Berlin!

Well hello there. It has certainly been a bit since I have updated on here. There will be a lot of pictures in this blog, and in general be super long. It is very busy with my classwork and that is why this is so late. My German language class have gone well, and I am fully done with that. I am very happy to report that I did very well in my class and my use of the German language has certainly increased. My semester has been going well and I definitely am very much enjoying it here! Now onto the main part of the blog, our class trip to Berlin. The trip was from April 5th to the 8th and it was just a very lovely weekend. 

The First Day

This trip was with my group IUSP, so we all took a bus to Berlin. It was a long 6 plus hour bus trip to the city, but the German countryside is certainly lovely and in some aspects reminds me of being in the Smokies again, but that is probably only because their are good sized hills here. The bus trip did take most of the day, and then we checked into the hostel. Hostels are not something you run into a lot in the USA so I will briefly explain. Hostels are like hotels but you share a room, sometimes with strangers. The beds are normally bunk beds or just twins and you have a communal shower. In the case of Berlin I shared a 4 person room with other IUSP members. In a later blog I will talk about a more common hostel experience. After getting settled into the hostel, me and my friend Ducky went out to go visit the Berliner Dom, but it was closed when we got there. So we took some pictures of the outside, which I will show later in this blog when I show the inside. We then decided to head back and get dinner on the way. The first day was not that exciting.

Burt and I ready for Berlin!

The Second Day

The day started nice and early with a tour around part of Berlin. The thing about Berlin is this, it is huge, absolutely massive. During my four day in the city I was only in the former East Berlin part. The tour showed us famous sites and locations. Here are pictures and explanations.

TV Tower

World Clock

Red City Hall

Berliner Bär, the city's mascot. You can see them all over the city.

St. Mary's Church

Neptune Fountain

National Gallery on Museum Island

Berliner Palace or Humboldt Forum

New Guardhouse

Memorial to all people who died in all the wars Germany has been in

Old Opera House (this is its orginal color)

Bebelplatz

Prussian Library and part of the Humboldt Uni

Sunken Library, memorial to the book burning that took place in Bebelplatz

New Opera House

French Church

Jewish Holocaust Memorial

 

Berliner Bär in American Embassy

 Brandenburger Tor

 

 

Bonus Bär in the Rittersport store

The best part was getting to see the Brandenburger Tor. It is so impressive up close, but I also relish in the fact that just over 20 years ago no one could get near the gate, as it was in part of the Berlin wall. After the tour of the town, Ducky and I got lunch and then headed back to the Berliner Dom. The Dom is actually a Protestant Cathedral. It is a lovely and massive building, and you can even walk around the large dome on the top. It offers great views of Berlin.

This place is huge!

View from the one side

 

Some detail work on the outside

Lutheran Rose

Doors have parables on them

Just so many little details

The altar in the Dom

The pulpit

The pulpit  from the back

There are these all inside the main chappel

Luther

 

The inside of the dome on top

Where the King of Prussian Empire would sit

Some graves inside the chapel

Luther relief

Angels on the top

Views of Berlin

Humboldt Forum

Me pretending I am not terrified of how high up I am.

Some of the statues in the tomb below the church

One of the tombs of the Prussian rulers

You might think I was done for the day, but Ducky and I then decided to go to the DDR museum. This museum is not for the video game though, DDR stands for the Deutsches Democratic Republik or as we say in the USA the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which was the East German government and not actually a democratic nation. The museum offered a fascinating look into life in the DDR, some of which was terrible. The East Germans had a lot of shortages of many types of goods. The fact that stuck out to me the most was how paranoid the State was. The museum had a fake apartment that showed the type of goods the average East German would had, and it also talked about the schooling and how the party was prioritized above many things. It was definitely a museum I enjoyed.

The day was not over though.In the evening we got the privilege to enter the Reichstags, which is the building that house the Bundestag, the German parliament. We got to visit their capitol building and see the chamber where their national government meets. They had to rebuild the building a bit since it was damaged in the second world war, and the DDR who controlled the building, did not do much to maintain and use the building. So when the governments merged in 1990, they took the building and refurbished it and added onto it to house the members and their offices and meeting rooms. They tried their best to maintain the history of the building and the like. They have grafiti from the Soviet soldiers who took the building at the end of world war 2, and there is part of tunnel. The tunnel has an interesting story. It is an old brick work tunnel from under the old building that connected it to the chancellor’s building. Right before Hitler claimed power the Reichstag was damaged in an arson attack. They claimed it was a communist supporter, and had him quickly arrested and tried, allowing Hitler to get control of the government in the matter of a day. Modern historians now suspect though because of the tunnels that the Nazis themselves might have committed the arson, since the attack spoke to it being more than one person. They keep part of the tunnel as reminder that democracy can fall so easily. They don’t want it to happen again. But here are the pictures from the building.

Thought this looked cool

Sideview

The grafitti

Art that has speeches from the German government

Meeting rooms

The tunnel

In the galley looking over the room

The famous glass dome

After that it was finally the end of the day. 

The Third Day
This is the day we went to the Stasi prison. As mentioned above the stasi were the East German secret police. They are like the Gestapo for the Nazis, in that same vein. The place was called Hohenschönhausen and it was kept a secret from the citizens of East Berlin, and it was on no maps. It is not allowed to take pictures in this site, because of what happened here. The horrors that took place at this site. I could spend the time explaining the prison and its history, but I am instead going to link to their site. This link will show you photos of the place. This link here is for the history. I highly recommend you looking over those links.

The place had a weird feeling to it. It is hard to explain, but you know when you enter the buildings and the cells something terrible happened here. My tour guide was very knowledgeable and knew people who were held here. There was another tour guide, since we were split into two groups, who had actually been a prisoner there. The tour itself was interesting and heartbreaking, but very respectful to the people that had suffered there. The interesting thing how no one was trusted, the guards, the interrogators, and the prisoners. There were checks on everyone and even extra recording devices in the interrogation rooms. It was an oppressive environment. I was glad that we got the chance to tour this place though.

After that tour we had free time left, but I did not want to go to another museum or anything like that. I decided to head to a place that is very famous in Berlin history, Checkpoint Charlie. It was a short distance away from our hostel and I did not mind the walk. It was small but cool. There were some sections of the Berlin wall nearby as well which you can see. It was a good way to spend the afternoon after the visit to the prison. Here are some pictures, I was so glad I got some without tourists all over it!

The acutal checkpoint itself

 

Pieces of the Wall, West side

East Side

Burt as we head back

The Fourth Day
This day was just our return to Marburg, and just a simple bus trip. The trip to Berlin was absolutely amazing and I want to go back.

I hope you enjoyed this long rambling mess! I have a couple other posts planning to come out soon, I got a bit of a backlog of trips I am working on getting on here.