Berlin half-term

Let's just start off by saying that I was NOT keen on Berlin on the first day. I have never been that cold. In my entire life. My circulation. which is already shitty, completely went to pieces. $10 my fingers drop off in the next 5 years.

First impressions were pretty good. After catching the plane to Tegel Airport and finding the bus to get us to Mitte, then driving past the Brandenburg Gate (which looks amazing at night, finally arriving at our hostel (which was amazing!) made me really excited. Aisling, Yve and I discovered a black and white photobooth acorss the road, so that was definitely the highlight of that day! We all hung out in the bar for a bit and got to sleep at about 1am - sitting down on planes, trains and buses makes you exhuasted!

On Sunday we headed to a Flea Market, but got lost along the way and ended up conveniently at a Berlin Wall museum. We walked the whole way that day, it was so ridiculously cold and I stupidly decided to wear flats..DON'T DO IT. Flats are meant for Australia and that is it. Anyway there was a bit of the Berlin Wall preserved as it was, and the 'death strip' right behind it, so it was very cool and weird to touch a part of something which used to be so important. It was also weird taking a photo in front of it - do you smile in front of something like that? You can't exactly pull a sad face, that would just be silly. After walking through the memorial gardens next to it we finally found our flea market, which was very German. I bought a vintage 60s brooch for €5!
We had dinner, then Aisling and I decided to go for a wander. It was 10.30 on a Sunday night, so we found a couple of cool bars (and one very dodgy one) but eventually decided to head back to the bar to meet some of our fellow travellers. We ended talking to this guy from Chile called JP and scoring some free drinks, and a couple of his mates who were American. We were, and until we left, the youngest people in the bar, lots were around 23,24, with a fair few being 27! Before we headed up to bed we bumped into J, who we ended up seeing somehow every night until we left!

Monday we headed to Checkpoint Chairlie and the Jewish museum. I sacrificed the balls of my feet for warm feet - wore my heeled leather boots, and have never felt more European in my life, walkng along cobblestone streets in -6! Checkpoint Charlie was awesome, although it is very touristy. Year 11 history came flooding back, Aidling and I got so excited reading about things we had written essays about. The Jewish museum was cool, very modern on the inside and really made you think, especially this modern art installation by an Israeli artist. There was this huge dark room about 4 floors high, full of strange angles and shadows, which contained 10 000 'faces' - heavy iron rudimentary faces representing the victims of war. Eventually I got lost and we all made our way back to the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial, just around the corner. The Holocaust Memorial is actually called the 'Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe'. There are other memorials around the city to other victims of the holocaust - there was one recognising people that were persecuted because of being homosexual, but I never got to see it. I can't really describe th memorial - it's really touching, has to be seen.
We got back, I took a 4 hour nap (being cold is tiring!) then a couple of us headed back up to the bar, and spent th night with some Americans and Canadians. It was a good night, lots of chatting, beer and jagerbombs and we headed to a club around the corner afterwards. They played Monty Python, so I was sold. I came home high as a kite and checked twitter before I went to bed, then saw that Christchurch had had another earthquake, so spent a very stressful hour looking at breaking news articles and seeing if people we knew were ok - I never really appreciated how much it meant to me until we moved away! Seeing the image of the cathedral and main square nearly broke my heart...

Tuesday we did a walking tour, which was really really good, gave me a much larger appreciation of the city I was in. Our tour guide was great, really passionate about what he does, and Aisling and I promptly decided to buy a postcard to send to Mr. Allan, to thank him for making us into such history nerds. I learned so many more things about WWII, the Cold War and Soviet Germany, so interesting. One of the best bits (although best is probably not the best word) was standing in Bebelplatz - crazy! That night we met some Argentinians and a Brazilian, good night!

(can you tell I'm getting tired of typing...)

Wednesday we went to a concentration camp about 40 minutes out of Berlin, called Sachsenhausen. After chatting to our new American friends on the train we hopped off and walked down to the camp, along the same streets as the prisoners would have (I'll just say now that's it's a weird feeling wrting about a concentration camp in a travel blog, it left a real impact on me and it's very hard to describe). Later on we found out that many of the houses along those streets were built by the prisoners for the German officers. As we walked through it it felt really strange - the fact that where we were standing was where tens of thousands of prisoners stood, shivering and near death, was nearly imposssible to imagine. Our guide took us around the whole camp and explained the general ins-and-outs of a concentration, some of which I knew already thanks to History and my general nerdiness, but a lot of which I didn't. For example, when the soldiers executed a political or important prisoner, they would cremate them and dump the ashes into a massive pit full of other peoples. They would then send a note to the person's family saying 'We have executed your spouse, for a small fee we can give you his remains.' The family would pay that fee, and the soldiers would literally go to this pit full of ashes, dip an urn in and fill it with the ashes of several people, none of whom would be the deceased. Is that not horrible? The whole dehumanisation of the prisoners, when their hair was shaved and their possessions taken from them, as well as their name, made me feel sick.They were degraded beneath human dignity, torn apart from their families...I can never imagine being in that position. You can see why some people still maintain the Holocaust didn't happen, because the stark reality of it is makes you want to be sick.

We spent nearly a whole day there, as it was quite large. There was an extermination chamber, as well as medical facilities where experiments were carried out. I don't particularly want to write anymore, there's not much else to be said except that visiting somewhere like that is something everyone needs to do, because it makes what the Holocaust so much more real.

Thursday Aisling and I spent the day being tourists in Berlin while the others went to the TV tower. We walked to the East Side Gallery, which took forever but was totally worth it once we got ther. I still haven't uploaded photos of it, promise I will soon Mum! It was the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall I had seen, and the art on it was awesome - wooo political art! We headed back, had dinner, then after a couple of hours at the bar we headed out with the Australian boys and American girls, plus a few Englishmen for good mention, Oh, the Australian boys? From Melbourne. One from Melbourne High. Typical. We go to Germany and we still end up bumping into MHS boys. That night was the best yet. We ended up in this club in some warehouse in East Berlin and didn't get home until 6am. WOOO!

Friday Aisling Janet and I slept in until 3, and felt horrible because while we were sleeping off our big night the others had gotten up and headed to Potsdam, some place outside Berlin with lots of beautiful old palaces. Bad tourists. Anyway we made the most of it and had a leisurely lunch, then headed up to the bar for one last big night before we left. I can't really remember much of it, but Aisling and I didn't sleep...

.....so going back to England was not fun. Aisling, Janet and I had been out all night, so getting on a train, then a bus, then a plane while hungover and cold was not fun in the slightest. I slept the whole way back to England, and the whole way on the bus back to High Wycombe.

I had babysitting that night, which went quite well apart from the fact that they got backat 1.30 and I had to sit on the cold tiles to keep myself awake! :) The house was amazing, their loft was from the 14th century....what?!

Phew! and that's Berlin. I feel like I've done a marathon, but typing style!