Sachsenhausen concentration camp

I'm not sure if I agree with keeping these places open as a historical chapter for people to remember or not.  Anyhow, this tour was interesting and very depressing.  We started the tour by catching the train to Orianienburg (about 35km from Berlin).

The route from the train station to the concentration camp is the same route that thousands of prisoners had walked when they first arrived. You walk along Stralsunder Strasse, then turn right on to Bernauer Strasse, then left on to Strasse der Einheit and then you turn right on to Strasse der Nationnen. It will take you about 15 minutes to walk to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

At the concentration camp we all felt that eerie feeling that you get when you visit places like this.  Just remember that this was a working concentration camp, not a death camp, even though many people died here, the prisoners were sent to work not to die like other concentration camps such as Auschwitz.

Beginning its existence in the mid-1930s as a Schutzhaftlager ("Protective Custody Camp") for political opponents of the Nazi regime, it soon became a repository for anyone considered an anti-social element: gay men, Jews, Roma and Sinti ("Gypsies"), others. Soon it was a full out concentration camp, eventually including an extermination center and crematorium chillingly referred to as "Station Z" (the end of the alphabet, the end of the line). Through the gate emblazoned with "Arbeit Mach Frei" ("Work Brings Freedom"), I entered the grounds, a "rationally"planned triangle of facilities, now largely devoid of its original structures. A shiver went up my spine.

I found myself confronting, with gut-wrenching immediacy, the ghosts of that horrendous period. We circled slowly through the barracks, where hundreds of innocent men were crammed in highly unsanitary conditions; the prison, where dark tortures took place; the kitchens, where inmates used their thumbs to paint images, even light-hearted ones, on the cellar walls; the infirmary and pathology building, where "experiments" were conducted and victims "autopsied"; the Soviet "special" camp (because Sachsenhausen was not only a concentration camp for the Nazis, it was also used by the Soviets as a secret service detention camp from 1945-1950); and lastly Station Z, where so many died.

 After this tour, we headed back into town to take a look at the Jewish Museum (because we hadn't had enough sadness for one day), we circled through the permanent exhibition quite quickly as I was quite tired from our long day at Sachsenhausen. We really wanted to see their Heroes, geeks and Super-Rabbi's (The Jewish Dimension of Comic Art) exhibition but we didn't have enough time.

We Can Be Happy Underground

One of the more interesting tours that we went on in Berlin was the Berlin Underworlds, a fantastic expedition into all the interesting remains of the various caverns, tunnels, tracks and shelters that lie underneath the city. Berlin, being built on a swamp, isn't anything like many other cities. For example, Rome is mostly built on top of Rome, whereas Berlin has one of the highest water tables in Europe which means you can only dig so deep. This also means that Berlin has very few tall buildings as the foundations can't go very deep and the few things that are underground are not very far down. Nevertheless there's still lots to see down there and our tour covered some 150 years of Berlin's underground history.
We began by taking a brisk walk from Gesundburnnen Station, down a large flight of stairs, across the platform, then up again into the daylight and across the road to an innocuous looking door on the side of the road. We descended down some much narrower stairs into a room with several benches and our guide gave us an overview of the whole tunnels and bunker systems telling us how they came to be built, their use in WWII as air raid shelters, and to their refitting for use as fallout shelters during the Cold War.
Our first stop was the past several radiation suits and through some more narrow twisting passages to see a part of the re-activated bunker from the Cold War period. Originally underneath the French quarter of Berlin after WWII this was turned into a fallout shelter after Stalin threatened to detonate a nuclear warhead over Berlin if the Allies didn't leave West Berlin. It turns out that this was somewhat of a crappy fallout shelter as the projected explosion of a 100 Kiloton nuclear device would have killed everyone in this particular shelter anyway.
Continuing on we saw more of the original tunnel system that was sued by the railways. This is what most of the bunkers and shelters in this location were before being used as air raid and fallout shelters. A decent amount of historic train memorabilia has preserved with the old station sign for Gesundbrunnen being donated by a household of students who were using it as a table.
The last part of the tour focused of the use of the tunnel systems as an air raid shelter during WWII. Again, it turns out to be security theatre as a direct hit on this shelter would have resulted in the top level or two of occupants being killed or badly injured.
A highly recommended tour, but unfortunately one in which photographs are not allowed.

Potsdam Delights

Oh what a surprise,  a crazy French king in the 17th century decided to use most of the country's wealth to make himself the Varsailles Palace and he nearly sent the country broke in the process. The various palaces and pavilions of the 740 acre park Sanssouci (French for "carefree") were built between 1744 and 1860, originally as a summer retreat for Prussian King Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), who came here to steep himself in the arts, especially music.

The city of Potsdam is located about thirty minutes outside of Berlin in the former East Germany. Potsdam includes several magnificent castles that survived WWII largely without damage. One of my favourites was the Sanssouci Palace, unfortunately we were unable to look inside as it was closed on Mondays. However, we had the rest of the gardens to explore.

Sanssouci Palace is the most beautiful building, it was designed by Georg Wenzeslaus Konobelsdorff. We began with a walk around the grounds of the Sanssouci Palace. The garden is gigantic and worth walking through. There are many stairs leading down to the garden. I went a bit crazy with the camera at this stage as it was just so stunning, the view from below (seen here in this photo) is simply beautiful.

The other big castle in the parklands is the Neue Palais (New Palace) which was built 1763-1769.　We managed to do an excellent audio tour in our oversized slippers (slippers to go over our shoes so we wouldn't mark the marble floors) of this pink baroque palace which houses an amazing ballroom and a grotto room smothered in seashells and shiny stones. Opposite the main castle are two matching buildings which housed the business side of royalty.  Dinners were also cooked in the kitchens and were rushed to the King’s halls through underground passageways.  There are a lot of structural problems with the New Palace, so many of the more impressive and massive rooms were off-limits.  Still, it was definitely worth it.  Frederick apparently built it out of Silesia marble and brick as a boast of his conquest of Silesia.  

The park and the palaces have been well maintained. Walking through the monumental tree-lined avenues and past the backs of the grand terraces of the palaces, with only a few other visitors braving the cold and rain, it felt not so much like touring a historical site, as wandering around a home temporarily vacated by the residents.

The Chinese House built between 1754 to 1756. The pavilion was designed in the then-popular style of Chinoiserie, a mixture of ornamental rococo elements and parts of Oriental architecture.

We visited a few other castles such as the Meierei (dairy) which is located to the north of Sanssouci Palace, Charlottenhof Palace, the Roman Baths and Orangery Palace which was the former palace for foreign royal guests. 

We spent about five hours in total here at the Parklands.  It was a great day out, loads of walking and sightseeing. 

 

 

I'm A White Trash Superstar

So many cool places to eat in Berlin, so little time. We've followed a few recommendations from people about places to eat and we've just followed our noses for some places. There's also a few that we've gone into purely for the humour value and ended up with a tasty meal or a good night's entertainment.

Berlin has soup! Intersoup is one of those places that doesn't look so great from the outside, but then you get inside; and it still doesn't look that great. I mean, can you really trust a restaurant that has it's website on myspace? Turns out you can, and we overcame our dubiousness while we squabbled about who got to embarrass themselves by ordering bier at the bar. We needn't have worried as the barmaid (like almost everyone in Berlin) spoke enough English for us to grab some giant beers and order our soups. They have an interesting assemble your own soup method of ordering, where you can pick the kind of broth you would like (Thai or Japanese) and then pick your meat (or lack thereof with some tofu). Sancha elected to have their special which was apple and celery soup with chicken. After our tasty soup we checked out "undersoup"; their downstairs area that was incredibly tiny and intimate. The night we were there there was a lovely German lady on the keyboard and ukulele, accompanied by a guy of the cello. We had to leave after a few songs as Sancha was feeling uncomfortable not understanding what she was singing about. For all we knew she was singing about the ugly, rude foreigners in the corner and we were applauding her.

Berlin has kebabs! But not always as we know them. We got a kebab for lunch one afternoon that was served in flatbread that had been cut almost in half, pried open, and stuffed full of kebab meat and salad. It turns out that when we had asked for a "döner kebab" we had gotten the most popular type of kebab in Germany instead of what we had thought we were getting, a wrapped kebab, which is a "dürüm döner". This actually turned out to be pretty great, there is much less kebab meat in these than your traditional Australian late night sandwich, and a lot more fresh salad. Sancha was delighted with the hidden cache of shredded beetroot at the bottom of hers, but I tried to inconspicuously hide mine under the wrapper. I tried to make it know to our generous kebab vendor that I would like hommous with my delightful sandwich, while my lovely lunch companion desired garlic sauce with hers. Turns out we were both provided with garlic sauce which was pretty rough on the breath but he did cook us some tasty "pommes frites" to round off our exceptionally healthy meal. All in all a great success.

Berlin has fast food! Probably the highlight of our dining experience was White Trash Fast Food. This was another recommendation as a great place to see a gig. We ended up having such a long day walking and stuffing ourselves so full of their tasty food that we had to go home and sleep it off before the show even started. In our defence the show didn't start until 20:30 on a Sunday night. Germany loves to party late, even on a school night. White Trash looks as thought their interior decorator had taken all his schizophrenic meds, crushed them up with some speed, done several lines of the resulting concoction in the bathroom of an old chinese restaurant, and then gone to town. Yes, the dogs eyes in the picture on the wall are glowing, and the rest of the decor takes its good taste from there, runs with it, and drowns it and a sack of puppies in the river. Throw in a hefty dose of bar staff that look like they ate a rockabilly performer for breakfast and the heavily tattooed waitresses and it was a fantastic night. My Berlin Fried Chicken came with a mound of mashed potato and a well of thick, delicious gravy inside and Sancha feasted on the delicious 'not so small' sized dish of California Nachos. We didn't have any room left to try the "Fuck You Fries" unfortunately.

Berlin has hotdogs! We stopped off at this hotdog place while we were wandering around. They had some tasty hotdog that, while small, were pretty cheap so ideal for a quick snack. I grabbed a hotdog with fried onion and gherkin on the top, and Sancha got one with spicy cheese on it. I had to resist the urge to go back and try several of their other hot dogs.

Berlin has dougnuts! Sort of! We found a replacement for the Berry Donut Van! These are tasty little versions of the regular donut, cooked fresh and dusted with icing sugar. We devoured these so quickly we got the icing sugar all over us and it must have looked like it was snowing. I think they were Berliner pastries but without any filling.

Berlin has schnitzel! And boy is it ever so good. We've had a couple of these since we've been here at various bars and restaurants and they've all been tasty. Sancha is having Pork Involtini in this picture just to be difficult, though since we basically took a look at the menu and picked the dish that we could almost recognise all of the ingredients.

Berlin Graffiti Culture

All around Berlin there seems to be Art. Graffiti art, Wall Art, Fashion - you name it, Berlin has it.

The roots of graffiti culture can be traced back to West Berlin in the early 1980s, when the American-occupied sector was the reluctant melting pot of anarchist punks, Turkish immigrants and West German draft resisters.

But while the west face of the Berlin Wall was blanketed with graffiti, the east face was orderly and gray. The notorious Stasi police kept graffiti under wraps, and writers in East Berlin risked imprisonment.

All that changed, of course, with the fall of the wall in 1989, which opened up vast new blank walls virtually overnight. Artists, musicians and young people flooded East Berlin, heralding a shift in the youth culture from west to east.

David and I have enjoyed seeing a lot of art around Prenzlauer Berg and its surrounds, we have included a few snaps below.

Update from David: Added the Banksy-looking dog at the end as well.

Introduction to Berlin

It was about seven degrees this morning when we decided to go out on the New Berlin walking tour. Our tour guide for today was Rachel – she was an American who has been living in Berlin for the past 4 years – she was both very knowledgeable about Berlin and presented our tour in a fun and high energy way. I thought the tour was excellent. We covered the main sites and the commentary was of a consistently high standard. It was funny, entertaining, full of facts and objective.

Our tour began at The famous Brandenburg Gate, the only remaining gate from Berlin’s 18th-century town wall. It’s topped by the Quadriga, a sculpture of a winged goddess of Victory steering a horse-drawn chariot and then moved on to the following sights:

Hotel Adlon - (Unter den Linden 77), a faithful reconstruction of the 1907 original and again the preferred shelter of stars, royals, and heads of state. Yes, this is the same hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his son from the balcony.

Reichstag - since 1999 home of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. the futuristic glass dome, added by British star architect Lord Norman Foster, as part of the building’s recent overhaul.

Just south of here on Ebertstrasse is the Holocaust Memorial, a football-field-size labyrinth of gray concrete blocks that is as accessible as it is disorienting. A free subterranean exhibit hauntingly documents the suffering of Jews during the Nazi period.

This was then followed by a visit to the former site of Hitler's Bunker - The Führerbunker - which is no longer in existence as they do not want groups of neo-nazi's or extremists filling the area, however last year the area was covered in rose petals to remember his death.

We then continued our walk onto The Berlin Wall. We passed some great graffiti and old buildings shot up with ammo and some pipes which drained water from a construction site because Berlin is on a swamp.

Once at the Berlin Wall I thought was going to be a lot smaller, however the remnants are approximately 50 to 100 metres. However, very subtly the wall is still there, they have two rows of small cobblestones on the roads to outline where it originally was.

From here we moved onto relive cold war history at Checkpoint Charlie and stopped for half an hour for some lunch at Aroma Cafe.

We then headed straight to lovely Gendarmenmarkt - considered Berlin’s most beautiful square and accented by two churches, and the Konzerthaus concert hall.

After this came Bebelplatz. This site is best known for the book burning ceremony held on May 10, 1933 by members of the S.A. ("brownshirts") and Nazi youth groups, on the instigation of the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis burned around 20,000 books, including works by Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx and many other authors. Within this square there is a glass memorial giving a view of empty bookcases, which commemorates the book burning. Furthermore, a line of Heinrich Heine is engraved, stating "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" (in English: "Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people"). Students at Humboldt University hold a book sale in the square every year to mark the anniversary.

Then onto Neue Wache (The Guard House). Originally built as a guardhouse for the troops of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the building has been used as a war memorial since 1931. Inside there is an enlarged version of Käthe Kollwitz's sculpture Mother with her Dead Son. This sculpture is directly under the oculus, and so is exposed to the rain, snow and cold of the Berlin climate, symbolising the suffering of civilians during World War II.

Our last site of the day was the Berlin Cathedral and Altes Museum also known as Museum Island. The tour delved deeply into the history of Berlin and too much to write about all in one post. If you are ever in Berlin, I highly recommend in taking a free walking tour as we had such a great time and even met a girl from Prague who is going to meet up with us next week when we arrive.

The Berlin Anti-Pub Crawl

We finally managed to get out for a walk on our second day in Berlin and ended up checking out all the cool places in Prenzlauerberg. We snagged a beer form the local cafe and ended up having an awesome schnitzel for lunch from a bar around the way.

Since we'd been asleep for most of the previous day I figured it was time to kick it up a notch, so come 8pm we headed over to the 'Yesterday Bar' to meet up with the Anti-Pubcrawl guide.

'Yesterday Bar' itself was pretty awesome, it's apparently run by some old hippies and they had fantastic old music going, a foosball table (pretty common in Berlin), and decor that was directly out of the 70s. Lava lamps were all around, and the plush red seats we were sitting on were awesome. Couple that with the crazy papermache bees that were hanging from the roof and an animated... something... it was all pretty fab.

We started with a few beers here as other pub crawl people trickled in and we eventually got under way at about 10:30pm as the bartenders served us some delicious apple schnapps shots.

Our next stop was the 'Last Cathedral', which is a Goth Horror rock bar. Our tour leader told us that this club was part owned by Rammstein, and it was all pretty scarily decked out inside. It was a pity there wasn't more going on, but we did meet a resident of Hamburg (a Hamburger?). He practised his English on us and I tried out my terrible German out on him. We also had another tasty mango shot here.

We made our way to an indie bar next, we think it was called 'Dammit' or some such name but by this time the beers and shot were starting to catch up with us. There was an excellent band 'Gecko' playing when we got there so we had a sneaky 1 Euro shot of Jaegermeister and rocked out for a bit. Well, I did anyway, Sancha was trying very hard to keep her Jaegermeister down.

We had a quick respite from beer at our next stop at 'Druide Bar'. Sancha and I weren't in the mood for any absinthe, so we treated ourselves to their 2 for 1 cocktails.

A short wander up the street was to the next bar, and possibly my favourite, 'Dr Pong'. This is the original 'Dr Pong' bar and I can see why other places around the world have tried to emulate it. It was pretty friendly and I got to play a few rounds of around the world ping pong, as there's only a single ping pong table in the place. This involves going to the bar, paying a 5 Euro deposit for a paddle, and then joining the big circle around the ping pong table. You take one shot when it's your turn, then rotate around the table. If you screw up you're out, so the circle gets gradually smaller and smaller, and it's quite hectic when there are only three people left as they are frantically racing around the table. We got to see some fantastic ping pong finals here.

Since I was so busy trying to play ping pong and drinking at the same time I hadn't quite finished my beer when it came time to leave. It was at this point that I found out an awesome thing about Berlin (yet another). You can take your drink with you when you leave. Well, I'm assuming only drinks you've purchased in bottles, and nothing in the house supplied glasses.

We had a quick stopover at the kebab shop next door where we were treated to a shot of a terrible vodka, and a few participants bought a cheeky late night sandwich. After the horrible vodka I was quite glad I still had my beer for a chaser.

We then made our way via tram to the last bar, Cassiopeia, which was and old train depot before it was bombed out during WWII. Getting into this place was a bit of a mission as you end up walking through so much disused real estate it looked like our tour guide had taken us to somewhere for our organs to be harvested. This last club was pretty crazy with dance music playing upstairs and reggae playing downstairs. We met a couple of scary looking guys from Ghana here, who were really quite friendly.

Everyone was fading fast at this point and I think we were the last ones to leave at around 5 am. We kind of wrote off the whole next day since we were exhausted and had been up for about 24 hours by the time we managed to figure out how the trams worked and got ourselves home. We had such a fantastic time, but got so very few photos of all the awesome bars we visited because Sancha's camera went flat after the first bar.

The pictures below are pinched from flickr, so if you click on them they will go to the page for that photo and you can see the original photographers info.