Berlin, Germany

I slept in a little today and did not awaken until 10:00. I then showered, dressed, and got ready. I exited the hostel and walked to the Oranienburger Tor U-Bahn Station and rode the train south to the Kochstrasse Station. From there, I walked to the replica Checkpoint Charlie hut in the middle of the street (where the original once stood between East and West). In front of the hut there are men in poorly-imitated American GI uniforms trying to get tourists to spent three euros to pose with them; from what I’ve been told, these men are fake soldiers by day and strippers by night; they are also annoying and ruin the otherwise historical experience. After taking several photographs I left this sad sight and walked to the Topography of Terror museum, which has a 200 meter section of the Berlin Wall still standing. The Topography of Terror Museum is located on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 AD were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS; it consists of an outdoor section and an indoor section and goes in to a great deal of detail about the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the destructive consequences the regime had on all; it was incredibly informative, but I breezed through the displays having studied this era before and also because I was short on time today. After looking around the museum, I continued on my walk through Berlin. Next, I visited an East German watchtower that once stood between the Brandenburg Gate and Leipziger Platz, but now stands near Potsdamer Platz. After looking at the tower, I walked through Potsdamer Platz and on to where the Führerbunker once stood (yes, the infamous bunker where Hitler spent the last days of his life as the Soviet Army conquered Berlin); now there are no signs of the bunker above ground and there is no access to the remaining sections underground; the only sign that the bunker ever existed here comes in the form of a historic display board; otherwise, it is nothing more than a lot surrounded by apartment buildings. I then walked to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (located south of the American Embassy, near the Brandenburg Gate). The memorial was designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold; it was built in 2004 AD and consists of 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae” (each varying in height), arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. I walked through the memorial and took a number of pictures (the rows of concrete stelae make excellent photographs) before exiting out on the other side and walking north to the Brandenburg Gate. Next, I walked to the German Historical Museum (“Deutsches Historisches Museum” or “DHM” for short), which is located south of Museum Island. I paid for my entry ticket in to the museum and then proceeded to explore the permanent collection. This museum is very thorough and covers German history from Roman times to the present; also, since Germany and its past incarnations (the Holy Roman Empire, German Empire, Weimar Republic, East and West Germany) played such a crucial role in European history, a visitor to this museum will end up gaining a historical overview of European history. There were many artifacts on display and the museum tour route moves through history chronologically. I arrived at the museum at about 13:00 and spent the nearly the next five hours inside the museum, up to when it closed (at 18:00), and I was speeding through much of it. One could easily spend the whole day or two or three whole days in here studying German history. Also, in addition to walking through the permanent collection, I visited the temporary exhibits which were on the aftermath of World War II, German unification, and homosexuality – this last exhibition had some graphic pictures and sex toys. After touring the museum, I walked outside in to the light rain. I then walked back toward the hostel, passing the New Synagogue along the way. Before reaching the hostel, I stopped at a restaurant for a proper German meal. I had beer, a Caesar salad (larger than I had imagined it would be), and skewered sausages and vegetables (currywurst, Thüringer roast sausage, Nürnberger sausage, leeks, onions, and peppers) with a small salad. Despite all this food, I had a desire for dessert, so I had ice cream and a coffee. I then returned to the hostel, grabbed my laptop, and did some research on the internet. Later on, I had a wheat beer in the hostel’s bar before going to sleep after 02:00.