So built we the wall...

Just a little teaser for what will come in this post. Hope you're all ready for LOTS of photos. This was the day when I really went crazy. For those who are actually interested in ALL of my pictures, we'll have some serious hours to dedicate to the topics when I get home!

Day three I headed out of the house fairly early. The plan was that I'd do a palace, some more museums, and then meet up with Ben later in the afternoon for things that were free. I was quite proud of myself for being able to figure out the metro system of Berlin fairly easily. I guess if you know one metro system, you can figure out the others, but they all have their own little quirks, so it takes some doing. Still, I managed to do this one pretty well.
My first destination was Charlottenburg Schloss. This palace was built by one of the Friedrichs particularly for his wife Sophie Charlotte. The way I understand it, as long as she was alive she had the place pretty much to herself, but after her death, her husband started to hang out there. Interesting. I was given the free audio guide for this place, so I took advantage of it. Fortunately, you can skip ahead when you don't feel like listening to every detail, so I managed to get a lot of info, without taking 4 hours just to do the palace.

The lower part of the palace managed to survive the ravages of war, and remains as it originally was. The walls were all covered in soft velvety paper in deep colors. A lot of the furniture has been changed, but much of it was original as well. Ben had informed me of some of his favorite parts, so I made sure to take in what I could. The ceilings were particularly impressive, the paintings really drew me in. It would be nice to just sit there for hours, imagining yourself in the landscapes and otherworldly scenes portrayed there. Of course, the coolest room in the lower part has got to be the China room. Sophie was very fond of oriental design, and had all sorts of China pieces scattered throughout the house, but there was one room, I believe it was designed later by her husband, in which hundreds of these pieces were showcased on the walls. Now, we're not talking nice curio cabinets, or mantel pieces or shelves. No, nothing so commonplace as that. The dishes are actually mounted to the walls, surrounded by mirrors in such a way as to make them look like they go on forever. It's really hard to describe, and no photos were allowed here, but it was really amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't even manage to buy a post card here. I was thinking I'd have time later, but never managed.
Another fascinating feature of this room is on the ceiling. There is a stuffed dear that seems to be bursting through the roof. It was just so bizarre. I couldn't help but stare and laugh. Oddly enough, this little bit of artistic curiosity was not mentioned on the audio tour. I was really curious about the idea behind it, but was left just to mull it over on my own.
I also really liked the small marble statue, just outside the chapel, of a baby that represented the six month son of one monarch or another who died in infancy. There was something about it that was just so peaceful, so beautiful, that I wanted to touch the smooth baby cheek, run my finger over the delicately carved features. Naturally that was forbidden, so I continued along.
The upstairs portion was highly damaged during the war, and has been just repainted in plain colors, with lots of paintings on the walls to represent what once was there. There were some original pieces still in the back half, but it was much less impressive than the lower part.
From there I moved on to the newer section of the palace. There was one room there that really took my breath away. A long hall, painted in a sea foam sort of green, and covered in gilded figures. At one end, a fairy-like nymph blew flowers into the air. The flowers took root, and their vines twisted their way from one side of the massive room to the other, breaking out in leaf and flower as small animals played in their midst. I could have stayed in that room for ages, drinking in the jovial designs, the sprightly air. But, of course, I was on a mission to see as much as humanly possible, so I kept moving on.
I'd gotten a ticket that also included a couple buildings out in the gardens, so I continued along to check those out, and to get some more palace shots as well.


I hurried along to the Belvedere, originally built as a tearoom by the River Spree, just a short walk from the palace. It is now home to a large collection of porcelain dishes and figures. I wasn't too excited about it, although I could have imagined my roommate Naomi from last year spending ages looking at everything :) I did, however, enjoy the view back to the palace, and also took advantage of how cute the little three story Belvedere building was for a photo shoot :)


After a quick peek into the Mausoleum, I crossed the street from the palace and took in three more art museums. They had some interesting pieces in them, but I didn't take any pictures, and by this point, I don't really have much more to say about art, except that Picasso painted some really strange things, and I thought Paul Klee did some interesting pieces. Also, art deco furniture is interesting. There you have my profound thoughts on all that art. Hope it wasn't too much to take in. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy art, I just don't have a great vocabulary for describing it, and since I spend an average of 5 seconds on each picture, unless it really captures my attention, there isn't a whole lot to really share.
By the time I managed to get all of this done I was pretty much starving, so I headed to the bakery where Ben and I had lunch my first day in Berlin, and got a bite to eat while I waited for him to join me. I must admit that the pastries here were constantly a temptation. After a weak attempt to resist, I decided I really must try the famous "Berliner." While they have a different name in Berlin, which is Pfankuchen, most parts of the country call these jelly filled donuts Berliner's. Therefore, the great joke that when JFK said "Ich bin ein Berliner," meaning that he was a citizen of Berlin, to most of the country he was calling himself a jelly donut. While the girl working in the bakery got all weird and asked me not to take photos, I did manage to get one of my own food before she went all mental.

The next stop on our tour was the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche. This church was once a massive cathedral, but was heavily bombed during WWII. As I mentioned before, Berlin is such a fascinating city because there are so many side notes to the past everywhere. I don't know how you could possibly live there and not be continually aware of the history all around you. Each era has left such an obvious mark, and it has been preserved that people might not forget the ability of man to be so cruel...
All that remains of the original church is the entry section and empty bell tower. On one side, a memorial tower has been built, and on the other a new sanctuary.




My internet decided to quit working, but I'm going to just keep typing, and hopefully it'll come back online so I can add the pictures and actually post what I've been working so long on. (sigh) The joys of being tied to technology.
Ben had never actually been inside the church, so it was a great experience for both of us. Once again, we were overwhelmed by the differences between a nation where Church and State are so totally connected, and our own American way of doing things. On the ceiling there was a lovely mosaic of a stately Jesus, looking down on the people passing in to worship. In contrast, on the wall there was a massive mosaic that showed the coronation of one monarch or another. I mean, can you imagine if we had churches with massive mosaics of George Washington? Or perhaps the Inauguration of Barak Obama Cathedral? I mean, seriously?


After walking around the church for a while we made our way to the new sanctuary. Julie had talked to me about her memories of this place when she was here 18 and 19 years ago. I could imagine the sun shining through the blue stained glass that surrounds the huge round room, as a golden figure of Jesus looks down, arms outstretched, inviting the displaced and abused to accept his sacrifice. It really was an impressive sight, and I thought of my sister, then only 17 or 18, standing in awe in this very place. It was pretty incredible.

This day, not wanting any moment to be anything less than enormous, took me next to the East Side Gallery. It was nice having Ben as a tour guide because it made it a lot easier and less stressful to get from one place to the next. The East Side Gallery transports visitors from the WWII focus, to a reminder of the oppression of communism. Just imagine, a people worn out from the struggle against the insanity of the Nazis, being immediately plunged into the extreme spy inducing over control of the Soviets. Out of the frying pan and into the fire for sure. When I read about how the wall sprung up basically over night, I just can't even imagine how it must have been to be suddenly so cut off from half of my city, not to mention the people I knew to be so near by, yet now completely unreachable.
How must it have been to realize that, were your house built just a few feet in a different direction, everything in your world would be different. They likely had no real concept of just how different the two sides would be, but I imagine it became obvious quickly.
I was in awe once again as I stood before this dilapidated stretch of the once mighty and seemingly insurmountable wall. Der Mauer. A symbol of total separation between East and West. A short time after the fall of the wall in 1989, artists from around the world came to paint the wall with symbols of peace, unity, and memorials to that which had now been torn away. Unfortunately, those beastly incomprehensible idiots, who feel it is their life's goal to destroy whatever they find in front of them, have done considerable damage to the art, but it is currently being repaired, and many of the original artists are coming back to freshen things up. I'm not sure how they intend to protect it in the future, but hopefully it will work this time.
I really got snap happy here, but I was just so taken with what I saw. Some of these pictures are very famous, and can be found on everything from handbags to coffee cups, key chains to postcards. So here are some glimpses into the art of the wall.







This last picture is of a squatters house, once built up against the wall, now a free standing sprawl of a place. While they didn't kick the people out of the building after the wall was gone, they did inform them that they couldn't make the house take up any more space, so they built onto the top instead. Can't say I'd want to live here, but it was interesting to see.

And so I close another day. I really saw so much history today. It's hard to sum all that up in a few lines, but I hope you're able to get some feel for what this experience was like.

The Quest for a VCR

Technology is such a fascinating thing. We were doing a lesson on Future perfect and future continuous (that would be progressive for those of the American school.) Anyhow, part of this lesson was for people to talk about things twenty years in the future and to speculate on whether they believe they will have changed or not. Some of them seemed to think that twenty years in the future is a relatively short period of time, and that things are not likely to really have changed a whole lot. They don't seem to realize that twenty years ago no one, except maybe really rich and famous types, had mobile phones. Nor did most private individuals even have computers. They did, however, have VCRs.
I remember when we got our first VCR. It must have been our second or third Christmas in Horse Creek, which would put me at about 5 or 6 years of age. I remember how exciting it was to be able to watch movies on TV when I was sick and had to stay home. I had two Little Golden Book videos that I watched over and over and over. One had animal stories and the other was Little Critter, who I still think is pretty marvelous. These days, however, the people who still are in possession of VCRs are few and far between. The only reason I still have one in the US is because it's attached to my TV. I still have a nice quantity of VHS videos as well, but when I've had the chance I've changed a lot of them over to DVD for a plethora of reasons, including better quality, longevity, and the fact that VCRs are pretty much obsolete at this point.
As I mentioned before, Sarah Vierra is doing research for her dissertation in Berlin. She found a video of an interview with an important Turk who died some years ago. The video was only available on VHS, and while she was able to obtain it from a museum, the museum did not have a player on which to view it. Consequently, she was feeling a bit stuck. After asking around her community of friends, she learned that the parents of one friend still had a VCR. It hadn't been used in a good ten years, but they believed it to be in working order. Therefore, on Wednesday of my Berlin trip, we went out to the German countryside in search of old technology.
Oranienburg is a small city about an hour outside of Berlin. It can be reached by the S-Bahn, an overground metro system that was extended to this area in the early 20th century. As the arms of the S-Bahn spread out into the country, little towns grew up around them. The ease of travel created finger-like suburbs around the main city of Berlin. It became popular to have a house outside of town, and so Oranienburg grew.
Originally the city had another name, but the marriage of some Prussian dignitary or another to a Dutch woman Louise Henriette Oranien led to the change in the towns name. She was a very popular Princess and has been preserved in statuesque form in the courtyard of her palace.


Andre, whose parents we were on the way to visit, was an excellent tour guide around the area. He grew up both here and in East Berlin, and was full of stories all day long. He also had some great smart remarks. I really must go back a moment to our ride out to the town. Besides the four of us, another girl, Laurie, who is also working on her dissertation, came along for the trip. We met up at Starbucks (!) and got drinks for the road. (Crystal, you'll be happy to know that I ordered a Caramel Macchiatto, since you say you like to make those.) After finishing the drinks Laurie began looking for opportunities to throw her cup away when we would stop for passengers to get on or off. The first place we noticed the bin was close enough, but after that they seemed to always be a long way from the doors and she feared she wouldn't have time to do her little Chinese Fire Drill garbage drop. I finished my drink a short time later, and we set to work looking for the opportune moment to sprint off the bus and make the drop.
Eventually we got to a station where our doors opened right by a bin, so we both scurried off and rushed to throw our cups away. Germans are big fans of recycling, so it was a bit of a struggle to make sure we put the cups in the proper receptacles before hurrying to get back on before the doors closed. We'd just sat down, happy with ourselves for doing so well, only be informed by Andre that we'd chosen wrong! GRRR!!! To make matters worse, the next stop was the one we were getting off at. As we exited the train and headed for the station Andre made us pause as he properly disposed of his trash and asked that we consider how satisfying it is to know that you've followed the rules and done things the German way. We all got a good laugh.
Now, back to the tour. We weren't able to go in the palace today, so we just walked around and saw it, and looked out at the drab looking gardens that are supposed to be part of a flower show in the spring. Too bad I won't get to see them then. Ah well, must make the best of my chances to travel when I can.
From the palace, we headed on along the Havel River. During the second world war this river was used extensively as a passage between Germany and Poland. I'm not as good as remembering all the explanations that Andre gave us as Ben was in his last newsletter, but suffice it to say that Oranienburg was also the sight of a vile concentration camp, and many of the prisoners there were forced to work on building a harbor on this river so that it could be used more effectively for the business of the Nazis.
We walked along the river for some time and paused for lunch in a little restaurant along the way. Here you see Andre posing with some friends before having lunch.

We had a nice lunch here. The people running the restaurant were an adorable little old German couple. They kept coming and making sure that we were enjoying the food. It was really quite adorable as they asked if it was "Schmekt" which means something to the effect of "tasty."
I ordered something that was supposed to be for people with a "small hunger," but I found it to be quite large and heavy. There was a piece of toast with some Wiener Schnitzel, cheese, and sliced sausage on top. It was really tasty, but definitely more than filling!

After lunch we continued along by the river. While we saw evidence of wild boars in the area (they're quite fond of rooting around in the moss and needles on the forest floor) and a sign warning of otters in the area, we didn't see any wildlife beyond occasional birds.

Laurie really liked the otter sign :)
As I looked around the forest I was really curious about what looked like ditches or some sort of strange sinking ground everywhere. Ben, the nature guy, was also curious and was kind enough to ask Andre about it so I'd get to know what it was all about as well. It turns out that, seeing as how this was a rather strategic position for the Germans, they'd built these holes in order to hide men and machines as the Soviets wre approaching. It really brings history to the forefront of your mind when you're walking in places and can actually see the scars or war upon the ground. Really makes a person stop and think...

We continued on and crossed over a train bridge that is no longer in use. We wandered to around to another small lake before circling back on the other side and heading toward where Andre's parents live.


I don't know what it is about random bits of rubbish that tends to fascinate me, but when I saw this shoe I just couldn't resist taking a photo. Maybe there's something about it that speaks to me of the person from whom it has long been separated. I begin to wonder who the person was, and how their shoe came to be in this place. Having grown up in a pretty damp climate, I realize that the fate that has befallen this particular shoe might not take as long as it appears, but I'm still guessing it had been there for a while.
As we circled back we also passed again by the harbor I'd mentioned. You can't really see the monuments very well, but there have been some skeletal figures placed by the edge of the water as a reminder of the horrors inflicted here. It is just so difficult to fathom the terrible things people can do to others. I cannot begin to imagine...

As we continued along, however, we were also reminded of the beauty of God's creation. Just take a moment to really look at the patterns in this ice. It was so incredible. And then there is the scene of the sun setting on the water with the tall grasses standing by. I was so transfixed by the wonder of it all. I really could have stood and stared for ages, watching the fading light blend into night.


We did eventually make it to the home of Andre's parents. They were really sweet people who served tea to those who wanted. Not being a tea drinker, I stuck with water. It ended up being of the sparkling variety which is really not my favorite, but I smiled and drank it all the same. I was feeling pretty tired by this point. After a week of being super sick, this week of traipsing all over the place was about enough to wipe me out. While Sarah watched her ten minute video twice, Andre supplied us with some reading material. Ben, Laurie and I looked through a massive book of birds which was rather entertaining and at least kept me from falling asleep.
We headed back to Berlin after the video watching was over. We were all ready for dinner by then, so we headed to the Oranienburg section of Berlin. Laurie lives in the area, and new of a great Asian restaurant. On the way, Andre made sure I viewed the massive Jewish temple in the area. It is the only temple that was spared on the night the SS went on their rampage of destruction. Andre explained to me how a group of firefighters stood guard over the temple, explaining to the Nazis that burning it would cause the entire block to go up in flames. It was truly a sight to behold.

We finished the day off with another excellent meal. They even had pretty decent chopsticks there, so that was fun. I still find it next to impossible to eat Asian food without them. So here you can see my "long life" noodles and Ben and Sarah with their tasty dishes.

Museums Galore

As Adelia once explained to Rowan "Galore means lots and lots!" That would be a very accurate description of my tour of Berlin Museums. With the help of Sarah, I discovered that Berlin has a special Museum pass that allows one to get into about 70 different museums for the cost of only 19 Euros. So by the time I visited three museums I had more than paid for the ticket. Unfortunately, a couple of the places I really wanted to go weren't on the pass, and even sadder was the fact that the display I most wanted to see, which the pass did cover, wasn't open :( So there was no Nefertiti for me. It really was quite tragic as this was one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing in Berlin. But such is life. So there are still reasons to visit this incredible city again in the future.
And I still managed to see a ton of stuff.
After buying my ticket down near the Brandenburg Tor, I hurried along Unter den Linden to Museum Island, a small island in the middle of the Spree River which is home to four, soon to be five, very impressive museums. Along the way I took some pictures of things like this amazing library, and the massive statue of Friedrich II the great King of Prussia.


Upon reaching Museum Island I was in awe of all the amazing buildings that housed ancient works of arts. I started with the Bode-Museum. Most of the works here were from around Europe. There were lots of sculptures and different paintings and such. I was mostly impressed by the building itself. I really kind of enjoyed being able to do these museums on my own because it meant I didn't have to worry about other people and what they were interested in. I truly am a rather selfish beast. It's the truth. So I scurried about, often laughing at my own private jokes. For instance, when I went into this little dark area and found the remains of a death shroud, now only a disembodied head, suspended over a table in the darkness, I was totally creeped out and couldn't stop laughing. Few people would really have been able to make sense of my hilarity, and on this day I just shared it with myself.



So these pictures were of me in front of the Museum, as well as photos of the outside and inside of the great dome. It was a pretty cool place.
Next I hurried along to the Pergamom. This museum houses a lot of really ancient things. There was the facade of a building from ancient Babylon, and a rather large collection of Babylonian art, as well as things from other Middle Eastern countries, and a large display of statues of Greek Gods. In this museum I wasn't allowed to use the flash on my camera, and seeing as how I don't have any sort of tripod, and I tend to move altogether too much to make a picture that needs flash look any good, I'm not going to add any of the photos I took there.
The next museum I went into was a gallery. Ben and Sarah had informed me about some of the pieces here, and I shared a good laugh with them as I came across the "painting of the artist's foot." Since feet pretty much gross me out to begin with, it was extra laughable to think about this artist being so engrossed with his own foot. We were all hoping that it was just a joke.
I liked the impressionist paintings here the best. They had some nice Monet's, Manet's Degas', and the like. I took pictures of some of my favorites here. They are naturally too shaky to be any good, but you can get a little idea. These were the places I took the most time to pause. I bought post cards of a few of them as well.

I also got a really big kick out of this next painting. I looked at it a moment and felt that it was a very familiar scene, and upon closer inspection, my feelings were confirmed to be fact. There in Berlin, I found a painting of the death of Waldstein (of Valdstejn) which took place right here in Cheb. There he was in the very bedroom I visited in our Museum, wearing his bloody nightgown :)

By the time I'd finished up there I was getting rather famished, so I scurried about and found a Subway nearby. I scarfed down my six inch turkey on wheat (with lots of veggies of course!) and then made my way back to the final museum of the day: the Altes Museum, home to Nefertiti. On the way there I did manage to get in a quick picture of my first Buddy Bear of the trip, as well as this charming little Ampfelmann.


I wasn't overly thrilled by the display in this museum, and being sad as I was about not getting to go to the Egyptian exhibit, I hurried through this one and headed outside to enjoy the last light of the day.
It turned out to be a rather nice day out, and I got some pretty incredible pictures like this one as I headed off the island and back to the "main land."

In this next picture you can see behind me two very famous sights. Poking out on the left hand side of the photo is the Berliner Dom again, and on the right the Fehrnseher Turm, or TV tower. This tower was built by the Soviets in order to show their technological prowess. Ironically, when the light passes through it reflects the shadow of a large cross...Don't you know they weren't too pleased when the discovered that, but try as they might, the cross remained.

Seeing as how the sun was still shining, and it wasn't yet very late in the day, I decided to try to get to the Siegesaule in time to climb up the massive Victory tower while the view was still nice. Along the way I paused periodically (it was a pretty serious walk let me just say) for some beautiful photo ops.



Unfortunately, by the time I arrived the tower was closed. I was still able to take some nice photos, which was good because I didn't see sun again the rest of the trip. Or at least not enough to speak of. Sadly, I never did get a chance to climb up the tower, but as I said before, that just means there are still some things for me to do if I ever have the chance to go back :)


I headed back for the main part of town by walking through the Tier Garten. It wasn't the best time of year for seeing beauty in a park, but it was mostly a nice walk anyway. By this point I'd been walking a lot and decided it was time to head back home. Once again, I spent a lovely evening just relaxing and hanging out with Ben and Sarah. Day two happily completed.

Willkommen in Berlin!

So one of Ben's favorite things to do is look for "Denglish" what I would probably call "Deutschlish" with my general way of renaming mixed languages, but apparently "Denglish" is a well accepted term. Anyhow, that accounts for the title of this post.
There are soooo incredibly many things to tell about my week in Berlin, so this will just be the beginning, a taster, a tease. Something to whet the pallet.
I arrived in Berlin Sunday evening, the first of March. I was greeted warmly by Ben and Sarah Vierra, and was incredibly excited by the prospect of spending a week with these amazing people, and seeing this fascinating city. For those who don't know, I should give a real brief background on the people in question. I've known Ben since I first moved to Blodgett when I was 14. Having spent the past 12 years of my life being convinced that Ben's I went to church with were meant to be enemies, I quickly created Ben out to be such. Fortunately, I figured out within a year or so that this was a pretty stupid thing to do, so I can pretty safely say we've been friends since I was 15, which puts it at half of my life by this point. We went our separate ways in college, but would always catch up on life, and the tales of piano bandits, psychotic squirrels and deranged ponds whenever I'd come back up to Blodgett. I'd only met Sarah a few times before they got married, and only a couple more times since then, so I was looking forward to this week as an opportunity to catch up on the old times with Ben and to get to know his wonderful wife a bit better.
They're currently living in Berlin so that Sarah can do research for her dissertation which is focused on the Turks living in the city. She spends much of her days buried in museums doing research, while Ben works on his German and cooking skills. It's a pretty great situation, and they have an incredible flat to stay in. Fortunately that flat was also big enough for a guest, and so I happily descended on them for a week.
All that being said, I had a pretty massive history soaked city to explore. Monday morning I headed out of the house around ten. Ben had a meeting with a Hungarian lady whose husband works at the Hungarian Embassy. They met in German classes and now get together once a week for her to practice her English in order to better engage in small talk at the big embassy parties. So while he was off chatting, I set out to see what I could see in their area of Kreuzberg.
My first stop was a nearby cemetery. Anyone who knows much of anything about me knows that those are always HIGH on my list of things to see and do.
Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
Tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
(From Marriage by Gregory Corso)
So, yeah, I was excited to go there and wander around amidst the quiet, the still. There is something that is just so intensely powerful about spending time amongst the sleepers. I spent about an hour there and took some pictures that I really enjoy :)





After the cemetery I headed over to Victory Park. This park is situated at the top of the "berg" or hill for which Kreuzberg gets it's name. From here, on a clear day, you would be able to see most of the city. Berlin is very flat for the most part, which turned out to be a good thing for me as I walked a LOT while I was there. I hiked up the hill and got what I could of the view.

It was too bad the waterfall wasn't working at this time of the year. I'm sure it really is a very nice place in better season and weather, but instead it ended up being a wee bit disappointing.
After the hike I hurried back to the U-Bahn and headed to the famous Unter den Linden. This is a long street that runs though a lot of the oldest and most famous sights of Berlin. It's a wide street with a parkish area that runs down the middle of it which is surrounded, not surprisingly, but Linden trees. I made my way down the street and ended up at the foot of the Brandenburg Tor (or Gate). This was where I met Ben who was kind enough to take my photo :)

Next we headed to the Reichstag building where the Bundestag, or Parliament meets. This building was highly damaged during WWII and has been rebuilt with a huge glass dome on top where people are now allowed to go. From this dome you can look down and actually watch them when they are in session. The goal was to promote transparency in government. Interesting idea. Anyhow, after standing in the dripping cold for ages the line finally moved enough for us to get inside. We had to go through a security check and then took a huge elevator up to the rooftop. Again, the view was definitely dampened by the atrocious weather, but we still took in what we could of the view and had a nice walk up to the top of the dome.


Did I mention yet that I did and saw a TON on this trip? Cause I did! From there we went back down and headed over to the memorial for all the Jews killed in the war. This place was really fascinating. The artist purposely didn't give any sort of explanation for why he did things the way he did. He just wants people to come here and experience it on their own. It's hard to explain how it makes you feel to walk along through the lines of rectangular shapes. They vary in size and the ground undulates beneath your feet. Voices come to you from afar, and while you can see the outskirts of the monument it's easy to feel lost and small at the same time. There is such a weighty feeling in this place. One cannot help but take pause and recall the suffering...


Ben and I headed back to Unter den Linden when we were finished with the experience and he walked me through a number of the sights along the way. He admitted that Sarah was a much better tour guide, but she was busy working, and he had plenty of information. I don't even remember all the things he said, so any more would no doubt have been too much anyway.
There were naturally some people who didn't feel that the Memorial to the Jews was enough, as many other people have also died in wars, so we stopped by the memorial that is built to honor all lives lost in war. It was an impacting sort of place as well.

We moved on from there and went past the Berliner Dom, which is a very famous church. We weren't able to go inside, but it was impressive enough from the outside.

We also stopped by Marx-Engles Platz where Ben got friendly with the massive statues :)

I will leave you now with two of the most famous people in all of Berlin. Enjoy :)