The next stop in the whirlwind post-graduation tour around Europe was Berlin for 2 days. We arrived late in the afternoon from the train and decided to spend the evening relaxing before the first full day. We picked up some more local beers to try.
Day 1
We started the morning bright and early at the Berlin Cathedral! This place was huge and filled with the most beautiful architecture and fantastic views.
We next headed to the museum complex and started with the Neus museum. The Neus museum is famous for its Egyptian and early civilization history and all for only 9 euros, including a headset!
We took a break at McDonalds for lunch nearby which was along a big tourist road which has the world clock, red city building, and St. Mary’s church. After this brief diversion, we went back to the museum complex to visit the famous Pergamon Museum.
After these museums, we did a slow walk through Bebel Platz, a famous square where a large book-burning occurred during the Nazi regime, and Gendarmenmarkt. It was extremely hot outside, so we stopped for some icecream and Jack needed a coffee pick-me-up.
We had an afternoon history and beer tour we scheduled through Airbnb. Nils, the guide, was fantastic! He is from Ireland, but he knows so much about beer and the history surrounding World War II. We would never have visited most of the places he brought us simply because we didn’t know the importance of them; I highly recommend the tour! We began at the Brandenburg gate followed by the controversy leading to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The controversy was that the artist who ended up building the memorial had many people saying the memorial did not capture the voices of the Jewish people. In order to make both parties happy, a museum underneath the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe has been created which features stories from different Jewish individuals who endured the Holocaust.
From there we went into what was the old Nazi street and visited the old nazi headquarters, where Hitler’s bunker used to be, as well as where Hitler’s body was buried. Most of this I would have never known about if it wasn’t for this tour!
The Old Nazi headquarters turned into the Soviet Union’s headquarters after the war because it was one of the only intact Nazi buildings. When the Soviet Union occupied it, they commissioned a large mural of everyone working together happily. Interestingly, only weeks after the mural was finished, the first protest in East Berlin began in front of this very mural, and the now-erected reflection pool below the mural shows a picture of the protest before it was dispersed by the Soviet Union.
Along the main street of the old Nazi operation was this art that I would not have realized symbolized the closest attempt of someone trying to kill Hitler. Just as Hitler was gaining momentum, he held a yearly event in a barn for his close friends. A watchmaker who didn’t like what Hitler was doing and knew when Hitler was going to speak on stage, planned a bomb to go off in the middle of Hitler’s speech under the stairs. Unfortunately, Hitler bumped up when he was going to give his speech last second and the bomb went off after Hitler left.
We saw the remaining parts of the Berlin wall that are kept up throughout the city, as well as the numerous other memorials to those who were prosecuted during the Nazi regime.
Something I had never heard before this tour was of the Soviet Union’s memorial they erected themselves immediately after arriving to liberate Berlin. While it looks impressive, it is quite controversial because the Soviet Union Army treated the Berlin locals very poorly when they occupied Berlin and Berliners want the monument to be removed. However, when Berlin was first divided one of the agreements the allies had to sign to the Soviet Union was to not remove the monument unless the head of the Soviet Union agreed.
The last stop on our walking tour was in front of the Reichstag building, the center of Germany’s modern government. Here is where we had the beer portion of our tour, and we sat on picnic blankets, talked with the other guests and the guide, and tried different beers including a Pilsner and a Helsinki.
Day 2
In order to see the Reichstag building, the famous renovated German government headquarters with a glass dome, you need to book tickets in advance either online or outside the Reichstag building (if you book closer than a month you can only reserve tickets with the in-person option). We had booked ours for 9 Sunday morning and decided to stop again at the Brandenburg gate, just on the other side of the park from the Reichstag, beforehand. It was worth going to the Brandenburg gate early because there was almost no one there! We also came after our tour, around 10:30AM, and the area was again packed.
There is a lot of security to get into the Reichstag building, understandably, because it is an official government building. What we learned on our tour the day before is that all the new government buildings are designed as open concept with as much glass as possible, such as the glass dome, to illustrate to their people and the world they won’t hide anything in the future. There is a free audio tour and going in the morning is ideal because it wasn’t crowded and it hadn’t gotten too hot inside (apparently it can get really hot in the dome mid-afternoon because all the glass acts like a greenhouse).
We decided to spend the rest of the morning at Charlottenburg palace, a little bit of a train ride away. We were split between going to the closest concentration camp to Berlin and this palace, but the concentration camp is really a day trip (if we had a third day I would’ve gone there as well). Unfortunately, this is the only picture we were allowed to take because no photos were allowed inside.
We went back home for lunch and to get out of the heat for a little before we were off to the east side gallery! The purpose of the gallery is to showcase the berlin wall and all these artists that are commissioned to create masterpieces everyone can enjoy. It was ridiculously hot out and if we had more time it would have been better to go in the morning when it was cooler.
For dinner, we met up at a brewery with one of Jack’s friends who lives in Berlin with his girlfriend. We stayed all evening drinking and eating good food and chatting.
Now, off to Copenhagen!
