Spring Break Eur(Bro) Trip: Berlin

5 hours train ride through the Czech and German countryside brought Brian and I right into the heart of Berlin, Germany.  Our hostel, the Helter Skelter Hostel, was the largest of the 3 that we stayed in during our trip.  We had a quaint, 14-person room, including one old Italian guy who loved getting up at 6:30am and banging his locker open and closed somewhere in the area of 25 times.  But I digress.

Berlin was maybe not my favorite of the three cities that we visited.  Rome was the culmination of my classics education, Prague was extremely inexpensive and beer mecca, and Berlin was somewhere in the middle.  I was fascinated by all of the history that centered in Berlin:  The Third Reich, WWII, the Cold War, etc.  Secretly, I think I should've been a history major sometimes.

Brian and I got there in the mid-afternoon on Saturday, March 12, walked to the hostel, got settled, chilled out for a bit (despite being on the train for 5 hours, neither of us really slept at all), and then headed out for dinner and to explore a bit.  The food is pretty similar to that of Prague, just with a lot more sauerkraut and curry.

Sunday we had to ourselves as well, our friends Nora and Michaela were arriving from Italy later in the day, so we took the opportunity to visit the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp, about 30 minutes ride north of Berlin.  We had originally planned to take one tour, but the guide never showed, so Brian and I, along with a girl from Vancouver that we met, booked it to catch up with another tour that had just left for the camp.  It was lucky that we did catch them, because the tour guide, Jessica, was excellent.  She was extremely well-read and passionate, which added a whole extra level to the tour experience.

Entrance to Sachsenhausen 

Motto on gate: Work will set you free. Morbidly ironic

The day was mentally and emotionally draining really.  Imagining the area filled with massively overcrowded barracks and the practice of horrific, inhumane acts caused me physical pain, literally knots in my stomach and a throbbing headache.  But it was something that was a necessity to experience.  To be in that place and learn what happened, and pay tribute to those who passed through those gates.  I will never forget this experience. Ever.

Neutral zone that, if crossed, you would be shot on sight.

All German/Berliner (not sure which one) primary/secondary school students are required to visit a concentration camp during their schooling, by law.  One of the guides that we had commented that this was Germany's way of addressing the mistakes made in the past, remembering those lost, and moving on to make the current Germany a better place.

Expanse of one part of the camp.  The large tower in the background is the Soviet memorial to those murdered here

Inside one of the Jewish Barracks.  Many flowers were left by visitors

Solitary confinement cell

Soviet Memorial- common theme in Berlin

Taking the train back, one of the people on our tour, a professor from South Carolina commented, "I need a beer after that".  I approached it differently.  After being in such a state of mind for the previous 4 hours, I went the Snickers bar route to cheer me up.  That's just a side note though; different ways to approaching stress.

When we returned, Brian, myself and our new acquaintance from Vancouver went to the Brandenburg Tor (gate) at sunset.  The gate is massive, and modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, I'm sure you can notice the resemblance.

After returning to the hostel for a little bit to chill, (Brian and I realized the need to just sit back and relax every once in a while when we were traveling, otherwise we'd burn ourselves out trying to make the most of every single minute) we went out to eat:  Currywurst= bratwurst + curry sauce = basically a curry coated, upscale fenway frank, but it was delicious nonetheless.

After trying and failing to find a beer garden we had found online, we ended up meeting up with our new friend from Vancouver along with some other fellow travelers that we met at our hostel.  One lad (yes, I did indeed use the term "lad") was from Co. Longford, Ireland...talk about a small world (my family hails from Co. Longford).  The other was a post-grad student from Hiroshima.  We spent the rest of the night talking about, well, just about any subject you could think of: Economics, politics, sport, travel.  We closed the place down, and it was one of the most enjoyable nights of the entire 10-day trip for me.

The next day Brian, Nora, Morgan and I (Nora and Morgan had arrived the night before, later on) went on a newEurope free tour around Berlin with a British fellow named Sam, who is currently studying in Berlin, doing a masters thesis on the reconstruction of London and Berlin after WWII.  Needless to say, he was quite knowledgeable and passionate about the subject, and again, it made our tour that much better.

We visited Reichstag, The Brandenburg Gate, The Memorial to Murdered Jews, the site of Hitler's bunker where he committed suicide (it's now a parking lot, with no marking, and rightfully so), Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, and a number of other significant places.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews:  Meant to be a contemplative area

The memorial to the Murdered Jews of the War was meant by the designer to be a place where people came and played, sun-bathed, ate lunch and socialized amongst this profound memorial.  He even encouraged graffiti.  The german mentality doesn't really accommodate for memorials being used in that fashion, so standing on the pillars is forbidden, and anti-graffiti coating was put on the stones.  The company that makes the coating, however, also produced the Zyclon B gas which was used in the gas chambers of Nazi Extermination camps.  Because of the political uproar resulting from this discovery, the company donated the anti-graffiti coating.

Communist Propaganda put up after the fall of the 3rd Reich.  Yayy, communism is great, everyone is happy! hmmm

Berlin Wall.  Ironically there's a fence surrounding the wall to prevent people from chipping away at it.

Checkpoint Charlie.   The site of almost the start of WWIII

The Reichstag

That night the 4 of us went on an "anti pub-crawl".  That means instead of focusing on the amount of consumption as some pub-crawls do, this focused on discovering some of the more alternative pubs and clubs of Berlin.  It was really cool.  First of all, our guide was a carbon-copy of my good friend and sophomore year roommate, Archie, which was uncanny.  The places we went were both interesting and fun.  My favorite place was a ping-pong bar.  Walking in, there was no sign advertising what it was, the only way you could find it was 1. by accident or 2. word of mouth.  When we walked in, the place had bare concrete walls, plastic over the windows, and a big ping-pong table in the middle of the main room, with the bar in an adjacent room.  You could rent a paddle and play around-the-world with anyone who wanted to.  Everyone knew the rules, no one argued when they messed up and got out.  It was so much different than I could imagine the same game being played anywhere in America- people shouting, complaining, rubbing it in peoples' faces, etc.

The next day, while the 2 girls went to Sachsenhausen themselves, Brian and I went on newEurope's "Third Reich Tour", with our same British chap tour guide, Sam.  There was some overlap with the first tour, but this went into much more detail about the psyche of the leaders of the Nazi party, their rise, their actions while in power, and ultimate demise.

Cool piece of modern art on Orienburger Str. near our Hostel

Brandenburg Gate at Sunset

Dark beer with dinner

The next day, with the rain pouring down, we made our way to the airport to get back to Dublin in time for St. Paddy's day.  The flight was delayed an extra hour, but I didn't care too much, it gave me time to finish another Dennis Lehane crime novel, Sacred (the guy that wrote Shutter Island, Mystic River and Gone Baby, Gone).

Berlin was a really interesting city.  Since about 90% of it was bombed out during the war, there's a lot of new construction, and since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, there has been even more development in East Berlin.  As a result, there's a huge contrast between buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries and those of the 21st century.  Although Germany is economically strong today, Berlin is not.  There are no major banks or financial companies bringing in any large amount of money, and there are many residential and commercial apartment buildings with large amounts of vacancies.  As a result, Berlin has developed through the influx of artists, and has a vibrant art and alternative scene.  This, juxtaposed with old monuments and Nazi buildings, made it quite a unique city, and one worth visiting!