Berlin

This has been a quieter stop on my travels, with it rainy hard and or extremely cloudy ( thunder clouds type of weather ) almost every day I haven’t really felt motivated to go out and explore.. and since I’m on my own here, I’ve felt the language barrier. I mean yes, most people have a base in English, and will try their best to direct you where you’re going .. but I haven’t exactly struck a deep intriguing type of conversation with any local… However these are the sites I did check out:

The Brandenburg gate: Which was one of the point that separated east and west berlin, at one point it’s also one of the sides of the Paris Square which was named that way out of revenge.. well let me explain the statue story before I getting to ahead of myself. The Quadriga statue was originally a peace gift from France with the lady of peace riding in the carriage, later napoleon came by Berlin while he was out conquering ever place .. and when he saw it and decided to bring it back to his private museum ( the louvre ) as a nice “little” souvenir the German didn’t like that very much… and later after they had defeated the French in some war… they rightfully took it back and placed it on top of the Brandenburg gate again, renaming the lady, Victoria, the roman goddess of victory and then they named the square that it looked upon Paris square as a reminded to the French that the victory of the German will always be looking down upon the French. Ironically enough the French embassy is located there along with the American and the Québec embassy oh and the infamous hotel where Michael Jackson held his baby that had a sheet over its head, over the balcony.


The Holocaust Memorial: this it’s an interesting site…

beautifully design by Peter Eisenman… it felt very peaceful, and yet full of energy walking thought it… the block vary in sizes so at one point I was in the middle of the memorial , surrounded by blocked that were two and a half times taller than me.. and it made me feel over powered… lost in a sense.. in this “labyrinth” of big rectangular stones… its unrealistic to me the amount of victims wars create….

The location of the Hitler Bunker : where they say he his wife, the dog, and the rest of his close family committed suicide toward the end of the war.. When the Soviet soldiers were taking over the city and Hitler knew he had lost. – this site is not at all indicated, if it wasn’t for a tour guide telling me this I would of walked by it, without never knowing. The Germans want it that way… they don’t want Hitler’s Bunker to be a tourist destination.

Checkpoint Charlie: which is a completely fake tourist site… that represent where once was an actual check point/gate between west and east Berlin called checkpoint Charlie. Where the people of the west and diplomats could show the appropriate paper work and come in and out of east Germany… I said it was fake.. because the real check point Charlie was completely destroyed after the wall came down…. It was only by popular tourist demands that they re-constructed this little booth where a guard stands…and there’s a pictured of an American soldier looking over the east side and a soviet soldier looking over the west side…


The Berlin wall: the first part of the wall that I saw was a section that was in very poor shape, damaged of course from when the wall came down in 1989 after 28 years of existence, and then from tourist who would come to Berlin and chip of a piece of the Berlin wall… as a souvenir to take home.

(the common sense some tourist have.. I honestly don’t get… they use to do this to the coliseum too, the pyramids of Egypt.. and a bunch of other historical monuments… it didn’t come across their mind.. That they were destroying it? Disrespecting a piece of our human history ? ) here are some pic of the remains of the wall. The 2nd part of the wall I came to visit was the East side gallery which is infamous for being the most well kept..and longest piece of the wall that remained! I thought it was beautiful. It almost completely covered in “gratifies” art really by artists from all around the world. :)



Tiergarten: Which is just a very green natural garden which was nice to relax in.. its pretty big, like the 1/6 of the center of berlin maybe

The Humboldt University Square: I’m sure its not called like that.. but its where the Humboldt University is and where around 25,000 books were burn in one day …by students, by professors, book that had been listed as against the Nazi government… book that were to liberal , that were written by Jews , by homosexual, by non communist authors… can you imagine ..Students burning their source of knowledge… out of fear ( I think) if the government.. out of fear of being killed themselves if they didn’t..within that square there’s also the Berlin Opera House which looks like the Roman Pantheon. Funny thing is.. in Berlin all the “old “ building were reconstructed after the war.. and made to look old .. a good example of that is the Berlin Dom

which was built in 1901 and design to look like it was build in the 1800 .. 1600 hundreds… actually.. it a clash of different types of architectures … they even made it look dirty.. Its located in

Museum Island :( they call it.. I don’t know why.. its not an island… ) which is the next place I went to visit… there there’s the Altes Museum, Alte Gallery Museum , Berlin Dom, Lust Garden and they are rebuilding the Royal palace ( for tourist purposes.. and also to re-balance the look of the square )


OH GUYS MY PHOTOBUCKET ACCOUNT WAS FULL SO NOW ALL NEW PICTURES STARTING WITH BERLIN ARE AT www.photobecket.com login eirelav103 password lorriana

thanks! leave me comments of what you think ... oh also my travel plans have changed again.. I'm going to Frankfurt on the 15th until the 17th then Munich 17th-20th then Verona...and then.. well I'm making my way back to perugia! just thought I'd keep ya'll updated! xoxox