Berlin

One of my tops sites to see in Europe was Auschwitz. Before I came here, it was one of the only concentration camps I had heard of, so perhaps that is why I wanted to see it. Unfortunately, Auschwitz is in Poland, and Poland is very far away. I needed to go to Berlin for my project as well, so we decided to take an overnight to Berlin, an overnight to Poland, and then an overnight home.
We got to Berlin successfully, but when we got there we were told that our ticket to Poland was invalid. The girl at the train station in Vienna had neglected to tell us that our Eurail pass was not valid in Poland. I don’t know how she forgot that detail, because she should have seen that we owed extra money when she put our information into the computer. Regardless, we had to buy a whole new ticket in Berlin, and we were not sure how we were going to get out of Poland once we got in. We decided not to worry about it and just see what would happen. With that decided, we headed into the city of Berlin.
We started our morning with a visit to memorial dedicated to all those killed in World War II. I am not sure if this was intentional on the part of the artist or not, but the memorial reminded me of a gas chamber, and one of the statues inside looked as though she was holding her hand over her face to shield it from the gas.
Then we went to the German History museum. Since our time was limited, we focused entirely on the World War II section, since it pertains to my project. It was by far my favorite history museum that I have been to. There were many pieces of propaganda published by the Nazi party: pictures of smiling Nazi girls and boys and pictures of blonde, blue-eyed families laughing together. There was a little girl’s dollhouse which was wall-papered with Hitler’s face. I have heard about the genius of Josef Goebbels my whole life, but I had no idea how truly brilliant he was until I went to this museum. No wonder the German people bought Hitler’s lies.
After the museum, we decided to take New Europe’s Third Reich Tour. New Europe had multiple options for tours, and I wanted to take them all, but this one went with the project and we couldn’t take two. I am SO glad we went on the tour. I learned so much about the war and the city of Berlin. We saw several memorials, including the memorial to the Jews and the remains of the wall. The wall surprised me: it was much thinner and even a little shorter than I thought it would be. The city was divided in a way that seems so random to me. Now, what I would call the “center” of the city is in what was once East Germany, but West Germany is more industrialized as a general rule.
We stood on the site where Hitler’s bunkers used to be, the bunkers where Josef Goebbels and his wife murdered themselves and their whole family. We saw the Jewish synagogue. We saw the Reichstag, the center of German power before Hitler took over. The tour was wonderful, and afterward we stayed to talk to our guide. We told her about the trouble we had had with our train tickets, and she took us to an internet café and helped us get information about entering and leaving Poland. I have relied so much on the kindness of strangers in the last two months, and it makes me more sympathetic to people at home who might need similar help.
After the tour, we decided to go to Checkpoint Charlie, the checkpoint between communist and free Germany. It was much more depressing than I thought. The exhibit showed pictures of people trying to escape from communism in car trunks, and one plaque listed everyone who had been killed trying to escape to freedom. These people must have been completely desperate: there is no other explanation.
We had trouble finding the train station that night, and we were scared that our ticket would be insufficient. We got on the train just fine, though, and slept great. When we woke up, we were in Poland.