Last weekend 6 of us took the train to Berlin. I went with Paula, Marcus, Will, Bobbi and Mark - 4 of those people being some of the new staff whom I have been enjoying getting to know. We stayed in the same hostel as I did in May, arriving Friday at about midnight. Since we left Sunday at about 3 pm we really only had a day and a half to explore the city.
Saturday we enjoyed some breakfast in the hostel and then headed out to Pariser Platz to see the Brandenburger Tor. We spent some of the morning sitting under a Starbucks umbrella watching the rain come down. Somehow I had decided to leave my umbrella at the hostel...
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| A wet morning at the Brandenburger Tor - at least when the rain started it cleared out some of the huge crowd that had been there when we first arrived. |
Finally the rain subsided a bit and we walked over to the Reichtag, through the Tiergarten (big forest park in the middle of the city, where the zoo is). Ended up back at the Brandenburger Tor to grab some sandwiches for lunch and meet up with the New Europe tours. I went on their free tour in May and it was amazing, so recommended to the others that they should do it too. I went instead on the "Red Berlin" tour. We ended up going all over the city looking at the history of when East Berlin was the capital of the DDR and the Berlin Wall was in place.
The first stop was Friedrichstrasse SBahn station. This was a big check point in the wall, and one where people came when they had permission to immigrate across the wall (don't know who got that, but apparently people did). The building that was used as immigration is still there, and is now a free exhibit on crossing the wall. They still have a few of the dividers that were there to make immigration booths and interrogation rooms. There were lots of stories of people who had crossed the wall, or escaped across. At the beginning, the SBahn still ran through both parts of the city, with border guards making sure people didn't get off on the wrong side of the city. There was a story of a family who escaped using the SBahn. They spent most of the day riding the trains trying to gather the courage to get off in the west (eventually they did). The East Germans then concreted up the East Berlin stations and rented out the lines below East Berlin to West Berlin. The entrances to the stations had 3 different concrete walls to ensure people could not escape through the tunnels. They now have brick lines to show where these walls were.
We then headed to the memorial to all the people who died attempting to escape across the Berlin Wall. I believe that there were 136 people known to have died. The memorial included some park space with various displays and a section of recreated wall. This reaction included both the main wall and the second wall, with the death strip in between and a watch tower. We were a bit surprised to see a wedding party taking pictures in the park area of the memorial and against the end of the recreated area... Didn't know a death strip was a good place for wedding pictures!
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| The memorial to all those who dies. There is a window for each person, many with pictures. I was surprised to see a bunch of little kids, including one baby! It didn't say how they died, but many were shot by border guards who had shoot to kill orders for anyone attempting to cross. |
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| There was a view place across the road that we climbed, to get this view. I took it as a panorama so unfortunately it looks a little warped. Just behind the end wall on the right was the wedding party. |
Next stop on the tour was the building below, to talk about the Stasi. This building was a hospital, then a Gestapo building and then the headquarters of the Stasi during the DDR. It was where people were taken to be interrogated. Now it is the headquarters of the traffic wardens for Berlin... Around the building you can see questions. They were put there as a bit of a memorial to what happened in the building while it was used by the Stasi. They are questions like "Wie kalt war die Wand?" (How cold was the wall?). Questions about what it would have been like for someone being interrogated.
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| Stasi Headquarters |
The final stop on our Red Berlin tour was this bridge, which was at one point a gate bridge. Like the Brandenburg Gates it was a customs gate into the city, but for the boats entering on the river. This is located right by the East Side Gallery. The gallery is a section of the Berlin Wall that has been decorated by various artists as an outdoor art instillation. We walked along it, but I wasn't that interested. I was also disappointed to see all the graffiti on the artists' work.
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| Oberbaum Bridge |
We then headed back to the hostel to meet up with the others and have a bit of a rest after all the walking. For dinner we headed to to Alexanderplatz area. We ate in a Spanish restaurant, sitting outside. After dinner we took the SBahn back to the Haupbahnhof and walked through the city to Potsdamer Platz.
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| View of the TV tower from near where we ate dinner |
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| The Reichstag all lit up at night |
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| Brandenburger Tor |
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| Inside the Sony Centre, at Potsdamer Platz. We are inside, however if is still basically an outside courtyard. |
On our way back we walked past where Hitler's bunker was. I managed to find the slide that my dad and I had found when I was in Berlin with my family. (L) 2012, (R) me in 2001 on the slide.
Sunday morning we got up for breakfast a little earlier and then headed off to the Reichtag. Normally you have to book online in advance, but we lucked out as there was a Bundestag open house. We were able to go inside the Paul Löbe Haus, where the offices are for members of parliament, and then take the underground tunnel to the Reichstag.
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| Inside Paul Löbe Haus. Various parliament groups, offices and parties had booths with information, freebies, and activities to do. We all ended up coming away with a bag full of free things we had won or been given. |
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| Playing a trivia game. There were 4 stations, and at each you had to answer 5 questions. Things like recognizing flags, languages or pictures of places or costumes. We got 20/20! The lady giving out the prizes seemed a bit surprised, guess she didn't know we were teachers! I got a Deutscher Bundestag truck - which went straight into my car box at school. |
Another booth had a quiz to win a book. However the quiz was on random facts of German parliament, and all in German. The man told us that inside the tunnel were information panels that contained all the answers, but again - all in German! However, we were an awesome team and managed to find all the answers.
Next stop: inside the Reichtag. Unlike when you visit on a normal day, today we were able to walk around a lot more of the building, and see many areas. On the ground level was the Assembly Hall. It is set up very different than in Canada. There is a front panel, and then the rest of the members sit in a semi circle facing the front. We later went up and sat in the viewing area (you can see a bit in the picture above, in the left hand top corner). There was a lady explaining who sits where in parliament. From what I could understand of the German, I learned where Angela Merkel sits and the president. On the right at the front sit the heads of all the states. On the left I believe the cabinet members sit. It is funny because the leaders of the states and Merkel, and anyone else more important, have chairs with slightly higher backs than anyone else.
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| Me in the Assembly Hall |
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| The chancellor's library. Could use some of those red chairs in my library! |
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| The walls of the hallway. They incorporate parts of the old Reichstag before it burned down. I am not exactly sure when the writing is from. The Reichstag was in West Berlin, however some of the writing in this picture looks to be Russian. |
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| View of the Assembly Hall from the visitor seating |
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| Another freebie from the open day - our picture taken as if we are the Chancellor! |
In reality we were standing in front of a blue screen, but they had a computer there and then printed it off for you like this :) My favourite was Paula's picture. They had a box for kids to stand on, and she also stood on it. Now she is taller than I am, so ended up almost not fitting in the picture, and completely blocked the eagle. She just looked as if she was an angel because of the eagle's wings!
We then went up the dome of the Reichstag and wandered around the balcony. They had an interpretive ballet performance that we watched for a while. The sun had come out so we played some frisbee and relaxed on the grass in front of the Reichstag before catching our train back to Frankfurt.
The train was fun. It was an older IC train (not the new higher speed ICEs). I felt like I was in a Poirot movie because it was all compartments, with old style seating. A great way to end a lovely weekend in Berlin.
