Berlin is a city that oozes history, sometimes not always the most happy of memories and some places can be down right depressing, one thing that seemed to be stock standard was the sheer amount of graffiti throughout the entire city. There was the typical graffiti tag style, then you had the very evocative slogans slashed across buildings and then there was the amazing art work on the sidewalks, entire lengths of the front and sides of buildings often 4+ levels up. The amount of what I like to call cultural art was simply astonishing, does anyone even care that it is there or is it an unwritten acceptance of the Berlin society.
Berlin truely is an interesting city, we spent the first day again on a free walking tour, we detoured on the way to see the Berlinadom, Museum Island (although we didnt actually visit any of the museums) and the absolutely dominating Brandenburg Gate. Our tour traced along the original path of the Berlin Wall firstly to the site of the Holocaust Memorial, an area of concrete blocks that undulates leaving you often disorientated and feeling a sense of something bigger looming over you until you rise up and slowly the blocks become smaller and smaller, finally seeping into the ground itself. Everyone has a different concept of what the memorial stands for and what it represents, naturally the artist has never told anyone of his intentions so I guess we may never know.
On a complete contrast our next stop was the site of Hitler's bunker, now flooded and buried under a not so impressive carpark, we stood at the place where a lot of hate was bred. We learnt that doing the salute or simply wearing or drawing a nazi symbol would quickly see yourself with a fine of 5000 Euros and a jail term. We stood at the centre of the Nazi headquarters and listened to stories of escape attempts at an original section of the Berlin Wall. Again not quite what I expected but very dominant all the same. We finished our tour at Checkpoint Charlie, which was simply a tourist trap and nothing like the original. We met up with a friend from home and it was nice to be staying at a home again rather than a hostel.
After a night of cheap beer and amazing falafal it was time to get out of Berlin for a day trip to the Sachesausen Concentration Camp. We spent the day exploring the site of what was originally a labour camp. We learnt that the main brick factory was staffed with the majority of inmates from this camp. As the camp was mostly demolished for its timber during a time of great cold, most of what remained were the foundations, the guard towers and the surrounding wall. We entered a recreated barrack where hundreds of people were living in cramped conditions and wandered around the old site of the prison.
The entire camp itself was huge and we headed for the smallest and probably the most dark section. A small bunker awaited us, below ground level it allowed for the sound of gunshots to be muted so as to not be heard by those in the camp. We also visited Barrack Z where the chilling remains of the buildings and rooms where inmates were deceived into thinking they were having a medical examination only to be led to a gas chamber or be shot whilst being 'measured' against the wall. The most shocking part was seeing the original ovens and although the camp served more as labour than extermination it was a truely sobering experience.
We drank our sorrows away on the Berlin Pub Crawl and spent the day recovering doing washing. With still a few days left in Berlin it is apparent that we have not even begun to scratch the surface of the quirky, buzzing city that is Berlin.
L&R
