Berlin & Sachsenhausen Trip

My daughter and I took a weekend trip to Berlin last week. What a cool city this is. It is such a mish-mash of architecture, styles, and people and just plain fun. Found a great apt. to stay in, which was half the price of a hotel and it even had a kitchen. I'll post the website so you can find a B&B in Berlin too.

Daughter took the 4 hour walking tour with "Insider Berlin" on Friday and enjoyed it. For only 12 euros, you get to see all the main sites in the city along with getting a good orientation for where things are. I had done this tour in Sept. and found it to be so interesting that I had wanted her to go on it too. We both thought the book burning memorial was fascinating, but we found the Holocaust Memorial to be the "high point" of the tour. It is so disorienting when you get inside of it. The designer did an outstanding job getting this feeling across. I don't know if it was meant this way, but I found the size and solidness of stones conveyed such a feeling of strength and permanency.
The tour went lots of other places too, the Reichstag, churches, Brandenburg Gate naturally, museum island, Checkpoint Charlie, the spot where Hitlers bunker stood, and of course saw a remnant of the wall. I do have a weird connection with "the wall", as the communists had the audacity to build it on my birthday.

One of the best tips our guide gave, was to ride the bus 100, as it does sort of a round trip in the city and you get to see many of the sites that the "hop on, hop off" bus does, but doesn't cost extra. It was a double decker bus, so that was fun. Buying an all day metro ticket for Berlin is well worth the money.

Saturday, we took the "Insider" tour to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Even though I have lived in Germany for over 20 years, I had never gone to one of these "places of death". I wasn't really sure if I would cry or not, but I didn't. The weather was cold and blustery, which I found fitting for some reason. It drove home the point of how miserable it must have been to have had to stand outside for hours in nasty weather, being hosed down with water, doing back breaking work, or hanging from a post with your arms ripped out of your sockets. This was the 1st camp that the Nazis built and though it was intended to be for political prisoners, it eventually followed in the path of the other camps, with mass executions and gassing. Most of its' prisoners were homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, clergy who spoke out against the Nazis, communists, gypsies, and social misfits, like alcoholics, homeless men, or criminals. As time passed, more Jews were admitted.

It was eerie, entering buildings where so much pain and suffering was endured. The walls just have a sort of aura that you can feel. Especially the pathology lab and the cells for special prisoners. One of the buildings that was used as a kitchen, has just opened a new exhibit that everyone found fascinating. In fact, we would have liked to have had more time there. It has lots and lots of glass cases, filled with personal items, especially things the prisoners had made. They had made small, aluminum items like cigarette cases, things carved out of bits of wood and so on. Many of the items were made to trade for food. One man had made a complete, small chess set, using airplane plexiglass for the pieces. Our favorite item though, was a small sculpture of a boot, filled with flowers. It was quite pretty and extremely detailed, but when you read how it was made, amazement sets in. A young boy, not quite 16, had saved little pieces of his bread, to make this thing of beauty. He gave it as a gift to one of the prisoners, right before he died of TB.

I would like to go back there again and spend the day, as there is so much to see and I would like the time to really absorb it better.

There is a lot more I could say about this, but I think I will stop here. I do recommend that you go to Berlin and take this tour. Our guide was very informative and communicated her passion for passing on this part of history. Visiting Berlin itself, will also convey to you a sense of the history that has had such a huge impact on our world.