Berlin, Germany

Starting our trip off strong! Sleeping completely squished together in a our overnight train.

First stop in Berlin: Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe

This is what the memorial looks like from the edge.

And this is what it looks like when you walk through. You couldn’t tell how deep it was until you walked through it.

It is hard to describe, but walking through this memorial was extremely powerful. I have no words to describe the feeling.

The Brandenburg Gate was a symbol of Berlin and German division during the Cold War. Now, it is a national symbol of peace and unity.

Just wandering though the city, you find tons of memorials from WW2. It’s one thing to read about this stuff in school, it’s another to stand where it happened.

The Reichstag Building. It’s basically Germany’s version of the White House.

Found a playground, so of course we had to play in it.

The Berlin Victory Column

Museum Island! There were soooo many museums. We only made it to 2, but there were over 20.

This is Ishtar Gate of Babylon and Carmela’s reason for living. It was built in the 6th century BC. AKA a very long time ago.

More gates from different places of the world.

A tomb in the Egyptian museum.

More tombs.

And more tombs.

Beautiful views at Museum Island.

Next stop: the Berlin Wall.

This is the east side of the wall, which is covered in graffiti from when the wall was torn down in 1989.

One thing I didn’t realize was the Berlin wall was actually TWO walls, with a strip of land in between called the “death strip”.

A gate built within the wall.

Graffiti art depicting Checkpoint Charlie.

“It is necessary to leave often to love always”

Roughly translated: “Disgusted, my happy memories lay in the muddy horror of this dark day. I was agonizing on the ground, defeated as a child drowns in his own tears. Only among the corpses of my hopeless hopes I contemplated life fleeing without regret. And this day of darkness swallowed up the man I was. Then, in the heart of the thickest of nights, a very amusing smile flourished on my lips. Hope offered me the most precious treasure: the promise of a new day to fight.”

Checkpoint Charlie

On Saturday, we thought it was important to visit a concentration camp.

The name of the concentration camp is Sachsenhausen. This was one of the very first concentration camps to exist. People were placed there beginning in 1936, about 5 years before the start of WW2.

This is a statue depicting the map of the camp.

Walking the half mile walk down the walls outside the camp. The prisoners had to do the same walk right before they were placed into imprisonment within the camp.

A Guard tower on the wall.

This is the first gate into the camp.

This is the “holding area” between the first gate and the actual camp. This is where they made the prisoners strip, be shaved and put into their outfits.

Now, there lays a memorial in this area for those who lost their lives in this camp.

This is Tower A, which is the entrance into the camp.

This is the gate in tower A. The gate translates to “Work is Liberating”. Haunting stuff….

Our first views inside the camp. As you can see, it looks pretty empty. That is because most of the barracks that used to occupy this space was destroyed.

You can just tell how large this camp was based on how large the empty space is.

This is the security system within the camp. There was barbed wire and an electric fence. Many prisoners attempted to end their lives by running into the fence and electrocuting themselves.

So this empty space is where the prisoners had to stand each day as the roll-call was made. If someone was missing, the prisoners were not allowed to leave until the person was located (even if that meant they stood there all day). The prisoners who had died were still required to be there the following day because they were still on the roll call. So the prisoners oftentimes how to stand next to the dead bodies beside them.

Taking a walk around the roll-call area. As you can see, we had an audio guide to listen to throughout the camp.

Every destroyed barrack was marked with a memorial.

This is one of the actual barracks that were not destroyed.

There were actually two of them.

This is the sign for the washroom.

The washroom

A look inside the bedroom where the prisoners had to sleep.

As you can see, the beds were just wood. And more than one prisoner occupied each bed. The prisoners were so squished that they couldn’t roll over unless the entire row of people rolled over.

A look at the roof.

Flowers could be found all over the camp.

The toilet room.

A storage room

The hallway of the barrack.

A look at more of the destroyed barrack memorial.

Walking through the camp.

The building in the middle is the prison within the concentration camp. The pathway used to be a hallway inside the prison, but most of it was destroyed.