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Och so much walking!! Seriouslxy. Today we took a free walking tour around Berlin, because me and Anna had heard from some people we have met on the way that they are actually really good, and the tourguides are enthusiastic and only run on tips at the end so the tour itself is essentially "free". But we gave some money jointly and we werent too stingey either because it was a very good tour.
We started off at the bit in the picture which is called the Brandenburg Gate, which is apparantly all new around that area because it was really badly damaged by the bombs in the war. But the gate itself has been restored. Next we got told about the reichstag building which we have decided we will go and see tomorrow night, as we have time to kill before our night train, which leaves Berlin at midnightish. eek, crazy night for us itll be. Anyway you are meant to get amazing views of all the city so we are looking forward to that. Then we saw the line of bricks going through part of the road which marked where the Berlin wall there used to be. Then we went to the Jewish holocaust memorial. We learnt that it is not signposted at all, so that people will walk through it and wonder what it is, and appreciate it a bit more. The memorial is huge and has something like 2000 concrete blocks, and although nobody really understands what they represent, apparantly the architect got his inspiration from a big Jewish graveyard in Prague. We walked through it and the floor goes up and down alot and the height of the blocks gets taller towards the middle, and people kept reappearing and disappearing again like a maze, which apparantly represents how the Jews felt, because they didnt know what was going on and didnt know when theyd see people again. Although it was really strange we thought that it was very fitting.
The next bit was the bunker that Adolf Hitler killed himself in. They had put a gravel car park over it, and there were apartment blocks built there in the 80s, but until really recently it wasnt signposted at all, because Germany didnt want to commemmorate him in any way, not even by recognising the site. Apparantly people take their dogs there and drunk people throw up there. Nice. After that we went to a building that the Nazis used and then was used by the Soviets, and had a communist propaganda tiled on the side. We learnt alot too about the wall, that seperated East and West Germany and ran striaght through the city. It was put up first wehen people were sleeping with barbed wire, so people didnt even realise until they woke up. There were no exceptions - you couldnt cross even if you had family on the other side of the wall. It was very sad. At the end of the tour though our guide gave a really animated and gripping talk telling the story of how and when the wall came down. Apparantly by accident! Silly leader who i cant remember the name of missed the meeting where they had decided to start allowing some people to travel across the borders, and went to a press conference and got asked what they were doing about demonstrators outside the building and said that they were lifting all travel restrictions, starting from now. Which wasnt what they meant to do at all but from that point onwards everyone was let out of East Berlin from behind the wall. It was a good story.
We also went to museum island, and the book burning square which is opposite a university where lots of important people taught like karl marx, albert einstein and the likes. albert einstein was a jew and he escaped just before the wars began which was lucky. Then after our tour we wanted to go and find part of the wall which was stillstanding near where our hostel is, on the river. It is called East Side Gallery or something, and they have got lots of graffiti aartists from all over the world to paint sections with big cartoons and political paintings etc. They are really good and we got lots of pictures of them, some of them had symbolisms and hidden messages, and some had german poems and stuff which I might ask my Gran to translate (pleeasse :)) cause we are interested in what they actually say.
Overall it was very productive day :) we sat by the river to relax because we were soh tired from walking halfway round the city (which it felt like but we had actually only covered a little bit....Berlin is soh big) which was niiiiice, and talked to some Australians who came over and asked if we knew how to strap an ankle. Turns out Anna did which was handy. I didnt really know anything about communism in Germany so learning about it and seeing the wall was really interesting and felt like it was really recent. We are excited about our sightseeing tomorrow, i think we all really like Berlin. Also people who lvie here are very proud, because on the train here yesterday a German lady was saying what we should see and describing the Reichstag at night. She was so enthusiastic! But nice.
Hmm i dont really know if there is anything to add because we did so much today, but if there is anything else Anna is going to add it in. (this is B).from Fran, Anna and Amy
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