Berlin!

I had the chance to visit a neutron source, Helmhotlz Zentrum Berlin, along with the Free University, which by the way is free and was established by the US, and an x-ray source, BESSY, in Berlin. It's a city I've always been interested in so I strategically planned the trip for Tuesday/Wednesday allowing me to holiday till Sunday! Chris and I packed up and headed to Germany.

The Wall

The fall of the Soviet Union happened in my lifetime, while I was in high school even, so the Berlin Wall has always been very intriguing to me, and I was hoping to see some of the wall. There are pieces around, but most of it was torn down within days of the fall.

The East Side Gallery is the largest open air gallery in the world. It is 1.3 km of the Berlin wall painted on the East Side with 105 paintings by various artists. It was commissioned in 1990 as a international memorial of freedom.

 

 

 

Potsdamer Platz has historically been a hub for commerce with a large government presence as well dating back to the Prussian Empire. It had Germany's first traffic lights, installed by Siemens. Most of was completely destroyed by the WWII bombings. There is a memorial of the wall located here.

There is also the spectacular Sony Center, and the restoration the the Esplanade, which was a very famous hotel in the 30's having guests such as Charlie Chaplan and Gretta Garbo.

 

Just around the corner from here was the SS/Gestapo headquarters and the last stronghold of the Nazis. What little rubble was left after the bombings, was cleared away by the Soviets. It seems that the Soviets wanted people to remember nothing of their former allegiance and tried to wipe out whatever they could. There is a section of wall that borders this area and some plaques to show which Nazi buildings were where.

 

I learned that there were actually two walls side by side with a gap large enough for the Soviets to patrol. Something like 100 people were shot on sight after having been found between the two walls.

Checkpoint Charlie is a few blocks away from here. There were some guys dressed like US soldiers taking money from tourists to have their picture made. Seems like we could put real soldiers there and make a fortune!

Notice the McDonald's in the picture. How appropriate!

I was torn about standing in front of the wall and taking a picture as I smiled. Seemed somehow inappropriate. In the end we decided that a pic by the art installation would be ok. So we took this pic that looked so cheesy and staged we redeemed it with a normal one.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy