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Berlin is a really cool city. I stayed in a hostel that was outside of the downtown which was a shame because I think there would have been a lot of fun had downtown. Regardless, I did enjoy the city quite a bit.
My first day, I took the metro all the way outside of Berlin to the small town of Oranienburg which hosted the first German concentration camp by the name of Sachsenhausen. The location was not always a camp. In fact, the area was essentially taken overnight as Germans came into a pub, informed people that this was to become a working camp and thus the next day many Jews began working on this project. It is so sad to learn that many of the Jewish people would actually help construct things that would emprison them and ultimately kill many of them. It was here where the Germans tested a few things out to see how they worked. For example, the first gas chamber and crematorium were built here. It was not used nearly as much as Auschwitz but still contributed to some of the autrocity that was the Holocaust. It was eary yet interesting walking inside the walls of the camp and seeing where they would enter the camp, do roll call every morning, seeing where the criminals would go (usually for doing little to nothing), where many Jews would be hung and last but not least as I've already mentioned where many were gased and eventually burned. The experience was certainly emotional on its own just learning some of the horror stories that went on but what really touched me was learning that most likely relatives of mine had been killed in this camp and others throughout the war. While I was looking through the book of the dead at this camp, I stumbled into a man by the name of "Leo Lendvai." I know the name is not spelled identically to mine but I am pretty sure our name has changed ever so slightly over the years and he was born in Budapest which is very near to where both of my Dad's parents were born.
My next couple days were spent exploring the city of Berlin. I bought an all day metro pass and so when I saw something cool, I hopped out and went exploring. The coolest part certainly was the East side gallery. If you're not familiar with this, it is part of the original Berlin wall that separated East and West Germany until 1989. Fairly soon after much of the wall was taken down, Germany invited several artists from around the world to paint some of the wall that remained standing. The artists went to town (literally) and made some really cool painting as you can see in my photos. I also visited the Jewish museum which commemorated the lives of all those lost during World War II. There were many other beautiful buildings, churches and museums to see in downtown Berlin but the main tourist attraction to talk about is the Brandenburg Gate which has been the main entrance to Berlin since 1788. I'm sure everyone reading this has seen the pictures from Hitler's reign of the six columned gate with Nazi flags hanging between the columns. Hitler made many entrances through here including the Olympics in 1936 where Jesse Owens embarassed him by winning five gold medals as an African-American.
A man at my hostel was then able to arrange a carpool opportunity to Krakow, Poland for very cheap so off I went.
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