Berlin!

Berlin was SUCH a trip! And I don't mean trip as in vacation....This excursion rocked my socks. The whole weekend was sooo amazing...I want to go back for sure! If anybody ever does a Europe excursion, put Berlin on your travel route, it's a MUST SEE!!!

All the students went on this one...I really can't even begin to describe this experience properly...

We got up well before dawn...again, and landed in Berlin before 8 a.m. on saturday morning, checked into our hostel and hit up a FREE 4 hour walking tour.. I swear the tour guide hardly stopped to breathe the whole time....every second was sooo interesting, but major information overload...I forget half of what I learned the whole time I was there.

I learned a lot about the history of Germany, especially concerning all it's wars, Hitler, the division of West and East Germany for so many years....just wow. I stood over Hitler's bunker where he committed suicide... you'd never know where you were standing if somebody knowledgeable didn't point it out. For obvious reasons, Berlin did not erect any sort of memorial here, they've chosen to view everything from the perspective of the victims. Hitlers bunker is hidden beneath a parking lot, and apparently when there's no snow the place is covered in dog crap from people walking their dogs... fitting? The bunker lies below those fences and cars.

Along similar lines, Berlin has recently build a big glass dome on top of their parliament building where tourists can walk in (ran out of time so didn't make it here)...The tour guide suggested that it was fitting that the people of Berlin can look down on the politicians through the glass, and if the politicians ever forget what it is they're supposed to be doing they can look up at the people... I liked that.

I also saw, of course, THE WALL! In most places, all that remains is a line of bricks through the pavement signifying where it used to stand, but there was one spot where a hundred meters or so of it still stood...I even got a piece of my own to bring home with me(!)..of course paying a stupid amount...but I'm such a tourist. On the left below is a pic of me, having an allergic reaction to who knows what in front of the wall...that's why my face is red and puffy. Anybody used to be able to chip away at it with anything that didn't require electricity, which is why it's in such rough shape. On the right you can see a part of the line where the wall used to be...it's the one that looks like it doesn't belong there...

You might be thinking, ok that wall doesn't look so high...how did it keep people in the city? I had the same thought. But there were armed guards, guard dogs on wires running back and forth (I believe there were actually 2 walls, maybe with the dogs between them?), there was electric fencing and barbed wire, machine guns triggered to fire automatically....it was pretty tough. I think about 50% of the people who tried to escape over it made it, and a lot of people died. One of the really cool museums I went to, also known as Checkpoint Charlie, had a lot of interesting stories about escape attempts. People dug tunnels, snuck out in hollowed out compartments of speakers, surf boards, luggage, car engines... all kinds of neat attempts. The people from West Berlin could go back and forth from East Berlin on certain occasions, so people would try to sneak their friends/fiances/family across when they could.

Here's me roar-ing with the lions painted on what used to be the gates to the city Babylon. After very little sleep... You should have seen what Jimmy did to the lion...check out the rest of my Berlin pics when I post em...he's a true art lover.

We also went to the Jewish museum, which was unfortunately incredibly boring... but some parts were pretty neat. The new part of it was designed by the same guy who is currently designing the new World Trade Centre. The architecture was amazing, the walls, the windows, the displays, the floors...everything was at very odd angles and the effect was that I felt incredibly disoriented the entire time I was in there. The layout of the place made me feel lost, and small...a little dizzy, and very very disoriented. It also make me feel very sad. There were a lot of displays or little stories on specific Jewish people. Nobody famous or prominent, but average people..telling maybe a little about who they were, what they did, and how they died. This whole trip, I can't believe that WW2 happened, and I can't believe the reasons for it happening, I can't believe the holocaust occurred, and I can't believed that East and West Germany were separated and nobody allowed to leave the east...People were essentially prisoners in their own cities, and so many families and couples were split up.

The wall literally went up overnight... And actually the story of it coming down was really cool. It was a mistake! Somebody was making a big speech, and accidentally read a document out loud over television that he wasn't supposed to, stating that anybody with a valid visa could go back and forth as they pleased. The document was something he was handed, and was supposed to read privately in his own time, about things the government was considering, not that they had decided on. So pretty much everybody in the whole city immediately rushed to the wall, and 2 women who actually had visa's got the guards to open the doors, and then everybody flooded through the gates out of control. You know the first thing they did in the free west side? Went to the cinema. No joke! They wanted their first taste of western culture or something...all the theatres sold out in minutes. You know what movie was playing that night? The first thing these people saw, their first taste of western culture, was Dirty Dancing.

Saturday night was ridiculous! The same people who offered the free walking tour offer a pub crawl. Get this.. I paid 9 euros, this included entrance at all the different places the crawl went to (4 bars/lounges, 2 clubs), free beer during the first 45 minutes of the tour (out of kegs, sitting on the sidewalk on a busy street in the middle of the city no less), unlimited free vodka shots all night, and a looott of free/deals for drinks inside all the places we went. Picture around 70 or 80 people from all over the world on this crawl...it was sick! When we met up at the check point with the guide at the beginning of the night, within 5 minutes he was handing out little plastic shot glasses and continuously pouring everybody this half/half vodka/orange juice mix.... the guides pretty much tried to drown us... I think it's because they make most of their money through tips that the hammered people give them at the end of the night. I met a lot of really cool people that night...and well...lets just say I had a really really good night! Slept around 5 a.m. or so, and up again before 9 to continue the adventure! There's no such thing as sleep when you only have 2 days in an amazing city like Berlin :) Here's a shot of me, Petar and Feraz at the first lounge we stopped at.

I met this guy here below at another museum we went to. He has a great bum.