, get up to the top of the boat!" We immediately left the train to find that we were indeed on a boat. We climbed a staircase up one flight to find a level of coach buses. Confused, we climbed two more flights, each time finding levels of cars. Finally we reached a level that was for passengers. We were amazed
to find that we were aboard a very large ship, ferrying us across a channel. The ship had restaurants, shops, and plenty of places to relax. Alex, Pat, and Ryan insisted that they needed a smoke to process this, and I couldn't blame them. We went outside where it hit Alex that,
"A bunch of Germans just loaded me onto a boat - and I'm Jewish!" We enjoyed the boat ride and went back down to our train when it was done. We were surprised, however, that no one had informed us of the 45-minute excursion when we bought the tickets.
We finally arrived in Berlin around 2:30, and proceeded to take the S-Bahn to our hostel. After a bit of trouble finding it due to poor directions, we arrived. The hostel was the Backpax Downtown Hostel, and was very nice. It has a pool room, bar, internet, and very clean rooms. We put our bags away and headed off to buy tickets for our first sleeper train of the trip to Krakow, Poland. We went out to dinner at a very cheap but very good Thai restaurant, and went back to our hostel to chill at the bar and sleep for the night after a few rounds of pool and some Wii Karaoke.
The next morning we woke up to snow outside our window around 9:15. We got some breakfast at the hostel and headed out for a free 3 to 4 hour walking tour of the city. The tour
met at the Brandenburg Gate in Pariser Platz at 11. The Gate has a very cool story about the statue on the top of it. If you look at it, the woman on the chariot faces the French Embassy in the square. Interestingly enough, this was not always the case. When the Germans took the square back from French control, they beheaded the statue and turned her head a a way of mocking the French for losing.
After the tour started and we were introduced to our guide Natasha, we went to the Parliament house which was beautiful. There is a huge dome above the debating chambers so the politicians can always see the people walking above them. Although we wanted to go in later in the day, the line was hours long and we didn't
end up wanting to spend the money.
From here we walked over to the Holocaust Memorial. The memorial is huge with a very interesting effect. It was placed in the center of the city so that no one can ever forget what happened or how many people lost their lives. The memorial is made up of thousands of blocks of stone. Each stone is the same size, but placed at different heights in the ground. Some people say it looks like coffins, while others say it resembles the cities that were demolished.
Next the tour brought us past the site of Hitler's Bunker, which is nothing more than a piece of grass at the edge of a parking lot. There is nothing there for fear that he would
become memorialized. In 2006 they finally put a small sign that shows the old blueprints of the bunker, and explains that this is where it was. The walls of it were 13 feet thick, and the inside was 2 stories deep. Locals refuse to even acknowledge that it is there, and many people just walk by.
We continued walking and eventually made it to Luftwaffe Headquarters. The building is now a finance building, but still has a socialist "protest" painting on the side of it. The painting was placed there to depict how people "felt" at the time, although it is the exact opposite of how people actually saw the government. The building was made to make you feel small, which it does very well. Since the fall of the Nazis, it has been kept close to its original condition as a reminder of how things used to be.
From here we went to the old SS Headquarters site, which was next to the largest standing portion of the Berlin Wall. The wall was a mere 6 inches thick, and about 9 feet high. The wall was originally topped with barbed wire, but people were so desperate to get over the wall that they would grab it and pull themselves over, so instead they replaced it with tubing so people would slip trying to get over it. On the other side of the wall was the death strip, which was 25 to 30 feet between two walls where many people were killed. There are cobblestones throughout the city marking where the wall used to be. We followed the cobblestones down to Checkpoint Charlie, which was the main American checkpoint, and is still standing with people standing symbolically in the old positions.
We took a 25-minute break to get some coffee, and then went to Bebelplatz, which was the square where the book burning happened. 20,000 books were burned in the square at the beginning of the Nazi regime, and in remembrance there is a memorial of empty bookshelves. Interestingly enough, one of the books burned that had been written in 1920 had a line in it that has been used ever since which said, "This is just the beginning, where they burn books they will eventually burn people."
In the square there was also a beautiful cathedral, St. Hedwigs, Humboldt University, which is a very prestigious university where Einstein once taught. We continued on to a memorial of killed soldiers in all wars and tyranny which depicted a mother crying with her dead son in her arms. Next was the Berliner Dom, which was absolutely beautiful and so large it is hard to even imagine. Next to the Dom is the TV tower, which was built while the wall was up to show everyone that they were able to advance as well. Interestingly enough, however, they did need outside help, so their show of engineering was not all theirs. The tour ended with a story about how the wall fell, and we thanked our guide and walked back up towards the start point. On the way, we passed by the Russian Embassy, which was huge.
We grabbed some great German food on the way back, including sausage, kraut, and meat with red cabbage. We went back to the hostel, had a drink, and talked for a while until we left to catch our overnight train to Krakow. Once we arrived at the train station, we boarded the train and got settled into our cabin. It took us about an hour to figure out how to get the ladder to work so we could climb up to the top bunk, which ended up being fine as we were delayed for about an hour anyway. We finally went to sleep and enjoyed the rest of our 13-hour train ride.
1 comment:
hey boys...happy new year!! sounds like your trip is fantastic. i hope i get to run into you all when you're in ireland but if not, have a safe and enjoyable rest of your break :-)
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