Just another day of history...

So today I decided to take it easy, and by easy I mean only spend about 6 hours walking haha.

I headed off this morning around 930ish and headed to this market area to walk around slowly and just enjoy myself. It was suppose to rain today, but instead we were blessed with a gorgeous sunny day of 24 degrees. It almost felt like Ghana haha.
The walking and aimless wandering paid off, around 10 or so I found a little alleyway that led to an Anne Frank exhibition that housed a bunch of items on loan from the Anne Frank exhibit/museum in Amsterdam. Beside it was Otto Weidt's workshop for the blind, which during the 2nd world war he employed blind and deaf Jews to work for him, and bribed the Gestapo to allow them to carry out their work. He eventually hid a bunch of people in the actual workshop to avoid persecution, and through his bribes and contacts he was able to smuggle 'care packages' to some people in concentration camps, saving their lives. It was amazing. Neither of these museums were listed in the guidebooks, so to not have wandered would have cost me these experiences. After this I went to a Berlin Wall Memorial, which was located in a very interesting spot, where the wall once stood but in this location the sidewalk in front of the apartments which were there at the time belonged to West Berlin, but their apartments were in East Berlin. The people were completely cut off from everzthing they knew, and there were many horrible escape attempts by jumping from the windows of the building... they had a tape playing of all this. It was crazy to see.

Then I went to the East Side Gallery, which is the longest preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall, and has been painted by artists, first time in 1990 and now this year a bunch of them are back to recreate their original painting (destroyed by vandals and weathering/erosion). It was amazing to see. Some of the art appeared meaningless, but others had such deep striking emotions conveyed from it it was hard to keep from crying.

When I came here my main interest was WW2 and the Nazis, but the Berlin Wall has done so much damage to the people here it is unbelievable. I didn't know much about it before I came, but now I am fascinated.

Tomorrow I am going to the concentration camp memorial Sauchsenhausen which should be interesting, and hopefully I will have time to hit a few more museums when I return, but I am going pub crawl tonight so who knows how up for life I will be.

Tomorrow is my last day in Berlin, Friday morning I leave early for Munich. I will be back to this city for sure. There is so much going on its hard to leave. There is a certain vibe here, a melody within the city that is so addicting.

Wow I am poetic today.

Anyways, time to get hopping.


Krystle