After only about 4.5 hours of sleep, my annoying alarm clock went off. Ugh. I took a shower and went to breakfast (late again). I quickly ate my breakfast and got on the bus.
My only planned activity for the day was the Historical Walking Tour. This was the BEST tour. Our tour guide was Amercan but he's been living in Berlin for like 6 years. He was extremely knowledgeable and he communicated his knowledge to us so clearly! I learned so much from this walking tour. I wish that this was the first thing we did in Berlin, it would have been a perfect orientation to the city! But better late than never.
One of our first stops on the tour was on museum island. This is a picture of the Alte Museum. It probably looks familiar to you because Hitler used this area to lead huge Nazi rallies!
One interesting thing about many of the the buildings we saw today is that you can see lighter colored patches all over their facade. These buildings were heavily damaged during WW2. The light color patches on the facade are actually covered up bullet holes! It's taken decades and a lot of money to restore these buildings to their pre-war quality.
We continued down the road to this memorial. I can't remember what it's called, but it's a memorial for fallen soldiers. It depicts a grieving mother holding a fallen soldier, her son. Directly above the memorial, a circle was carved out of the ceiling exposing the mother and son to the elements 365 days of the year just as the soldiers were exposed to harsh conditions during the war.
Across the street, we stood at the sight of a Nazi book burning. Super sad. Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 or, more recently, the Koran-burning preacher guy. But I loooooooved the memorial there. It was impossible to get a decent picture of it, but I'll describe it. On the ground in the center of the courtyard area, there is a slab of glass. You can look down into the ground (through the glass) and see tall rows of empty white bookshelves. And apparently (I couldn't see it at the time) in the middle, there is a light bulb, always lit to symbolize that it is possible to destroy the book, but you can't destroy the idea <3
Next to the memorial is a plaque which translates to "Where books are burned, in the end people will burn." Which was a quote from Heinrich Heine who lived long before the third reich. That quote is so true that it totally creeps me out!
From where we were standing, we could look across the street and see Humboldt University. Many famous scholars have been associated with this university. Einstein, the brothers Grimm, Marx, and Engels to name a few! Anyways, I can't find the picture that I took of the Humboldt, but here's a picture of a nearby building... I think a faculty building for Humboldt (?).
Then we made our way down Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's most famous structure which miraculously survived WW2.
We took a quick bathroom break. Here, you have to pay to use public restrooms. Also, if there is a restroom attendant, you have to tip them like 50 euro.
...I'm going to stop here.... I'm tired! I'll blog more tomorrow on my way to Prague.
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