Tweleve: Berlin II

We woke up the next morning around 7:00 and ate a typical German breakfast (which is small and consists mostly of toast with BOTH butter and jam). The first item on our agenda was a bus tour of the city. The problems: not only was the tour in German, but the tour guide put everybody (including the Germans) to sleep. We did get to drive around, though. We saw the zoo and some old churches and ect. Berlin isn't pretty- it was 90% destroyed during the war, and then it was rebuilt in the 50s with very boring architecture. It also "smells funny" according to the group. I loved it. It's the feels more like New York than any other place i've been, but it's different too. Almost no high-rise or skyscraper buildings and the streets weren't as busy, but it had that feeling.

I couldn't tell a difference between east and west, but I'm sure one exists.We got to see where the wall was and we drove past the checkpoint Charlie museum. We stopped at some old Prussian home and saw a pair of churches next to some kind of Museum.

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I don't remember much, as this part of the trip was really boring. There was then another stop at a series of cathedrals:

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We finally stopped in a restaurant- but apparently we (including the Germans) had ordered meatloaf instead of steak. It was really, really bad. Just a hunk of hamburger meat on a plate with some cold noodles. And this was at a fancy restaurant. I ended up eating part of Mia's vegetables (she got a plate of fried vegetables, as she's a vegetarian).

Finally, we headed off to the Jewish Museum. I was looking forward to this, as I had seen some of Max's pictures from when he went. I wasn't disappointed. This was the single best designed building I've been in. It made you FEEL. At first, we went downstairs into a series of hallways, except both the floor and the cieling weren't level. Maybe the walls weren't too. There were little exhibits with stories recessed into the walls, but they were set up so that you could only see black unless you were right in front of them. Above were names of cities. After following the cities for a while, we took a turn and the names turned to concentration camps. The hallway got very small, and then came to an abrupt halt with a single black door. Inside was a small concrete room that was maybe fifty feet tall. There was a latter just out of reach and a small window high up in one corner. As we walked toward the light, the room became darker (we weren't directly in the beam anymore). Then, turning around, we could see the shadow of the ladder was just in an arm's reach. Only the shadow.

We quietly left the room and headed back out into the hallway. We walked back and took a right turn down another hall that had the names of cities on the walls. It led to the garden of exile- which was outside and had a slanted square base with an organized forest of concrete pillars. It made you DIZZY to walk through. Then, on the other side, we could see the outside and some high-rise buildings, but we couldn't reach them because there was a ditch and a hedge on the other side. Very cool.

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We then left and went to the museum proper. I wish I had a couple of hours here and a tripod- there was a lot of cool information. We learned about the Torah, Kosher foods, and Circumcision on our tour, which was focused on Jewish Traditions.

Finally, we came to this room:

Every time you walked on one, it made a quiet "clink" noise. One of the most creepy things I've ever seen.

The tour was finished around 4:00, and we got back on the bus for the long ride back.

Somehow I screwed up the photo upload. I might just link from Flickr from now on.

Robert