Ich Bin Berlinerin! pt. 1

Last Tuesday I made the sojourn with the rest of the "Junior Year Program" Bonn students to Berlin for a week. The trip was amazing, and I stress again A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, Berlin is the best city in the world. Why? Because it is such a multi-dimensional city with history with so many different peoples and conflicts. Every corner of the city has a story to tell and it is amazing to strip off of the layers one by one. 

Our first stop was actually not in Berlin at all, but rather was the former boarder control between east and west. The Autobahn used to run through the booths above and people would wait for hours to get through to be able to go the Berlin. The would check the cars with mirrors and if there was anything that seemed out of place than they could take apart the entire car to check for any contraband or wall jumpers. After getting through, the cars were not allowed to make any stops until they got the Berlin 

List of people who died of trying to get out of the East

^Things people would by on the boader

So we stayed in a Youth Hostel, and the food there was fantastic, I felt so spoiled eating as much German food as I ever wanted. The first night we had some gnoochi!

The first night we went down to Potsdamer Platz, which is one of the several "downtown" areas of Berlin. It was split during the Cold War by the wall. Although the wall is obviously no longer existent, they have left an obvious mark of the former boarder (see above)

Small pieces of the wall on Potsdamer platz

We took a bus tour of all of Berlin the next morning. It is an amazing contrast of new and old and Cold War era, to Weimar Republic, to remaining rubble from the war, to Prussian architect. The picture above is, believe it or not, the new central train station

Here is the canal right by the boarder where a lot of people tried to escape the East.

Here is a strip of the wall that still remains called the East Side Gallery. It is about a mile long and depicts some of the famous graffiti that was present along the wall

Here is the infamous Brandenburger Tor. It is one of the only gates in Europe that historically always remained open to show that everyone was welcome in the koenigsreich of Brandenburg. Therefore, it is ironic that it remain sealed by the Berlin wall during the cold war. This is one of the main staples of Berlin, and is depicted on the Euro currency here.

So whenever we had to stop for a little, we would always be told to get some coffee (the German way?) But passing by this holiday Starbucks sign I thought is was funny how most of the coffees are the same except for the Gingerbread latte here is "Lebkuchen" flavored.

^Brandenburger Tor after the war (the gate was spared by the allies)

An east-Berlin apartment building

Checkpoint Charlie (a little smaller than I imagined). They were selling pieces of the wall here in many of the souvenir shops, and according to our tour guide, for a while some of them said "made in china" on them, so he warned us if we were planning on buying them to make sure they really were actual pieces of the wall. 

East and West!

This is one of the coolest pictures they had around Checkpoint Charlie

Here is a depiction of the Todesstreif, if anyone is not really familiar with the history of the wall, there was actually two walls with a section of "no mans land" in the middle (this is where most people were shot and killed while trying to escape) and there were watch towers and trip wires all around.

Okay so this was a blog for Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. I will be doing another one tomorrow for the other days, but I am a bit exhausted after my 7 hour bus ride so pardon the geteilt blog.