Day 20 & 21, May 5, 2015.Berlin, Germany and AT SEA

Well,  Berlin is now on our “Been There, Done That” list…..no T-shirt.  It was an early start to a very long day.  We docked shortly after  7 and by 7:40 we were flying down the autobahn at 100 KPH towards Berlin.  The ride was comfortable, the road was great and the scenery was beautiful….looks a lot like home….pine tree logging and all.  It took 3 hours to get to Berlin where we met another guide and split into two smaller groups..We had 18 in our group and were on a somewhat smaller tourbus (still a bus!). 

Our guide was very, very well informed…had more facts and figures than we could ever remember..in fact, it was total information overload.  Berlin history goes back to the 1400’s and which King built which building or remodeling which building just was not a must-know fact.  We were mostly interested in the WWII occupation, the Wall, the buildings involved with the Gestapo.  We did SEE it and did have maybe 5 minutes to get off and take a picture, but it was a fast, drive-by looksee for most of the day.

We actually had to beg to get him to stop to get something to eat…and if you could find a souvenir in the shop next door to the Subway, good for you…that was the shopping.  He kept saying we can’t waste the time for shopping or eating…there is much for you to see.

We went by the Olympic Stadium which hosted the 1938 Olympics.  Nearby were three tall columns, one of which is behind a sort of speaking stand…Hitler

Hitler spoke underneath the left column

spoke to Berlin from that spot back during the war days.  Interestingly, when we got back to room tonight, we watched a movie called, “Unbroken”…unaware that it was about a man called Louis Zamperini who ran in that very stadium in the Olympics and who, along with two others survived 47 days in a life raft after being shot down in WWII.  They were then rescued (2 of them) and then made prisoners of war during the remainder of WWII.  A very good  movie.  It was neat to realize that we  had just seen the very stadium!  It was also the very stadium in which Jesse Owens won the Gold Medal….there is a street named after him as you leave the stadium.

 

Olympic Stadium

We saw lots of Berlin waiting in traffic, and much of the downtown “fifth avenue of Berlin” stores.  Lots of buildings that we don’t’ remember the reason for their importance…just too much.

The things we wanted to see, we did but just didn’t get to spend enough time.  For instance, behind the section of the Wall we visited, there is a panarama of scenes showing the old walls of the SS building that they destroyed when the wall came down…I had just started looking and we had to go.  That was very disappointing. 

All in all, we have no desire to return to Berlin.  It’s a very, very busy city, full of cars and people, and all the “tourist” points (Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall) are just out in the middle of a street with traffic going both ways and full of people. 

The Brandenburg Gate was used to represent the separation between East

Brandenburg Gate

and West Berlin and was seen in photos showing the German soldiers being attended to in the mall area in front of the gate.  There are now sculptures.  It is also seen in many news photos showing the Nazi soldiers parading down the street.  There are many Embassies located in this area…the US Embassy is just across the street from the hugely popular tourist stop.  Many photos and informational walls are located here.  We learned a lot there—had about a 10-15 minute stop.  It’s unbelievable to look at the photos of the cruel acts that Hitler and his Nazi Party did….

The most informative things were the signage located in the various stops (which were few).  The area between the East Berlin Wall and the West Berlin Wall was called the Demilitarized Zone except for the locals….they called it the Death Strip.  Over the years, over 5000 people escaped from East Berlin to West Berlin—over 150 were executed before running to freedom. 

After the building of the Berlin Wall, the Church of Reconciliation stood in the

The Berlin  Wall

Site of the Nazi bookburning

Hitler's quote

Jewish memorial

Reichstag--home of German Parliament

middle of the death strip inaccessible for the parishioners.  They began to have services in newly-built parish rooms which today house the Berlin Wall Documentation Centre.  In 1985, the East German government ordered the church to be dynamited.  After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the parishioners had the Chapel of Reconciliation built on the foundations of the old church.  Services are held regularly in memory of the victims of the Berlin Wall.  Each prayer service is devoted to the life of a person who was killed or who died at the Wall.

I am going to have to read or Google just exactly where and how the Wall was built.  The guide explained, but we were so disoriented (we’d drive from East Side to West Side and back again)  we just couldn’t “see” how the city was divided.  An hour later, he was explaining the long colorful wall full of art and how these designs came from 7 different countries…..someone had to ask before we knew that all the art on the wall was actually THE WALL …it was on the East German side. 

While enroute to the Brandenburg Gates, we went by the Hotel Adlon where Michael Jackson stayed while in Berlin.  The small open door on the left is the

place he famously held his little baby out over the railing for the crowds to see.

At 4 we met back with the rest of the group, loaded back into the big bus for the trip home.  We were already aware of a detour we’d have to take which added a good 30-40 minutes to the return trip.  It was slow going but through some beautiful German countryside with sheep farms, cattle farms with ponds, geese, ducks---just like home. Wish we could post some pictures of the beautiful countryside, but we had already put the camera away and it was in the overhead compartment.

We were totally exhausted when we got back on ship…it was raining (we drove through a pretty bad storm about 30 minutes from the ship—saw on the news there was a tornado from those storms) but the weather during the day was nice—very warm—almost 80.  My feet looked like marshmallows with tiny sausages sticking out of them when we got back.

Glad we saw what we did, but Berlin doesn’t need to be done on a tour bus.

Day 21:  Today, Wednesday, May 06, 2015, we are at sea.  A good time to lay flat and relax.

We changed time zones again.  We are now 8 hours ahead of home.  I feel like we’ve finally adjusted – it took me about 5 days to feel like I’m on a normal day/night schedule.  So, I guess, It’ll take 5 days to re-adjust when we get back home.  I now know what the term “jet lag” means and we haven’t even been jetting.