The next 3 days we spent in Berlin. What a brilliant experience. It was nothing like I expected. The buildings, monuments, museums, etc. are everywhere. It reminded me of Rome, every corner you turn is another incredible building or monument to take your breath away.

A real surprise was how Berlin has dealt with their dark period of Nazism and the Holocaust. Rather than sweeping this history under the rug and pretending that it didn't happen, they embrace it, atone for it and speak about it openly.

There are monuments to remember the book burning, the Jews murdered as part of the Holocaust, the concentration camps and much, much more.

They have specifically left war damaged buildings with their scars so that they don't forget what happened.

The Jewish memorial is particularly stirring, comprised of 3,500 stone blocks, similar to crypts, of all different sizes, covering acres of land.

We took a four hour walking tour that covered a fair bit of the city, including the memorials, the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and Museum Island.

The location of the book burning has an underground memorial, which is basically a window in the ground showing a huge room underneath with empty bookshelves. A very moving monument.

We also visited the location of Hitlers bunker where he committed suicide. Berlin has chosen to keep this area in a non-descript park with a dodgy kids playground on it. The exit to the bunker has even been turned into a sandpit. There is nothing to mark the spot, you wouldn't even know it was there, which has been done purposefully so as not to memorialise the place.

The day after the walking tour, we went back to Checkpoint Charlie to see the wall museum, then the remnants of the Berlin wall, which is located right next to a free museum called the "Topography of Terror", which documents the entire history of the rise and fall of the Nazi party.

The following day we got in the car and drove out to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, about an hour out of Berlin. This was a difficult day, seeing how prisoners were treated. The camp was initially used to imprison the opposition politicians to the Nazi party and then was expanded to imprison homosexuals, jews, blacks and any other minority, including people who liked jazz or swing music, which was seen as negro music and therefore forbidden.

Lidia was even more distressed to learn that after the allies won the war the soviets took over the camp and people continued to die there for 12 more years after the war, including many political enemies to communism.

To leave this blog on a high note, Berlin has a treat sold by vendors everywhere called Currywurst, which is basically a cut up sausage smothered in curry and sauce. Of course, we partook a few times, and we even found Alex a vegetarian version! The beer was also, of course, outstanding, as was the schnitzel!