"I'm reading my passport and getting emotional"

My trip to Berlin was absolutely unreal. I had no idea there was THAT much history all in one city. It was so interesting to walk through a city that has been torn apart by war so many times. Most of the buildings had been burned down before and reconstructed. Sometimes they would repair the buildings and use the same statues from the previous building. The statues would be charred and blackened. Ps I can't figure out this whole blog thing so the pictures are in the opposite order of what I wanted them but they take so bloody long to upload that I don't want to do it again. So I will try to tell you about my day in reverse.

We finished our day at this building. I cannot remember the name of it but our tour guide told us that it is noted as one of the buildings with the worst architecture. Apparently there is far too much going on.

This was an amazingly beautiful memorial. It is a sculpture of a woman holding her dying son who is a soldier from WWI, I believe. The women who is the artist of this sculpture lost her son and her husbands in the various wars that plagued Germany. What was truly beautiful about this memorial was that directly above this statue was a circular hole in the ceiling. On this day the sunlight poured down like a spot light. On some days, when it is raining, our tour guide told us that it looks at though the woman is crying.

This is one of the few remaining standing pieces of the Berlin wall. It was surrounded by a fence so you couldn't get too close or touch it. There were actually two Berlin Walls. The first time they put it up all it was was a barbed wire fence intended to keep the people from fleeing Communist Berlin. They constructed this fence in the middle of the night so no one would know. The people of West Berlin woke up one morning and were trapped in their own city. However that did not last for too long as people would just jump the fence. Two fences were erected, and inner and an outer. There was a narrow space between the two walls that was filled with land mines, dogs and snipers. Setting foot between the two walls was instant death.

This was the holocaust memorial. It was a HUGE field of concrete blocks of different sizes. The ground was uneven and some of the blocks would lean. There were no signs there to mark that it was the holocaust memorial. It was that way because the designer of the memorial wanted people to walk by and ask questions. What was it there for? Why was it the way it was? In a strange way it was very powerful.

After we walked through the holocaust memorial we went to an even eerier place. We walked in between some apartment buildings and into a parking lot with some trees and grass. He stopped us there and said that this was one of the MOST important places in all of Berlin and perhaps Europe. We were standing where Adolf Hitler killed himself. There were no signs. There was no stone marking it. Under where we were standing was Hitlers underground bunker. As he could hear Berlin falling he and his mistress took cyanide pills and a gun shot to the head. This is a debated point of history because no one exactly knows how he died. That is why some tabloids will tell you he was spotted in Cancun. Forget the fact that he is about 120 years old by now...

We saw the Brandenburg Gate and the government building where Adolf Hitler was elected into power. That was the only day that he ever set foot in that building. We also stood in the square where the Nazi book burning took place. There is a memorial that is actually underground. You walk by a glass window in the ground and can see empty bookshelves symbolizing what happened.

There was so much to see in Berlin and I really wished that I could have seen more. It was so interesting to hear of all the history that has taken place in one city. I don't understand how people can live there and not be touched by the tons of memorials and other important buildings that serve to remind us of our past.

We also visited a concentration camp just outside of Berlin. This was one of the first camps and was a model for all of the rest. It was Sachsenhausen. This was a work camp and not a death camp but even still somewhere between fifty and one hundred thousand people were murdered at this site. It was chilling to stand in a square where hundreds of people were beaten to death. To see where they were forced to run over rocks and difficult terrain with 20 kg backpacks on until the died from exhaustion. We saw the Jewish barracks and the prison where "special" people were kept. Legend has it that Joseph Stalin's son was imprisoned there. The Soviets captured a German field marshal and the Germans called Stalin to try and strike a deal. Stalin's reply was, I would never trade a Lieutenant for a field marshal. Joseph Stalin's son died at Sachsnehausen by throwing himself on an electric fence. But nothing was more horrific that seeing the gas chamber. Seeing the "doctors office" that prisoners would be sent to before they were shot to see if they had any gold teeth. The most shocking was to stand in front of the actual furnaces that were used to burn twenty to fifty people a day. There were so many horrible stories that I don't believe I will ever forget. Mental snapshots of Sachsenhausen that will never fade from my memory. It was a truly horrifying place. For the first time during the entire weekend, my group of over 100 rowdy, obnoxious college kids were absolutely silent.