We started the morning with a very thorough walking tour of the city. We saw all the major sights and found out about Berlin's history.
These pedestrian crossing men at the lights are the only part of the former East Germany which has been kept.
Everyone likes them so much that they entire merchandise shops dedicated to them
The Brandenburger Tor. I think they might have been cleaning the statue of Vitoria.
A close up revealed plastered up bullet holes
This is the sight of Hitler bunker where he shot himself at the end of the war
This is an old Nazi Luftwaffe (airforce administration) building, one of the only buildings not destroyed in the war. It looks like a normal door until you walk up to it and the door knob is level with your eyes. Appartently this was typical of Nazi buildings which used to try and intimidate. They also had really large windows on the bottom of the building which got smaller towards the top to make the building look bigger than it was.
Berlin - the city of bears. Where ever you go there are painted bears.
This is where the Nazi book burnings from Humboldt university occured where the Nazis burnt all the books that had different viewpoints to theirs. The monument of big empty books shelves shows us that the information in those books is lost forever.
The Neue Wache (New Guard) was originally a royal guard house built in 1816. It became a war memorial in 1931.
This big stone bowl was shaped from one stone and carried to the museum to be the centrepiece. However they brought it here they couldnt fit it inside so they left it outside.
The Fernsehturm (Berlin TV tower) was built by the soviets in East Berlin to show how great their engineering skills were. They were very against religion and were hugely embarrased when the sun shined like today and a large cross appeared on the edge of the tower.
There had a large outside exhibition on Bernauer street where many escapes where from East Berlins getting into the West. This was where a tunnel was built for escape.
This is an outline of where the reconciliation church once stood in the death strip until the soviets blew it up in 1985
Looking along Bernauer Strasse
This is a small section of the death strip which was not torn down. It show the main wall, the secondary wall and the guard tower. Anyone caught in this sandy area between the two walls was shot by the East Berlin guards.
Part of the wall left intact. It doesnt look so high but the round part at the top would have made it almost impossible to climb without a ladder.
I climber the Victory Column in the former West Berlin
From the top their are great views across Berlin. This is looking out towards the Brandenburger Tor
Their is Karen sitting down on the steps
Their were amazing mosaic paintings on the bottom of the column
The column is surrounded by a multilane roundabout so entrance is through this tunnel where this stange heat sensor lights up when you walk past
Last time I visited Berlin I could see the Old Tower of the Kasier Memorial Church still in ruins from bombing during the war. However, they have decided to renovate the tower and repair it.
We stayed in this really impressive flash hostel near the east side gallery
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