A walking tour

Friday, June 7th (or the day I got really hot and stayed that way)

I decided to hit up all the landmarks today. Basically everything famous is in East Berlin and within walking distance from Jocelyn's apartment. I started by walking over to Museum Island to see the Berliner Dom. I said I was going to look up facts, so here are facts. The Berliner Dom is called a cathedral (Dom) but it's not a cathedral. It is actually a Protestant church. The church was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who apparently was good at everything and designed a LOT of things in Berlin. It was finished in 1905. If you've seen my instagram you'll notice it looks much older.

 

The shiny spaceship looking thing you can see in the background is actually only 60 years newer than the church. The shiny spaceship thing is called the tv tower and it was built between 1965 and 1969 when the Russians controlled the east side of Berlin. I haven't gone up it but you can see it from almost everywhere on the east side. You'll turn a corner and go, "oh, there's the tv tower!"

Anyway, I went to the Berliner Dom in the morning. The church looks a lot like a Catholic cathedral inside. Stained glass and statues and an organ. I always love to see the organs in old churches. They remind of the organ in the church I grew up in and also the organ in the conference center in Salt Lake.

You can take the stairs up to the top of the Dom and walk around the outside. The view is pretty amazing. This was when I got hot though. There were so many stairs. It was almost as if they knew how much I dislike stairs because there were lots of landings and at a couple of the levels you had to walk around the inside of the Dom to get to the next stairs. Even still it's a lot of stairs and its not air conditioned. :) Some pictures from the top.

 

 

 

From the Dom I walked through Gendarme Markt and then on down to Brandenburger Tor. The Tor is basically the only building that survived all of the wars in Germany. It was isolated in between West and East Berlin when the wall was up. This part of the city is way touristy. There were people dressed up as all different characters, Darth Vader, Mario brothers, even Mickey Mouse. But he for sure wasn't the real Mickey.

I kept wandering to find the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. I had seen it described in two travel guides but neither one really did it justice. It covers 4 acres (if I remember correctly) and it is impressive. I almost walked past it at first because for one corner the blocks are short, about hip height, and they seem to be flat all the way across the whole thing. But then you walk into it and they start to get taller and it just keeps going forever. Every angle looks different. Even thought the blocks are all the same grey color and approximately the same shape, none of them is exactly the same. I wish I could transport everyone I know to see it. It's beautiful.

 

 

I continued my walking tour to find checkpoint Charlie. On the way I stumbled upon the topographie of terrors. I had read about this in guidebooks too, but it didn't sound like something nice to see. I'm actually glad I found it. There is a portion on the wall still up here, damaged and with holes, but still there. This was my first time seeing the wall. There is an exhibit here, below the wall outside and inside a building, that talks about how Hitler came to power and how the Nazis used propaganda to gain support. It was very informative. It is on the sight where the Nazi SS had their offices. The building you can see behind the wall is the Air Force building. It is huge.

 

I eventually made it to checkpoint Charlie. When Germany was still split into east and west, there were three checkpoints going between the two sides. One at the border where the west and east met, one going into West Berlin from outside the city, and one inside the city between the two sides. They were checkpoint alpha, bravo, and Charlie. There's a little outpost in the middle of the street near where the checkpoint used to be. It's not very exciting, and a lot touristy. I saw checkpoint bravo on my last day it looks much more like you would expect a boarder crossing to look.

I worked my way back to the apartment to meet Jocelyn for a show. We saw a show called Dummy. It was sort of a dance show with some crazy cirque du soleil type acrobatics mixed in. Super fun. There'd were these two boys who did a routine with two tall poles. They were flipping and climbing and sliding down them. At one point there was a dummy they brought out, probably normal guy height, and this kid was doing a gymnatpstics routine on the dummy. Handstands and pommel horse type moves. It was jaw dropping.

This has been the world's longest post, brought to you by Jenn.