Berlin

The next stop for Ben, Carl and me on the week of traveling was Berlin. We decided to take an 8 hour walking tour that started at 10:30 AM. Little did we know what was in store for us with our guide Terry...he was a 74 year-old former British embassy worker in East Berlin...and did he ever have ENERGY! After our 9+ hours day of touring ("It's impossible to give a shorter tour, there is too much history," according to Terry), he was still energetic and hadn't sat down once except for at lunch and dinner, while the rest of us were sitting down at every site and were completely exhausted...meanwhile Terry looked shocked that anyone would be tired enough to sit down. Exhausting at it was, Terry truly made Berlin come alive for us. He was passionate about this history and would barely let anyone ask questions because he was so intent on telling the story.

We walked mostly through East Berlin, then made our way into West Berlin toward the end of the tour. While sometimes we saw some neat monuments or memorials, the stuff that got to me the most was when we would stand somewhere and hear a story like, "Right here in front of this Jewish girls' school is where the Jewish girls had to report to be shipped off to concentration camps." Nothing spectacular to see, but so moving. A lot of the buildings in East Berlin were pretty dilapidated still from the war, but there were still quite a few that had been rebuilt.

This was just the first neat building on the way over to "Museum Island"...we saw beautiful building after building after this- apparently they rebuilt more than I realized! Suprisingly, the picture below is actually a Protestant church...again, beautiful.

Following a lot of these churches and museums, we saw most of the sites associated with Hitler- the place where his bunker used to be, the place where he and his comrads would do their plotting, the memorial to the Jewish people killed in concentration camps, etc. Below is a picture of the memorial where Hitler did the burning of the books- it is a glass floor in the middle of the square, and below you can see an empty library, with rows of empty shelves to symbolize where the 20,000 books could have been had Hitler not destroyed them.

We also saw a lot of stuff associated with the Berlin wall- the part of the wall still standing, Checkpoint Charlie, etc., and of course heard all of the history associated with it.

We passed a fabulous chocolate shop full of chocolate sculptures...

...and I really wanted to try something...

...but we bought a little chocolate bar instead. We also passed the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony. Not exactly historical...but I took a picture anyway.

At the end of the tour, Ben went back to our hotel to check some things online, but Carl and I went to a concert we saw setting up earlier that day that was taking place in the middle of a square between all these beautiful churches and buildings (a "desecration" to ruin such a fabulous square with a concert, according to Terry). We sat at a cafe on the corner where we could hear. Carl went to get a closer look- and who does he run into? Yep, Terry the tour guide. He bought him a coffee and we had a nice little chat. Turns out Terry knows a lot about music, because he knew every song that played. He also speaks 12 languages...wow! I told him I couldn't even name 12 languages. We had the server take a picture just so Ben would believe our crazy stories about Terry.

After we left, Terry even followed us down to the subway...we think he must have been lonely the way he kept turning up everywhere we went. Whatever the case, he made Berlin a fabulous experience for all of us. Before going, I thought Berlin might be a little boring, but it turned out to be one of my favorite places I've visited so far. Thanks, Terry!