Berlin 2

OK, I know in the whole scheme of the world, the East/West Berlin setup shouldn't seem so crazy to me. You've got a few large powers dividing up a major city at the end of a war; it turns out said powers don't all get along so well, and the city becomes literally divided. But then you've got West Berlin, walled-in, just sitting in the middle of East Germany during the Cold War...crazy.


Another great thing about Berlin is the museums. Scores of the! Plus, on certain nights after 6PM, many of the museums are free. So I had myself a little after-dark romp through the Egyptian museum and the Pergamon museum. Yep, wild and crazy times in Berlin.

Nefertiti: the original "look"













21st Century A.D. woman inspects 14th Century B.C. woman















The New Synagogue, from behind a tree.

The Reichstag with German flags and Germans. (And tourists)









The Reichstag is Germany's Parliment building. The German Republic was proclaimed here in 1918. It almost burned down in 1933. The Nazis blamed it on Communist conspirators, but there seems to be some skepticism about that one...
The Nazis made their last stand here in April 1945, when it fell to the Allies.
The building didn't see much action until 1995, when it was wrapped in silver cloth for its 101st birthday (I bet that felt nice). Then it was rebuilt to be back in action. You can actually walk all the way up the glass dome at the top (very cool view). From the dome, you can look down into the legislative chamber and watch the government at work. Nice touch.

All together now: the Brandenburg Gate

Berlin Memorials

Portion of the Wall near the old Luftwaffe building. The Luftwaffe building was so close to the Wall (on the Eastern side) that one day, after hours, an office worker strung a zip line from one of the windows, tossed it to a friend across the Wall, and glided himself, and his wife and son into West Berlin. Yeah, the windows were bricked up after that.

Neue Wache ("New Guardhouse"-it was new in 1816). After WWII it was a memorial to the victims of fascism, now it's a memorial to the "victims of war and tyranny." It houses the tombs of an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim. The statue is a copy of the Kathe Kollwitz statue, Mother with Her Dead Son

Holocaust Memorial

Unter den Linden is one of my favorite places in Berlin. I like to walk up and down it while eating donuts and drinking coffee. Unter den Linden means "under the linden trees" and it has been a main drag since at least the 15th Century. Hitler, apparently deliriously over-confident in the beauty of the swastika, cut down the trees and replaced them with Nazi flags. The Germans were not happy about that one, and he actually replanted the trees. Ooo, ouch! Pride comes before the fall, Hit. I hear the Hellespont hasn't been whipped in a while.


Unter den Linden, Frederick the Great Statue, looking East
















Unter den Linden, a few minutes and about 100 meters later, looking West.