Berlin

My semana santa (Spring break) ended up being a well planned tour of Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels. There was also a weekend at the beach in Alicante, Spain thrown in for the fun in the sun element.

For Berlin it was just me and another student in the program traveling together. We arrived late thursday night at the airport and some how managed to figure out the passanger train system to reach our hostel on the east side of Berlin.

We ended up just using the subway the whole time we were there. Oddly they use the honor system were people buy tickets at machines and just punch card them on the platform before you get on. The first day we were feeling brave and not validating our tickets so that we could use them over again. On the second morning a feeling of guilt came over me so I decided to finally validate my ticket. Then at the next stop on the subway a man in street clothes came into our car and started yelling instructions in German. People began pulling out their wallets to show their passenger cards and tickets as he flashed his id badge. It felt like the secret police had decided to make its presence known. We later found out the fine for not validating tickets is 40 euros. Thank god for my guilt.

The front desk ended up being closed but luckily there was an Italian girl smoking right outside that directed it us to the bar on the corner. After knocking on the window of the closed bar, a long haired, bearded, denim-clad man informed us that he can check us in. He quickly introduced himself as "The Wolf" and showed us to our room. Then proceeded to instruct us to tell everyone how cool "The Wolf" was, though he did give us towels for free.

We had dorm room with 3 other beds in it and only one was occupied. This was my first time staying in a dorm room style hostel and I didn't know what to expect. I was pleasently suprised to find out how clean it was along with the communal bathroom. Unfortunately that night we discovered our roommate snored like I have never experienced before. It was so loud that I slept only a few hours and the rest of the night was agonizing. At one point I thought it was a radiator getting ready to explode and kill us all.

The next day we set out early to see the sights. It ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day, sunny and warm. It was great for the activities we had planned, which was just seeing as much of the city and its monuments as possible I was happy to see the lack of touristy things at the Brandenburg gate and the Riechstag. Plus compared to Madrid, the food was very cheap.

In front of the Reichstag

From the Brandenburg gate we proceeded down one of the main streets of Berlin, Unter Den Linden. Along this street were various sites, including Humboldt University where Einstein, Planck and other intellectual greats studied & worked.

The square across the street from the University is called Bebelplatz and it is unfortunately famous for the Nazi book burning in 1933 during which over 20,000 books were destroyed. There is a small window in the stones of the center of the square that looks down to a small library full of empty bookshelves. There is a line from a poem of Heinrich Heine, a famous 19th century German poet, "Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people"

Bebelplatz with St. Hedwig's Cathedral

There was also the Neue Wache, a memorial to all victims of war & tyranny. Inside is a statue of a woman holding her dieing son, with a opening in the roof that exposes the statue to the elements.

Neue Wache

When then proceeded to Museum Island which includes the Berlin Cathedral. One very depressing thing to read in the guide book was every time they mention a historical structure they mention that it had been badly damaged during the war or destroyed and then rebuilt.

Berlin Cathedral

Another interesting thing about Berlin is there are some places where they have intentionally left ruins standing from the war.

One example of this is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church. They left the ruins of the spire standing and built a new church right next to it. The ground floor of the old church now housing a exhibit documenting the church's history, where there is a cross made from the two nails that fell from the roof during the bombing. There is also a Russian Orthodox Cross given to the church as a symbol of forgiveness between the two churches.

There is also various statues and mosaics that survived the bombing raid. There is also a scale model of what the church and the surrounding streets looked like when it was completed.

Near the Branden Gate is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It consists of an entire city block with 2,711 concrete blocks of various heights. Underneath it is a museum focusing on the stories of various people and their families who perished during the Holocaust. There is also a list of all the known Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It was a difficult place to visit.

The last day of our Berlin portion of Semana Santa was mostly spent at the German Museum of Technology. It was excellently put together but unfortunately almost all the information was presented in German. Though I was delighted to discover there was an exhibit dedicated to a pioneer in computing, Konrad Zuse. On display was the first programmable computer, though it was mechanical. It was fun to see all the modern components of a computer in a machine conceived more than 70 years ago. I was nerding out pretty bad.

In front of the first computer, it was entirely mechanical.

That night we took a bus to Amsterdam. We left a 7:30 pm and would arrive in Amsterdam at 6 in the morning. It was much worse than I thought it would be...

In front of the Brandenburg Gate with my guidebook