City tour

This was my first Berlin city tour! It was so fun because I got to go with a bunch of missionaries from all over Europe. They were so nice and we had a great time. It was rainy and a bit chilly but also loads of fun.

This is the old city municipal building type thing. It was burned almost to the ground before Hitler rose to power and he used the unrest of this event to start moving people to camps and elevating his position. Some people speculate that he burnt it down to cause unrest. Now the dome is glass. Most German architecture, especially city/national buildings, use lots of glass to signify an openness and show they aren't hiding anything anymore. They are transparent. Interesting, no?

There are memorials all over Berlin for different groups of people that died during the Holocaust. This one is for the gypsies who were placed in camps and who died.

This is Brandenburg Gate. It's really cool. On the other side are loads of embassies and a Starbucks. The gate was in between the two walls. Did you know there were two walls? And it wasn't a straight line. It was more of a circle encompassing West Berlin. Crazy. I'm not an expert though so...sorry if any of this is wrong.

This is a Jewish Holocaust memorial Under it is a museum. It's really interesting. It looks like graves on the edges but as you enter it they get taller. The ground sinks and rolls like small hills and valleys. It sort of creeps up on you. It's supposed to give a sense of isolation and unrest but other than that, one can translate the meaning. The designer wanted everyone to be able to create a meaning for themselves. Really interesting. Intimidating and dark. It's hard to explain but I think you should go there and see it. I'll definitely go back and check out the museum.

This is a parking lot. It's also a place where people bring their dogs to poop. Aaaaaaand....it's where Hitler killed himself in a bunker and they burned his body. Crazy right? It's just a parking lot now. There is a haphazard sign. That's it. Nothing else. So weird. It's such a huge part of history and they decided they didn't want to memorialize and therefore glorify him. So they didn't.

Here is part of the wall.

This is checkpoint charlie. Sorry it's blurry. This was one of the places that people could go from West Berlin to East (but obviously not vice versa). Our tour guide told us about one guy from the west that found a girlfriend also in the west and they got close. Then he took her passport and used it for his REAL girlfriend to get from the East to West! Ha! Poor west girlfriend. Tricked.

What's a blog without pictures of food? We went to dinner that night and this was my salad. It had TONS of bacon!!!!! It was great.

Aaaaand...this is my full rack of ribs. Yep. Bomb! So good. I finished them. Barely touched the fries. You can get fries anywhere. The ribs are where it's at. I turned to my semi-vegetarian friend and said "I like when you can tell it used to be an animal." Maybe not terribly sensitive but I thought it was funny.