The full Berlin adventure! 🇩🇪 - Touring Berlin - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
As I'm sure all of you may know, I recently went to Berlin. As I'm writing this post in fact, I've literally just got back from the trip. I was going to write this post later but I've been posting a lot of photos from the trip on my Instagram so I thought that it wouldn't be good to leave it too long. There were some ups and downs but I'll give you an overview of the whole trip.
The first part of the trip was really good and everything went to plan. I slept surprisingly well due to the 20 hour bus drive, which I now think was actually a 16 hour bus drive but you get the gist. It was still really long. I did feel a little bit sick towards the end but we were already in Berlin so that was fine and as soon as I stepped outside the bus, I felt a lot better.
However, right at the end of the trip DISASTER STRUCK. DUN DUN DUUUUN! No, it wasn't terrible but it also could have gone a lot better. After coming back from a long walk around the Berlin Olympic Stadium, the U-bahn, and the Roma-Sinti memorial, I arrived at the hotel extremely tired after the epic long day. I realised later that I didn't have my phone on me. I checked my bag; emptied everything from it and I still couldn't find it. I began to panic so me and my friend began to retrace our steps outside the hotel on the steps and the bench that we sat on but we still couldn't find anything so we returned to the hotel. I had another look again with my really nice history teacher but we still couldn't find anything. We tried everything from tracking the device, phoning the mobile (although i'm pretty sure that I left it on silent,lol), and we even left the type of phone and the school details at the reception of the hotel, incase they found anything but obviously, we were unsuccessful. I think because I was just so tired, I cried on the teacher's phone to my mum even though it literally wasn't that big of a deal. As my dad said when I came home, a phone is just a lump of metal with electronics in it. It is nothing that special. It made me think about how dependent we become over material items sometimes.
On the journey back to the UK, I was sick on the bus due to I think exhaustion and travel sickness. It was really embarrassing because I was just vomiting (TMI) in front of everyone in such an enclosed space. However, the same history teacher that helped me look for my phone came over to me and cleaned everything up because I was just sick everywhere. I was talking about this to my mum in the car on the way back home and we were just like, how do the teachers cope with sick students? If I had to do that job, I'd probably be throwing up myself so I've got a lot of respect for teachers. Like ALOT! Anyway, it was all fine in the end and everyone was incredibly nice to me, including my good friends.
Anyway, enough of the bad stuff, let's get onto some of the positive and interesting things that happened on this trip. I will try and add as many photos as possible here from my Instagram, since I was unsuccessful in backing up my photos. It doesn't matter that much anyway because you've really got to see it all for yourself to understand the history properly but I'm sure I will be able to describe most of it to you in a way in which you can understand. However, if you do get the chance to visit Berlin for yourself, please do because it is an amazing city with a mixture of things between the past, present, and the future which is what makes it such an interesting place.
On the first day, one of the places that I really enjoyed visiting was Brandenburg Gate and the whole avenue (Unter den Linden). It's not too dissimilar to the Arc De Triomphe or also Les Champs-Élysées in Paris in the sense that some famous leaders have walked under the gate and the whole avenue is neo-classical and very posh. We talked about the event on the night of 1933, when Hitler was appointed as Chancellor and the Nazis held a torch-lit parade to celebrate this. We also talked about earlier history where Napoleon, after the 1806 Prussian defeat in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, was the first to use the gate for his triumphal procession where he took its Quadriga back to Paris. Now, it is a massive tourist attraction with a lot of embassy buildings encircling it. As one of my history teachers repeatedly said, this shows the connection between the past, the present, and the future.
After looking at the Brandenburg Gate, we also visited the Book Burning Memorial further down the Unter den Linden where around 20,000 books of great and controversial thinkers, including Karl Marx and his book on communism and other anti-fascist books from other thinkers, were thrown into a bonfire and burnt to get rid of opposing ideas to the Nazis. To commemorate this, there was a hole in the ground where a ton of white empty shelves, which could supposedly hold 20,000 books, were placed. Surrounding the memorial, were universities and academic buildings which was kind of contrasting to the content of the literature that was burnt and the way people used to think about new ideas.
As well as this memorial, we also saw the war memorial where I believe Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, placed a Käthe Kollwitz inspired statue where a mum was carrying her dead son, to replace the GDR memorial piece. This memorial is placed in the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) building where it serves as the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship. This is located on the North side of the Unter den Linden, in Berlin. It is honestly an amazing memorial which really truly represents what war is about, which when broken down, comes down to a mother mourning over her dead son.
On the morning of the second day, we visited Sachsenhausen memorial of a former concentration camp. I am careful to word it that way because at the end of the day, it isn't history, it's memory work. Sachsenhausen is no longer a concentration camp anymore, people have moved on from the past. But, people do visit it for memory work and to remember the past events that have happened because at the end of the day, that is what is going to make change in the world. That's the common misconception that our brilliant French tour guide (memory work leader) Julianne, helped us to realise. He talked about the Nazis not necessarily being evil people, but actually being ordinary people like you and me who have decided to do something evil. Julianne, showed us an area with a bare bit of fence that the people outside the concentration camp could see into. It was a beautiful piece of lawn with flowers and trees that was supposed to serve as a sort of zoo of the concentration camp prisoners. Not only does this show that the prisoners were treated like animals, but it also shows that the people of Sachsenhausen knew exactly what was going on. This is an example of how the Nazis used terror through propaganda to get people to conform to their ideology. Julianne, also told us about this game that the Nazis played on the prisoners. Surrounding the barracks was a section inside the barbed wire fence where if you stepped into it, you were shot. The Nazi officers would take the cap off one of the prisoners and chuck it into the shooting area and told them to "go and get it." If they didn't, they were beaten up, if they did they could be shot but not always. Although this treatment of the opposition, such as the communists and general offenders was terrible, only 40% of the people inside Sachsenhausen were killed. This highlights the fact that this is a concentration camp and not a death camp where thousands of people were gassed.
On the Third day of the trip, we visited the memorial to all the murdered Jews that were killed under the Nazi regime in Europe. This memorial for many was a strange one because it didn't seem like this memorial was made with much care and the point of the architect didn't seem to be clear. There were just a bunch of metal blocks placed in equal rows but not of equal height, in a massive square piece of land in the centre of the city. There were some rectangular stones engraved into the ground which some of us accidentally stood on. Toddlers and adults were standing on the tall stones and many teens were taking selfies on them with their friends. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, people were taking selfies at the shooting zone which is obviously disrespectful but when you don't know what a memorial is trying to represent, is it really that disrespectful to stand on top of it? It caused many of us to question.
On the third day, we also saw the Berlin TV Tower on the East side of the city. It was built by the Soviets at the time of the Berlin Wall. When we drove to the area, we saw the comparison between the West and the East in the sense that on the West, the buildings were a lot more fancy and grand whereas in the East, the buildings were a lot more practical and big and cheap-looking. This shows the interesting difference between what was the capitalist west in comparison the the communist east, at the time after Nazi defeat and during the Cold War. It is also ironic that every time the sun shines on the sphere on the TV tower, a cross is formed because of the way it is shaped. This is ironic because the communists were highly against religion. However, despite this, the view from the tower was totally amazing. We could see everything that we visited from the Brandenburg Gate and the Siegessaule. It was totally amazing and definitely a time to take selfies!
On the fourth/last day, we visited the Berlin Olympic Stadium which I took a lot of photos of but sadly can no longer have access to which does kind of annoy me but what can you do? It was epic and grand and amazing to see. From afar, on the outside, the whole structure seemed bigger because it was built on top of a 6 metre high man-made hill to make it seem all the more intimidating. At the time of the Nazis, there wasn't a roof to the stadium but the whole structure was designed in the style of the Roman period by Hitler to promote the strong Aryan race. Nowadays, it has a large glass ringed roof which looks incredibly light because it is only held up by a few stilts and pillars and there is a gap between the wall and the roof. This makes it kind of look like it's floating. Apparently, at night it glows and kind of looks like a ring of fire. I also saw the old swimming pool area which was also built by Hitler just outside of the main stadium. The pool water was green and we were all kind of freaked out but it was still pretty impressive nevetherless.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post even if I didn't have all the photos. It's not the biggest deal that I've lost my phone, I do have a password on my phone and I don't have anything of any importance on my phone but it certainly sucks to have lost it. There are some things that you can't control.
Have you got any more questions on Berlin? I've also visited Alexanderplatz, the Berlin monument, the Roma and Sinti memorial,the German Resistance Museum, and the Hackscher Market so if you've got any further questions on those, please leave them below. I love ♡ hearing from you!
*Special thanks to all the history teachers for bringing everyone involved on an absolutely amazing trip.
*Special thanks to the bus drivers for driving us there and back for 16 hours!
*Thanks for 900 followers on my Instagram, it really means a lot to me that all of you love and support what I do. I am forever grateful!
See you next time,
Bye,
XOX,Juliette
My social media handles:
My Instagram
My YouTube channel
My second blog:
The Book Hub
As I'm sure all of you may know, I recently went to Berlin. As I'm writing this post in fact, I've literally just got back from the trip. I was going to write this post later but I've been posting a lot of photos from the trip on my Instagram so I thought that it wouldn't be good to leave it too long. There were some ups and downs but I'll give you an overview of the whole trip.
The first part of the trip was really good and everything went to plan. I slept surprisingly well due to the 20 hour bus drive, which I now think was actually a 16 hour bus drive but you get the gist. It was still really long. I did feel a little bit sick towards the end but we were already in Berlin so that was fine and as soon as I stepped outside the bus, I felt a lot better.
However, right at the end of the trip DISASTER STRUCK. DUN DUN DUUUUN! No, it wasn't terrible but it also could have gone a lot better. After coming back from a long walk around the Berlin Olympic Stadium, the U-bahn, and the Roma-Sinti memorial, I arrived at the hotel extremely tired after the epic long day. I realised later that I didn't have my phone on me. I checked my bag; emptied everything from it and I still couldn't find it. I began to panic so me and my friend began to retrace our steps outside the hotel on the steps and the bench that we sat on but we still couldn't find anything so we returned to the hotel. I had another look again with my really nice history teacher but we still couldn't find anything. We tried everything from tracking the device, phoning the mobile (although i'm pretty sure that I left it on silent,lol), and we even left the type of phone and the school details at the reception of the hotel, incase they found anything but obviously, we were unsuccessful. I think because I was just so tired, I cried on the teacher's phone to my mum even though it literally wasn't that big of a deal. As my dad said when I came home, a phone is just a lump of metal with electronics in it. It is nothing that special. It made me think about how dependent we become over material items sometimes.
On the journey back to the UK, I was sick on the bus due to I think exhaustion and travel sickness. It was really embarrassing because I was just vomiting (TMI) in front of everyone in such an enclosed space. However, the same history teacher that helped me look for my phone came over to me and cleaned everything up because I was just sick everywhere. I was talking about this to my mum in the car on the way back home and we were just like, how do the teachers cope with sick students? If I had to do that job, I'd probably be throwing up myself so I've got a lot of respect for teachers. Like ALOT! Anyway, it was all fine in the end and everyone was incredibly nice to me, including my good friends.
Anyway, enough of the bad stuff, let's get onto some of the positive and interesting things that happened on this trip. I will try and add as many photos as possible here from my Instagram, since I was unsuccessful in backing up my photos. It doesn't matter that much anyway because you've really got to see it all for yourself to understand the history properly but I'm sure I will be able to describe most of it to you in a way in which you can understand. However, if you do get the chance to visit Berlin for yourself, please do because it is an amazing city with a mixture of things between the past, present, and the future which is what makes it such an interesting place.
On the first day, one of the places that I really enjoyed visiting was Brandenburg Gate and the whole avenue (Unter den Linden). It's not too dissimilar to the Arc De Triomphe or also Les Champs-Élysées in Paris in the sense that some famous leaders have walked under the gate and the whole avenue is neo-classical and very posh. We talked about the event on the night of 1933, when Hitler was appointed as Chancellor and the Nazis held a torch-lit parade to celebrate this. We also talked about earlier history where Napoleon, after the 1806 Prussian defeat in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, was the first to use the gate for his triumphal procession where he took its Quadriga back to Paris. Now, it is a massive tourist attraction with a lot of embassy buildings encircling it. As one of my history teachers repeatedly said, this shows the connection between the past, the present, and the future.
From the 1st day in Berlin
Click me!
After looking at the Brandenburg Gate, we also visited the Book Burning Memorial further down the Unter den Linden where around 20,000 books of great and controversial thinkers, including Karl Marx and his book on communism and other anti-fascist books from other thinkers, were thrown into a bonfire and burnt to get rid of opposing ideas to the Nazis. To commemorate this, there was a hole in the ground where a ton of white empty shelves, which could supposedly hold 20,000 books, were placed. Surrounding the memorial, were universities and academic buildings which was kind of contrasting to the content of the literature that was burnt and the way people used to think about new ideas.
As well as this memorial, we also saw the war memorial where I believe Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, placed a Käthe Kollwitz inspired statue where a mum was carrying her dead son, to replace the GDR memorial piece. This memorial is placed in the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) building where it serves as the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship. This is located on the North side of the Unter den Linden, in Berlin. It is honestly an amazing memorial which really truly represents what war is about, which when broken down, comes down to a mother mourning over her dead son.
On the morning of the second day, we visited Sachsenhausen memorial of a former concentration camp. I am careful to word it that way because at the end of the day, it isn't history, it's memory work. Sachsenhausen is no longer a concentration camp anymore, people have moved on from the past. But, people do visit it for memory work and to remember the past events that have happened because at the end of the day, that is what is going to make change in the world. That's the common misconception that our brilliant French tour guide (memory work leader) Julianne, helped us to realise. He talked about the Nazis not necessarily being evil people, but actually being ordinary people like you and me who have decided to do something evil. Julianne, showed us an area with a bare bit of fence that the people outside the concentration camp could see into. It was a beautiful piece of lawn with flowers and trees that was supposed to serve as a sort of zoo of the concentration camp prisoners. Not only does this show that the prisoners were treated like animals, but it also shows that the people of Sachsenhausen knew exactly what was going on. This is an example of how the Nazis used terror through propaganda to get people to conform to their ideology. Julianne, also told us about this game that the Nazis played on the prisoners. Surrounding the barracks was a section inside the barbed wire fence where if you stepped into it, you were shot. The Nazi officers would take the cap off one of the prisoners and chuck it into the shooting area and told them to "go and get it." If they didn't, they were beaten up, if they did they could be shot but not always. Although this treatment of the opposition, such as the communists and general offenders was terrible, only 40% of the people inside Sachsenhausen were killed. This highlights the fact that this is a concentration camp and not a death camp where thousands of people were gassed.
The book I bought from the book shop at Sachsenhausen
On the Third day of the trip, we visited the memorial to all the murdered Jews that were killed under the Nazi regime in Europe. This memorial for many was a strange one because it didn't seem like this memorial was made with much care and the point of the architect didn't seem to be clear. There were just a bunch of metal blocks placed in equal rows but not of equal height, in a massive square piece of land in the centre of the city. There were some rectangular stones engraved into the ground which some of us accidentally stood on. Toddlers and adults were standing on the tall stones and many teens were taking selfies on them with their friends. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, people were taking selfies at the shooting zone which is obviously disrespectful but when you don't know what a memorial is trying to represent, is it really that disrespectful to stand on top of it? It caused many of us to question.
On the third day, we also saw the Berlin TV Tower on the East side of the city. It was built by the Soviets at the time of the Berlin Wall. When we drove to the area, we saw the comparison between the West and the East in the sense that on the West, the buildings were a lot more fancy and grand whereas in the East, the buildings were a lot more practical and big and cheap-looking. This shows the interesting difference between what was the capitalist west in comparison the the communist east, at the time after Nazi defeat and during the Cold War. It is also ironic that every time the sun shines on the sphere on the TV tower, a cross is formed because of the way it is shaped. This is ironic because the communists were highly against religion. However, despite this, the view from the tower was totally amazing. We could see everything that we visited from the Brandenburg Gate and the Siegessaule. It was totally amazing and definitely a time to take selfies!
On the fourth/last day, we visited the Berlin Olympic Stadium which I took a lot of photos of but sadly can no longer have access to which does kind of annoy me but what can you do? It was epic and grand and amazing to see. From afar, on the outside, the whole structure seemed bigger because it was built on top of a 6 metre high man-made hill to make it seem all the more intimidating. At the time of the Nazis, there wasn't a roof to the stadium but the whole structure was designed in the style of the Roman period by Hitler to promote the strong Aryan race. Nowadays, it has a large glass ringed roof which looks incredibly light because it is only held up by a few stilts and pillars and there is a gap between the wall and the roof. This makes it kind of look like it's floating. Apparently, at night it glows and kind of looks like a ring of fire. I also saw the old swimming pool area which was also built by Hitler just outside of the main stadium. The pool water was green and we were all kind of freaked out but it was still pretty impressive nevetherless.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post even if I didn't have all the photos. It's not the biggest deal that I've lost my phone, I do have a password on my phone and I don't have anything of any importance on my phone but it certainly sucks to have lost it. There are some things that you can't control.
Have you got any more questions on Berlin? I've also visited Alexanderplatz, the Berlin monument, the Roma and Sinti memorial,the German Resistance Museum, and the Hackscher Market so if you've got any further questions on those, please leave them below. I love ♡ hearing from you!
*Special thanks to all the history teachers for bringing everyone involved on an absolutely amazing trip.
*Special thanks to the bus drivers for driving us there and back for 16 hours!
*Thanks for 900 followers on my Instagram, it really means a lot to me that all of you love and support what I do. I am forever grateful!
See you next time,
Bye,
XOX,Juliette
My social media handles:
My Instagram
My YouTube channel
My second blog:
The Book Hub
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