Effective... IMMEDIATELY!

14^th October 2011 – 9.30am

I apologise in advance for how long this one is. If nothing else it will show how much we enjoyed our time in Berlin and especially how much we have learnt. Pay attention, there will be a quiz when we get home!

First though, back to Denmark.

The second day in Copenhagen was miserable. The weather was cold, wet and windy. Our super duper bus ticket that was going to see us tour the entire city in coachy comfort turned out to be a fizzer. There were three separate “loops” you could do with the ticket that we had bought except two of them had stopped running for Winter and the loop we were on ended at 2pm. So there we were at 2.10pm in the pouring rain, stranded and defeated in the middle of Copenhagen with absolutely no idea what to do. So we did what anyone would do. We went to the Lego shop and customised our own Lego men (and lady) and had a little wedding. Yes. That really did happen and no it wasn’t my idea. The celebrant was a one-legged Pirate.

THE WEDDING! I REALLY FEEL I'VE CAPTURED MATT'S SENSE OF STYLE!

I DOOO!

In my opinion Copenhagen doesn’t really look like your typical city, there were no massive high rise buildings. Some of the streets were cobblestone and there are a lot of open spaces, and a few really (really) old buildings. We got a few snippets of information while on our bus tour like the Royal Family have been living in the same building since the 17^th Century and income tax being around 50% but with one of the world’s best welfare systems. I might have to do some reading on the place when I get home because I feel so ripped off by our time there. Didn’t really learn a thing!

Another train, but this one goes on a ferry!

THE TRAIN IS ON A BOAT!

We arrived in Berlin and it was raining but it didn’t last long so we were lucky. It lasted just long enough for our walk to the Laundromat. It’s the best feeling in the world when laundry day is over. I will never complain about doing the laundry in the comfort of our own home EVER again. We had a traditional German dinner in a traditional German pub, surrounded by Germans cheering for their team in the soccer.

The next morning we went to Paris Square, under the Brandenburg Gate to join a free walking tour of East Berlin. Free walking tours are held all over the world by this company, and we are kicking ourselves that this is only the first one we have done. I think it really contributed to Berlin being our favourite city so far. 

The tour guides all work for tips only. At the end, you tip what you think the tour is worth. Our tour guide was fantastic. He is from London originally but has been guiding in Berlin for 4 years and you can just tell that he loves the city. It was incredible that he kept everyone interested for 3.5 hours. 

So we started off at Paris Square where we learnt that the Statue on top of Brandenburg Gate overlooking the square had been put there by the Germans in… I can’t remember what year… but a LONG time ago. Napolean triumphantly walked through the Gates and fancied the statue so he took it back to France. I would need to read back over the history of the place to get all the dates/facts straight but the Germans got her back and she has been there ever since.

BRANDENBURG GATES

The tour group then went to the Reichstag which is the Parliament Building of Berlin. It was here we learnt that this building was burnt down in 1933, only one month after Hilter was elected as the Chancellor. A mentally ill communist Dutchman was pinned to the crime but historians now believe it was the Nazi party themselves that were responsible for the fire. Within 2 months Hitler pretty much had the power to do as he pleased. And we all know how that turned out. I found it unbelievable to learn how quickly things progressed, within 3 months of coming into power, he had started ethnic cleansing. 

This building was gutted by the fire and rebuilt. It was then bombed heavily during the last years of the war and was again rebuilt. In very recent years, a glass tower/dome has been added to the top of the Reichstag and you can walk around a spiral to get to the top and look down into the Parliament.

Because Berlin was so heavily bombed during the war (bombed by the Brits by day and by the US by night) it was almost completely flattened. The buildings that look old have in fact been rebuilt. The statues and sculptures are original though. Before the worst bombings began they actually removed the statues to safety. The rest of the buildings are new. In Paris Square for example, apart from the Brandenburg Gates, the rest of the buildings are post-2000, so are very sleek and contemporary.

We then went to probably the most confronting memorial there is. It is a memorial to the 6 million Jews that were murdered by the Nazis. The artist who designed the memorial has said little about what it means, purposefully, to let each visitor find their own meaning when they visit. You walk into the memorial, between massive blocks of concrete... It’s really quite hard to explain it in writing… but it was quite moving. There is an information centre underground which we got back to later in the day, but I’ll get back to that later. 

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

There are no signs at the Holocaust Memorial, and the artist in my opinion has done an incredible job of not saying a word about it, and to let people go there and just think about it. Our tour guide emphasised again and again the amount of effort and thought that had gone into this memorial (completed in 2005) and then led us just around the corner to a gravel carpark of an apartment building, just a few cars and a few puddles. A stark contrast to where we had just been.

Below where we stood is the bunker (forever sealed) where Hitler had run much of his campaign, and in the end, shot himself. He didn’t come out much, as Berlin was being bombed 24 hours a day. He and his wife committed suicide in that very bunker, and their bodies were temporarily buried in a shallow grave 20 metres away. There is (very rightly so) nothing there. The Russians exhumed the bodies and buried them in the middle of nowhere, and mislead the US into thinking he was alive and well and hiding out in Argentina. In the 1970’s the archives became public and only then did it become known what had happened. The bodies were exhumed once more, cremated (twice) and scattered into the North Sea so that they would never have a final resting place. 

There was one building that stood throughout all of the bombings and that was the Luftwaffe HQ (German Air Force). This was thought all along to be pure luck, but since then it is widely recognised that Stalin had the foresight to preserve this building for himself. He knew he would need a building of this size to police from, so there was an agreement between Russia and the Allied Forces to not bomb this place. So, it went from a Nazi building to a Communist building. Now, funnily enough, it’s the TAX OFFICE!!

After that we went to look at a section of the Berlin Wall. The story of how this thing went up is as equally amazing as how it came down. It was 1am on a Sunday morning and 140,000 Soviet soldiers began erecting the wall. By 6am it was completed, all 164kms, a complete ring around West Berlin. No one knew the wall was going up, so if you were on the East side that night and your family on the West, you would not be seeing them any time soon. The only thing that divided Berlin was the wall. People wanted to move freely between the east and the west but it was forbidden. Our guide told us a story of a young couple who were separated from their young baby on that night, and it broke my heart. The wall went up in 1961.

THE BERLIN WALL - NOT AS BIG AS YOU'D THINK

Our guide explained in depth how Berlin (in Eastern Germany) came to be divided into East and West. If you already know this bit, sorry! You may skip ahead! The Allies knew Berlin was valuable so when the city quite clearly fell in the borders of East Germany, it was agreed that the city would be split into East (Soviet sector) and West (American, British and French sectors). So basically there was a dot of West Germany surrounded by East Germany. West Berlin was pretty much free to do whatever you want. Before the wall went up, 2.5 MILLION East Berliners had already escaped Germany via West Berlin. The majority included skilled and educated people, doctors, lawyers, etc. So East Berlin needed the wall to somehow keep the skilled workers in. 

When our guide started telling us the story about the fall of the Berlin Wall, it really hit home that this was not long ago at all. Simply put, a Politician made a bit of a cock up in front of the World’s media. In the late 80s, small groups started gathering weekly and discussing the need to move freely between East and West. The Government didn’t see these small groups as a threat and let them be. The groups held their first protest and 10,000 people peacefully protested to bring down the wall. Authorities told them: “Do not protest next week, remember Tiananmen Square.” The next week 70,000 people rocked up and again peacefully protested. The next week it was over half a million. The crowd was pacified with a statement that they wall “would” come down, however there was no when. There was probably no intention of it actually happening! 

The Communist Party boss, Gunter Shabowsk, usually a regular, had missed the meeting about the protests, didn’t know much about them, and went into a press conference with nothing but the meeting notes under his arm. An Italian journalist fired 3 hard hitting questions. 1. What about these protests? 2. Is the wall coming down? 3. When? Old mate is frantically flicking through the minutes looking for the answers when he buckles and makes a critical error. After spotting in the meeting notes that the wall “would” come down he announced that the wall “will” come down, incredibly a single word and such a difference.  Panicking again he answers the third question, “effective immediately.”

 

The crowds gathered at the gates, over 20,000, and the 6 guards were told not to let anyone through. As the crowd grew, the guards were told to stamp the passports of the trouble makers and let them pass. They were instructed to stamp half over the photo to identify these people when they tried to cross back, and hence be denied re-entry but the guards ended up stepping aside and the borders were open. This is where we left our tour guide. As you can tell by all the detail, we were hanging off his every word, he made everything so interesting and real for us. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, I’m not normally one for history.

After our tour we went back to the Holocaust Memorial. We walked through the Memorial again and underneath to the Museum. They first take you through a timeline of the years leading up to the war and the war itself, accompanied by horrific and graphic images. I won’t go into detail here, but it was confronting. Then you walk through a room that is filled with the final diary entries and letters of the murdered. This was the second of six rooms and I left this one in tears. It was a life changing thing. 

OUR GROUP SAT ON THESE STAIRS WHILE WE HEARD THE STORY OF THE FALL OF THE WALL

We tossed up whether to do a tour the next day but we decided against it. The day before had been amazing but it was all very heavy. We headed back to the Reichstag to walk around the dome but were told we needed to register a few days in advance. I was PISSED! I started to walk away but Matt must have been working his charm and next thing the guy at the entrance escorts us in and provided we could show our passports he was allowed to make the “occasional unofficial exception.” After all of that the dome was closed for cleaning! But the view was nice from the roof anyway. 

I WON'T BE LEFT THINKING "I WONDER HOW THEY CLEAN THAT THING?"

ANY OTHER DAY YOU CAN WALK UP TO THE TOP!

THE VIEW FROM THE ROOF OF THE RIECHSTAG

We spent most of the day wandering around the city and saw a few attractions, including the Victory Tower. As our day was almost over, we went to the East Side Gallery which is a portion of the Berlin Wall that has been painted by artists. One side is covered in graffiti (the West Side) and the East Side is covered in commissioned art. It runs along a river bank and I read once that if people ever tried to cross the water to escape, they would be shot swimming to freedom. 

SOME WEIRD ART INSTALLATION IN A TUNNEL

IMAGINE IT'S THE 60S & THIS THING GOES UP ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL

SOME OF THE ART AT THE EAST SIDE GALLERY

MATTY AT THE EAST SIDE GALLERY

Then for dinner we ate burgers out of a toilet.

We have had a great time in Berlin, and I can’t recommend this city enough. Paris and London are great but this was different from other cities. What? You want more details of the toilet burgers? Heh, okay... A public toilet block on a traffic island in the middle of a busy road, underneath a rail bridge is now a burger restaurant. Good burgers too. 

EATING FROM A TOILET

TOILET BURGER JOINT!

Now we are on the train to Prague. There are a few things we need to check out in Prague as a bit of a follow up from the tour in Berlin. If you’re still with me, I’m stoked that you got that far! Go to Berlin!

Amy.