Berlin (part 3)

Continuing...

The next day, Saturday (July 6th), I went on a tour of the escape routes from East Berlin to West Berlin.  I didn't actually take any pictures from that, since it was kind of an exhibit more than anything - plus, Matt reminded me just now that we weren't allowed to take pictures. That's probably the main reason, then. :P We obviously did a tour in German (English tours were only once a week on Wednesdays or something) and I didn't get a lot out of it since there were a lot of words I wasn't familiar with, but I did kind of get the gist of some stuff. It was interesting hearing about the ways the Germans would try to escape and then how the Soviets would counter their strategies. I guess there were parts of the wall that went through buildings, so the windows in those buildings would be boarded up since people would try to jump out of them to escape.

That evening, I went with a small group of friends to a memorial for all the Soviet soldiers that died in World War II (about 25 million Russian civilians and soldiers died in WWII, says Matt, though the memorial commemorates 5,000-80,000 Soviet troops that fell in the Battle of Berlin, which was April to May of 1945).

Soviet Memorial

Sunday was much more laid-back, since we had a couple things we wanted to check out but we didn't really have a schedule.  The first landmark we hit was Checkpoint Charlie, which was the US controlled point in Berlin that crossed into the Soviet side. Apparently there was a Checkpoint Bravo as well, belonging to another country.

Yup, that little booth is Checkpoint Charlie. (To the left of this picture was a McDonald's, because America!)

After the checkpoint, we wandered over to the "Typography of Terror," which was a free exhibit showing the buildup of the Nazi power in the 1930s and showing how they treated everyone.

Hint: They didn't treat Jews very well. (sorry about the cut-off picture; the sun happened)

As a little side story, I was wearing a sundress that day (which you'll see in a later picture) and I had someone come up to me to make sure I was wearing sunscreen. I've been pretty OCD about applying my SPF 50 so I actually haven't gotten sunburned at all! (Knock on wood...it's supposed to be 90 in Paris while we're there...)

Trabi Welt, or Trabi World

We saw this while walking. Trabis were the little cars that they had in East Germany during that time; I guess they weren't very good/reliable.  (I hope you're not expecting a lot of cool history facts in these posts because I am not good at that sort of thing, and I say that because I feel like with this picture, I should be giving you fun little facts. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen for now. But if you want to read up about them, here's the Wikipedia article!)

After the Typography of Terror, we hit a flea market that someone had recommended to me, but a lot of the prices were pretty expensive, so I didn't get anything. We then moved on to the holocaust memorial, which I'd gone to four years ago with Hannah's class.

The stones aren't very far apart and then they get a little bigger the farther in you get, and the floor also drops pretty suddenly, so even though they might not seem that tall, some of those stones are easily 10-15 feet high. The last time I was here, we (the class) had had a pretty good time getting on top of them and jumping between them until a policeman came and told us to stop.  I didn't re-create that memory for obvious reasons, but I did re-create this picture:

See? No sunburn! :)

Then it was back to the daily grind of class from 9-1. After class on Monday, I went with some friends to the Ritter Sport store, which some of you might recognize that name - you can buy Ritter Sport chocolate at Meijer and Target, but there is much more of a variety in Germany's Ritter Sport.

Ritter Sport Colorful Chocolate World!

We went in about half an hour before they closed, so there weren't many people there, which was really nice. There was an option to "make your own" variety (one of the filling options was rhubarb, which was quite intriguing to me!) but that would've meant waiting for a while for the chocolate to set, so we opted out of that

That's all for now - I have to pack to go to Paris tomorrow, so I should probably get going with that. What else do I have to update you on for Berlin? Well, we went to the Berlin cathedral again, along with some other miscellaneous Berlin pictures. And then I'll have updates from Villmar, where I am currently! Hopefully that will be up relatively soon.

Bis bald!