Free Day in Berlin

 On Friday, we had the whole day to use as we liked. We ended up starting the day together and most of us ended together. 

We heard about this museum from our tour guide when we arrived.  The “Stassi” is the common name for the secret police that basically ruled over East Germany during the Cold War and Communist rule. They were greatly feared and had great power.  They forced almost everyone to be a spy on each other - friends, family, neighbors, etc.  The museum is housed in the old headquarters and has lots of interesting displays about how they operated.

This is an example of a bug hidden inside a door - but powered with American Duracell batteries.

This was the wildest thing to me.  The spotlight is on a tiny hole in the grout of the tile in the men’s BATHROOM at the HEADQUARTERS to spy on their own agents.  It really gives you a sense of how much mistrust, suspicion and fear was rampant.

This is one of the offices where some secretaries worked. It is one of many rooms that were preserved as they were found in 1989/1990 when Berlin Wall fell.  It cracked me up that the museum talked about it like it was such old decor…. I mean - I remember this decor! My grandma’s house was this decor, my house was this decor. LOL

Next we went to the East Side Gallery - which is the longest preserved section of the Berlin Wall.  (Yes, in a previous post I said that we saw the only remaining section…I was wrong. Sorry.). This section was specifically kept to create a giant art gallery.  Artists from all over the world were invited to paint sections of it.  It took quite awhile to walk the length of it and is very interesting.  Here is a link to a website with an impressive catalogue of all the murals, their artists and other information.  

https://www.eastsidegalleryexhibition.com/

Maria jumped on this flying broomstick with an owl.

This is probably the most famous painting on the wall.  It is a recreation of a famous 1979 photo of 2 famous statesmen, one from the Soviet Union and one from East Germany, sharing a “socialist fraternal kiss”.  The words read something like “My God, help me to survive this deadly love.” It became a symbol of the Communist rule and influence in East Germany.

I’m not sure who Geddes is giving a “socialist fraternal kiss” to in this photo…

This mural listed all the years of the Berlin Wall’s existence and had a rose stamped for every person that died trying to cross it on the year in which the death occurred. There were about 140 in all.

I took this time-lapse video of a chunk of the wall to give an idea of how it felt to walk along it.

At a nearby souvenir shop, you could buy chunks of colorful concrete that were supposedly part of the Berlin Wall.  David forbid me from getting one.  He said he could get me other chunks of concrete that were just as likely to have been part of the wall.  (Such the skeptic!)

After the group had lunch, a few went off on their own adventure, but most of us went to the museum under the “Memorial for Murdered Jews”.  It was a powerful display of artifacts, photos and testimony documenting the Holocaust for specifically the Jewish people.  There are other memorials around the city - and Europe - for other groups of people murdered by the Nazis, but this one is specifically for the Jews.  Our tour guide on the first day said that they named it the “Memorial for Murdered Jews” intentionally instead of saying the “Holocaust”.  They wanted to speak clearly about the actions of what happened - innocent people were murdered.

The museum is underground - under the memorial with all the concrete blocks.  You can see where the blocks are placed by the recesses in the ceiling.  

This room had various artifacts in the floor, with descriptions. Things like letters written to loved ones on toilet paper and hidden in bathrooms, postcards or letters thrown off trains, notes written on top of the text from pages in books, all sorts of attempts to get some word out to the rest of the world from the victims.

This section catalogued the fate of about a dozen different families from all over Europe.  It had a several photographs and documented the fate of each person, as well as their journey from camp to camp during the war.

At this point, our group really broke up. Here is what David and I did. 

We headed down the Main Street of Berlin - in front of the Brandenburg Gate, called “Under De Linden” - named for the Linden trees that line both sides.

Our first stop was the “Ampleman Store.” This little figure is at all intersections for pedestrians.  He is well loved in Germany.  The entire store was full of shirts, magnets, toys, candy, cookie cutters, playing cards, and just about anything that could have this logo on it.

Next stop was the Ritter Sport chocolate store.  Ritter Sport is a common chocolate in Europe, especially Germany.  Think of this like a Hershey’s store.  You could fill up a little waffle cup with liquid chocolate, pick a mix of your own or make your own variety at the chocolate maker.

We passed Humboldt University again.  Across the street from this building is the plaza where the books were burned.  But the University is quite well known.  The Brothers Grimm are alumni and Albert Einstein taught here before going to America to escape the Nazis.

These markers are on the sidewalk in front of the University.  They are inscribed with names and dates and then say “murdered at Auschwitz”.  I had heard about these and was so excited to find some.  Apparently the are called “stumbling stones”.  There is an organization in Berlin (maybe all of Germany?) that will put these markers in front of the homes of people who went missing or were taken during the Nazi era.  It is intended to literally be a “stumbling stone” to stop people in their tracks and remind them of the horrible atrocities that happened.

This is the square we were in on our walking tour a couple days ago.  The building on the left is the place Hitler liked to give speeches from - with all his troops lined up to fill the square. When we passed through it on this day, there was a violinist playing a beautiful melody that filled the air, a man was making and sharing huge bubbles with the crowd, and there were people all over laying on the grass, smiling, eating a picnic, soaking up the sun, enjoying friends, etc.  I just thought it as a beautiful, wonderful, redemptive sight for a place that used to represent such evil.

I remembered this from my first trip to Berlin.  There are examples of this all over, but these columns have LOTS of bullet holes from the war.  It is incredible to see all that damage and think about how many bullets were flying around….

Mr. And Mrs. Mikesell had a quiet evening at the hotel after this, but the rest of the group kept on adventuring!  Many of them met up at a small beer garden for supper and then to an Ice Bar afterwards.  I’ll let them share their own adventures with you, but here is a great photo!