BERLIN

Starting to write about our time in Berlin is both exciting and scary - exciting in that I am looking forward to recalling our fabulous 8 days there and all the interesting things we saw and learnt about, but scary because it is going to take me forever!!

After missing one of our connecting trains during the 4-hour trip from Hamburg, we arrived in Berlin a little later than we anticipated.  The Berlin Hauptbahnhof was one of the largest and impressively designed train stations that we have seen this year, and we have seen a lot!!

Our hostel was on a main intersection, the Rosenthaler Platz, a few km's to the east of the Hauptbahnhof.  It was a huge building, easily the largest hostel we have stayed in so far, and the facilities were absolutely fantastic, pretty good for 18 euro each a night!

We had a pretty rough sleep that night with a room full of drunken snorers, so the next morning Anna went down and sweet talked us into another room which was just so much better.  Apart from going from fat drunken snorers to some really nice people, we also went from top bunks to bottom bunks and also the wifi internet worked in our room as well, perfect!

with so much construction going on in Berlin, there are heaps of external pipes which I think look really cool

The next morning we got down to Pariser Platz, which is not only where the Brandenburg Gate is, but also where the majority of the walking tours start from.

made some new friends in front of the Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate is a pretty impressive monument, but it had a more powerful impact on us once we got close to it and learnt about its history.
The symbol of Berlin was originally erected in the 1730's to represent peace, but in 1806 Napoleon took the Quadriga (the chariot drawn by four horses, driven by Victoria, the Roman Goddess of Victory) back to Paris when he conquered the city.
After Napoleon's defeat in 1814, the Quadriga was restored to Berlin and it is said that Victoria's head was slightly tilted to the left so that she was staring down onto the French Embassy hah!

The gate somehow survived WW2, even though everything around it was demolished.  When the Berlin Wall went up, the gate was left in the death strip (there were actually two walls separating East & West and the death strip was in the middle) - the city's symbol was stranded where people from both sides could see it, but not touch it.

Hotel Adlon, where Michael Jackson famously dangled his baby out of the window

Our tour started smack bang on 11am and we set off through the Brandenburg Gate to the east.  Luckily it is 2012 and we were allowed to proceed because from 1814 to 1919, only the Royal family were allowed to pass through the main arch.

Just on the other side of the gate, we could see the line of stones that took a right angle turn in the middle of the road.  This line follows the exact path of the infamous Berlin Wall which we were to learn heaps about over the next few days.

Our first stop was the inspiring Holocaust memorial which covers a whole block of over 19,000m sq.  It consists of a field of 2,711 blocks or 'stelae' of varying height (in fact not one block is the same size) that gradually get higher as you walk in.

The memorial has proved highly controversial in Berlin, partly because it takes up a huge amount of prime development land and partly because it doesn't seem to represent anything in particular.  Architect Peter Eisenman has never explained what the blocks are supposed to represent, but the feelings of claustrophobia and intimidation as you walk further in seemed pretty appropriate.

We walked around the site for about 5-10mins and then met our guide at the other side to discuss how it made us felt.  The overwhelming response from everyone was that it gave you a real feeling of uneasiness, so I guess Eisenman achieved the desired outcome.

Not more than 250m away we stopped in a random car park and the guide asked us if we knew why we had stopped in this most boring of locations.  Well it turned out that it was not so boring, in fact we were standing directly above Hitlers bunker and the exact spot where he committed suicide and then had his body burnt beyond recognition.

We all took turns in venting our frustration at the grave of the most horrible man to ever walk the face of the earth (??).  Some people chose to not even acknowledge it (which is why there is a measly car park and no monument), whilst others jumped and stomped up and down and kicked and swore and anything else that seemed offensive at the time.

Next we learnt about how badly Berlin was destroyed during WW2.  Almost 80% of the whole city was completed wiped out, which would explain why there aren't many examples of fine architecture around.  We stopped at one building that was as boring as they come, just one big block of concrete really, and we were told that this was one of only two Nazi buildings to survive the war.

What I found totally hilarious is that this building now houses the German Tax Office hah!

adding a lighter tone to the day after all the Nazi talk was Anna's excitement at seeing her favourite Italian car!

In a symbolic act of major significance, on 10 May 1933, upwards of 30,000 volumes of "un-German" books were burned in meetings around Germany and Austria.  In Berlin, some 40,000 people gathered in the Bebelplatz to hear Joseph Goebbels (one of Hitler's closest associates) deliver a fiery address and watch almost 20,000 books go up in flames.

These book burnings were a campaign conducted by the authorities of Nazi Germany to ceremonially burn books in Germany and Austria by classical liberal, anarchist, pacifist, communist, Jewish and other authors whose writings were viewed as subversive or whose ideologies undermined the National Socialist administration.

It was just one interesting story after another as we stopped at Bebelplatz to checkout the small monument in memory of this infamous night.  The monument is a really clever one; it consists of a glass plate set into the cobbles, giving a view of an empty bookcase which is able to hold upto 20,000 books, the same number that were burned.  Furthermore, a line is engraved, stating "Das war ein vorspiel nor wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" - Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people."

students at Humboldt University hold a book sale in the square every year to mark the anniversary

The nearby "Neue Wache" (New Guard House) has been reclassified as the "Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny" and inside it contains an enlarged version of Kathe Kollwitz's sculpture 'Mother with her Dead Son'.

This sculpture lies smack bang in the middle of the room and is therefore directly under the skylight.  It is exposed to the rain, snow and the cold of the Berlin climate, symbolising the suffering of civilians during the world war's.  It was a fairly moving place, but even more so when we were told that the sculptor had lost her son in WW1 and her grand son and husband in WW2!

As we learned towards the end of the tour, some East Berliners pine for the old communist days, with the most obvious symbol of this nostalgia for East Germany being the Ampelman.  Not only can this jaunty little fella be seen at almost every traffic light in the East(whether green or red), he also has restaurants and souvenir shops based on him.

pretty cool I think!

the green man is a much more popular symbol than the red man

The tour finished with our guide giving us the usual spiel about how they do these tours for free, "but of course if you feel like I did a good job, I am more than happy to accept tips etc. etc.".  Usually we give 5-10 euro depending on how good the tour was and how many people are in the group.  Although it was a really great tour, there were almost 40 people in the group which is absolutely massive, so we thought 5 euro each was more than sufficient.  If everyone gave him 5 euro that would be 200 euro for 3-4 hours work.  Not bad for walking around the city talking about something you're passionate about!

We got back to the hostel around 5pm, which gave me enough time to get changed and head off to Crossfit.  I had to run about 3km to the north, crossing a prominent section of the old Berlin Wall along the way, and my first taste of Berlin's famous street art.

The guys at 'Crossfit Werk' were so nice and welcoming, not that I wasn't expecting it, but god they were super friendly. Everyone shook hands and did the old one-two kiss when they arrived, it was a real little community, just like it is at Crossfit Stkilda, it was great.  I didn't think it was so great by the end when I trudged out all sweaty and sore and still had to run 3km back home, but it was well worth it!

That night Anna and I were pretty keen for some proper German food after having a quick pasta and pizza the night before.  We asked the girls at reception to recommend somewhere and next thing we knew we were on the metro travelling about 15-mins out to the trendy suburb of Friedrichshain.

I had some great local beer, whilst Anna had some interesting red wine, and we both went for the chicken schnitzel that had been crumbed with corn flakes.  It was bloody delicious!

the side portion of bread was a ridiculous size!

The next morning we were up nice and early and ready for a big day.  Our first stop was the much talked about 'Checkpoint Charlie', which in the end was really a bit of a crappy Americanised tourist destination.

Checkpoint Charlie was the name given by the Western Allies to the single Berlin Wall crossing point for foreigners and members of the Allied forces between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.  The name Charlie came from the letter C in the phonetic alphabet.  

It was interesting to talk to Grandmother about 3 weeks later and find out that her and Grandpa had actually travelled to Berlin during the Wall days.  Although they stayed in the West, they had ventured into the East to check out some museums, and to do this they had to pass through Checkpoint Charlie.  She said it was a pretty daunting experience as the guards checked their papers and ran bomb-detecting devices all over them and their car, it was fascinating to hear that after we had just been there and read all about it.

The Cold War was a sustained state of political and military tension between the powers of the Western world, led by the US and its allies, and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union and its allies.  This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers of the world.

The Cold War was so named as it never featured any direct military action, since both sides possessed nuclear weapons, and because their use would have almost guaranteed complete destruction on both sides.  The conflict was instead expresses through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, massive propaganda campaigns, nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the space race.

a map showing the different controlled zones of Berlin

After the end of WW2, despite Berlin's location fully within the Soviet zone, it was divided into four sectors (the Allied powers consisting of the US, UK and France and the Soviet Union).  Within 2 years, political divisions increased between the Allies and the Soviet Union and this started a massive emigration of East Germans into West Germany and even further into other Western European countries.  

With the closing of the inner German border officially in 1952, the border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible because it was administered by all 4 occupying powers.  Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West.  The Berlin sector border was essentially a loophole through which 'Eastern bloc' citizens could still escape.  The 3.5 million East Germans who had left by 1961 totalled approximately 20% of the entire East German population!

By 1961, the 'brain drain' of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the German communist frontier was imperative.

On Saturday 12th August, 1961, leaders of the German Democratic Republic (GDR - East germany) signed an order to close the border and erect a wall.  At midnight, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border and by the next morning, the border with West Berlin was closed.  East German troops began to tear up streets running alongside the border to make them impassable to most vehicles and to install barbed wire and fences along the 156km route that went around the 3 western sectors and the 43km that divided West and East Berlin.

With the closing of the East-West sector boundary in Berlin, the vast majority of East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate to West Germany.  Many families were split, while East Berliners employed in the West were cut off from their jobs.  West Berlin became an isolated exclave in a hostile land.

an old photo looking from the American sector in the West, through to the East

Although Checkpoint Charlie itself was a bit of a letdown, there was a free open-air museum right next to it that contained many interesting photos and maps and information, so it was definitely worth a visit.

We then headed back to the Holocaust memorial site because there was a museum underground offering an exhibition on the Nazi terror in Europe.

the faces of 6 different Jews representing the roughly 6,000,000 Jews that were killed during the Holocaust

The exhibition included some really dramatic things including a whole room full of large-scale diary entries, letters and last notes that were written during the Holocaust, many of which had been thrown out of train windows that were headed for the concentration camps.

It had been a huge morning with a lot of information going in one ear and the our brains trying desperately hard to stop it from going out the other, but the day was far from over!  We grabbed a quick lunch and coffee and then headed off to the meeting point for the 'Red Berlin - secrets of the Communist Capital' tour.

First stop was the 'Tranenplast' (Palace of Tears) which was the former border crossing station at the Berlin Friedrichstrasse station.  The expression Tranenplast derives from the tearful goodbyes that took place in front of the building, where western visitors of the divided city had to say farewell to their East German relatives that were not permitted to travel to the Western part of Berlin.

Since September 2011, a permanent exhibition has been open to the public, free of charge.  It aims to remind visitors of the consequences and daily restrictions due to the German separation.  It was a super museum with original artefacts, documents, photographs, audio recordings and my favourite were the video recordings showing live footage of both tense times during the period of the Wall and also the night when it finally got pulled down in 1989.

It was then off to the Nordbahnhof railway station, which has display panels showing how the Wall was extended to underground railway tunnels and it seriously looked like it hadn't been refurbished in 100 years.

As the operating line connected northern and southern areas of West Berlin, the line continued even through it went through East Berlin as well.  Between the day the Wall went up, to September 1990, trains did not stop at the station, turning it into a barely lit ghost station.  Time basically stood still here for almost 30 years and the original signs with the Nazi style font are still on display.

Walking out of the station, were were on Bernauer Strasse which has become an open-air museum, known as the Mauerpark (Mauer is German for wall).  Large parts of the original Wall remain standing here and it was staggering to read stories about communities being divided and there were also some excellent tales of escape attempts as well.

photo's of those who lost their lives trying to flee East Berlin

In June 1962 a parallel fence about 100m further into East German territory was built.  The houses contained between the fences were demolished and the inhabitants relocated, thus establishing what became known as the Death Strip.  This strip was covered with raked sand or gravel, rendering footprints easy to notice, easing the detection of trespassers.  It offered no cover, and importantly for the  guards, it offered clear fields of fire.

The 'Grenzmauer 75' was the fourth generation wall and most sophisticated.  Begun in 1975 and completed in 1980, it was constructed from 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6m high and 1.2m wide.  The concrete provisions added to this version of the wall were done so to prevent escapees from driving their cars through the barricades.  The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult to scale, and they even obtained the services of elite athletes to see if they could make it over!  All of this, along with around 120 watchtowers, made escape near impossible.

view of both walls and the death strip from an elevated position

looking at the wall from the West side

a third wall was constructed inside the death strip to make life even harder for would be escapees

Despite the various security measures enfaced, escape attempts were commonplace, especially in the years immediately following the erection of the wall.  Climbing was the obvious way to go and some 5,000 were said to have reached the other side.  However, in its 30 year history, almost 200 people were shot dead, most famously the 18 year-old Peter Fetcher, who, after he was hit in the hip, was left to bleed to death in no-man's land as the world's media watched on.

As security tightened, more creative escape plans became the order of the day.  Tunnels and jumping from bordering buildings were two more successful ways of getting to the West, however the Wetzel and Strizyck families escaped in true style, floating to salvation in a hot air balloon which they had fashioned from hundreds of small pieces of nylon cloth (after which it became almost impossible to buy cloth in the East!).  Rivalling them for the coveted prize of brave escapes, is the unnamed citizen who drove up to the checkpoint barrier and, winding down the roof of his convertible at the last minute, slipped underneath!  Needless to say that a lower barrier was subsequently installed.

Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard to flee to the West and this picture of him escaping has become an iconic image of the Cold War era.   

The date on which the Wall fell is considered to have been 9 November 1989, but the Wall in its entirety was not torn down immediately.  Starting that evening and in the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers and other types of hammers and chisels to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process and creating several unofficial border crossings.  These people were nicknamed "Mauerspechte" (wall woodpeckers).

Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin party boss at the time, will be forever known as the guy who accidentally led to the fall of the Wall.  He improvised a slightly mistaken answer to a press conference question, raising popular expectations so rapidly that massive crowds gathered the same night at the Berlin Wall, forcing its opening after 28 years!

Party Time! Berliners celebrate their freedom.

The tour finished at the start of the East Side Gallery in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg area and from here Anna and I walked along the 1.3km section of the Berlin Wall to check out some of the interesting artwork.

The ESG is an international memorial for freedom and documents the time of change and expresses the euphoria and great hopes for a better and free future for all people of the world.  It is possibly the largest and longest-lasting open-air gallery in the world.

the "fraternal kiss", probably the most famous of all ESG paintings

Painted in 1990 on the east side of the Berlin Wall, the gallery consists of 105 painting by artists from all over the world and although some of them were pretty cool, to be honest, we were a bit let-down by the quality of the actual artwork on display.

my favourite one!

etching our names into history!

What a massive day it had been!  We literally fell into the metro and made it home around 6pm, just long enough for us to have a brief lie-down before we showered and headed off to meet Lachie and Hannah (funny similarity to Lachie and Anna haha) who we had met in San Sebastian way back in July.

We had remembered that L & H had planned to live in Berlin, so it was great to be able to catch up with some of the friendliest people we have met along our way.  We met them back in Friedrichshain and had had a great meal and a few beers at a Thai place and then went out for a few more beers at their local bar, which was actually directly underneath their apartment!

Although not too boozy, we had a great night, it was great to catch up with some friendly faces and pick their brains about the best things to do in Berlin.

Next morning I woke with a little hangover, which was pretty pathetic considering I had only had about 5-6 pints the previous night - I'm getting old!!

Anna and I decided to split up for the day as she wanted to do some shopping and I was super keen on doing the 'Alternative Berlin - Street art workshop' tour.

The 2 part tour started off in the back streets of Berlin as we discovered some of the latest and greatest examples of street art, graffiti and mural art in what is described as the ultimate mecca of the urban art world.

One of my favourite "paste ups" is Little Lucy, a popular Czech cartoon in which she plays with her pet cat.  In this series however, the artist has portrayed Lucy in different scenarios where she is killing her cat.  Above you can see her slicing it on the kebab machine haha 

the newest fad in street art is to cover poles and posts with giant knitted socks hah! 

Our tour guide was a graffiti artist himself, so he was able to give us a great insight into some of the best stencil art, throw ups, mural art, paste ups, tagging, ad busting, heaven spots, burners and installations, whilst also teaching us about the actual guys who were behind the art and what their motivations are.

We were taken to an old abandoned train yard near the Warschauer Srasse station in the Kreuzberg area, which was really interesting.  Completely run down with smashed windows, old furniture and heaps of graffiti, it really gave you the feeling that you were in Eastern Europe (even though we were actually in Central or Western Europe haha).

The tour guide told us about a new phase of street art that is taking not only Berlin by storm, but the rest of the world as well - stickers - and not just any stickers, but more specifically stickers where you can write your own "tag" or name on them.  He gave us a few and let us give it a shot, it was kinda fun haha.

One of the most impressive pieces of art we were shown was part of a series where the whole wall is painted with white paint and then the artist has chipped away at the brick with a chisel to reveal the portrait of a prominent local, in the case below, one of Kreuzberg's favourite grocers.  Pretty impressive!

this one was my favourite, pretty clever how the artist has used the doorway to his advantage, rather than an obstacle

The 2nd part of the tour was back at the warehouse of the tour company where we learnt about the art of stencilling.  We had to choose our favourite character and then painfully start cutting out the black bits with a stanley knife, it was a bloody hard process!

I couldn't go past Mario!

Once the figure was cut out properly, we then got taught about a variety of methods that can be used to achieve the desired outcome.  In typical me fashion, I couldn't decide on which colours I wanted and I ended up spraying about 4 or 5 layers of different coloured spray paint before I stopped on bright pink. The problem was I then had to wait for it to dry which took forever, it was so boring, literally like watching paint dry hah!

In the end I just gave up and created some crappy thing just so that I could say I did it.  The whole thing was really pretty stupid, I would have much preferred to be out in the streets looking at more interesting street art stuff.

Back at our hostel around 5pm, Anna was already home and unusually (haha) having a rest.  I was a little peckish and couldn't wait until dinner time, so I went around the corner to try a currywurst which we had heard so much about.
This quickly-made dish of German origin consisted of steamed, then fried pork sausage cut into slices and seasoned with warm curry ketchup.  This sauce of tomato paste blended with generous amounts of curry powder was pretty horrible and it was indeed the first and only time that I subjected my internal organs to this filthy creation.

That night we again caught up with Lachie and Hannah and this time they came to our neck of the woods.  We went to such an awesome wine bar that they had previously been to.  Awesome not just because it was just a really cool bar, but super awesome because you paid 2 euro for a glass and could then fill it up as many times as you wanted with white, red, rose or champagne.  Then at the end of your session, you paid them for what you thought your drinks were worth.

From memory we had about 10-11 glasses between us and I think we paid 15 euro, pretty damn good value if you ask me!!

We then came across a dumpling restaurant and even though we had Thai food the night before, it had been so long since we had tasted these beautiful chinese sensations that we couldn't resist.  They were quite expensive when compared to Berlin standards, but all in all it was an awesome meal and throw in a few beers I think we still only paid about 15 euro each.  We went out for more drinks after dinner, but come about 1am we all died in the arse and called it a night.

Next morning Anna and I were back at the Holocaust memorial site and accompanying underground museum as we didn't have time to see the whole thing the day before.  We also visited the 'Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism' which was just across the road.

From here we went off to the start of the Berliner Unterwelten tour.  Behind locked doors and down a long flight of stairs to almost 25m underground was a network of nuclear shelters, emergency infirmaries and grim-looking dorms.

Berlin was the nerve centre of Nazi Germany and therefore one of the main targets for allied bombing during WW2.  This tour lead us through one of the few remaining bunkers, as it was left after the war.  We learnt about the life of the average Berlin citizen during the air-raids that destroyed 80% of the city's centre.

It was here that we were also told about some more interesting Nazi stories that probably aren't told on the mainstream tours.  One was that Hitler would reward women who gave birth to children during his time of reign because he saw them as future soldiers of his ghastly outfit.  The more children the woman bore, the higher her reward was.  My favourite story though was about the jokes that Berlin citizens used to tell each other down in the bunkers, the best one being that Berlin was called the "city of wherehouses" - because when people emerged from the bunkers they would invariably have to say "where have all the houses gone?"

It was confusing to see signs saying room for 28 people when they looked like they could hold at least double that, but we were told that the underground rooms were so air tight that if people were stuck down there for long periods of time during an air-raid, they needed ample oxygen to get them through the ordeal.

Travelling through the twisting passages and rooms, we got to see countless artefacts from the war that had been buried for decades.  My favourite was this Nazi tie because to me it signified that one of these pricks had most probably met his timely death.

Berlin seems destined to be under construction for eternity as it continues to rebuild from the war

The rest of our afternoon was dedicated to the Topography of Terror, an outdoor museum on the site of the buildings that housed the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era.

The focus of the exhibition is on the central institutions of the SS and the police in the "Third Reich" as well as the crimes they perpetrated throughout Europe.

It was by far the most interesting and informative of all the sites we visited in Berlin that focused on the Nazi occupation.  The information was precise and to the point, going you a great overview from when Hitler first came to power in around 1933 right up until the trial of major war criminals in Nuremburg.  Although sometimes quite graphic, the photo's were the real highlight as they really made the whole atrocity come to life.

Hitler's appointment as Reich chancellor ushered in the separation of powers, basic rights and freedom of the press.  The National Socialists announced the advent of a new order, the 'Third Reich" and SS men were appointed auxiliary police officers and encouraged to use firearms.  Numerous SS meeting places became centres of torture, where the Nazi party's political opponents were held and maltreated.  Nazi terror unfolded in the public eye to spread paralysing fear, however many contemporaries had failed to foresee the extent of violence that would lead to the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, while others shared Hitler's political aims or expected his success to be short-lived.

Within a few months, parties, trade unions and associations had been crushed and banned and the federal states brought into line.  The SS and the "Gestapo" became pillars of the new unitary Nazi state.

There were so many photo's which showed Hitler as a much loved, almost worshipped person by the German public.  I don't know whether this was because they truly loved him, or because they were scared of him, but it was sickening!

Hitler as a guest of honour at a gymnastics and sports festival in 1938

I loved this photo of everyone in the crowd giving the Nazi salute, but there is one outcast who refuses to do so.  He was probably later killed, but good on him!

2 German women accused of intimate contacts with prisoners of war were publicly humiliated by members of the SS. 

After their heads were shorn they were led on a pillory march through the town.  The signs around their knocks read "I was expelled from the Volk community because I consorted with prisoners of war"

Heinrich Himmler at his desk in the SS State Police Office in 1936

One nasty bastard that featured heavily throughout the museum, in fact almost more than Hitler himself, was Heinrich Himmler.  He was a military commander and a leading member of the Nazi Party.  Hitler appointed him 'Reichsfuher' of the SS which saw him become one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the personals directly responsible for the Holocaust.

As facilitator and overseer of almost all the extermination and concentration camps, Himmler directed the killing of some 6 million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people and many other victims.  The total number of civilians killed by the Nazi regime is estimated at 11 to 14 million people, holy fuck.

There were so many photo's of this guy that he seemed to be a lot more present than Hitler and by the end of our time at the Topography of Terror, I think we hated him more than Hitler.

Notice posted on a shop windows in Munich 1933.  The notice reads - "Store closed by police due to price gouging.  Storekeeper is in protective custody in Dachau.  The Political Police Commander of Bavaria.  Signed, Himmler."

The stories of blatant attempts to scare the public were horrible.  Himmler had over 200 wholesalers and retailers taken into "protective custody" (with many of them later killed) by the political police in Munich for allegedly charging inflated prices for butter.  This guy was a serious prick, it makes me so mad.

Illustration showing the patches for protective custody prisoners in the concentration camps.  From 1938 onwards, prisoners in all the concentration camps were categorised according to their reason for detention and their "race".

These photo's, although not graphic, were disgusting.  They showed SS men and women from Auschwitz concentration camp at the SS retreat in the idyllic mountain landscape of the Sola Valley.

The photo below shows Richard Baer on the far left, commandant of the main camp at Auschwitz, and on his right is Dr. Josef Mengele, who as camp doctor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, was responsible for categorising Jews and "Gypsies" as they arrived on the trains.  He basically sent them one way to forced labour, or the other way straight to the gas chambers or for medical experiments.

this photo was taken just after another mass murder at the SS retreat near Auschwirz in 1944

Of course it was not just the Jews who were targeted by the Nazi's, the homosexuals were as well.  Nazi party ideologues stirred up hatred against them for refusing to reproduce, thus rendering themselves useless for the project of strengthening the German family.

In October 1939, Hitler ordered the murders of disabled people in a letter of authorisation.  This program of murder was referred to as "euthanasia".  By using this term, the Nazi leadership sought to arouse the impression that the incurably ill were being put out of their misery on compassionate grounds.  the sole aim of the murders of patients, however, was to rid society of individuals incapable of working, who were referred to as "useless eaters".

photo's of homosexual's shot and left to be cleaned up by prisoners

The photo above shows Heinrich Himmler (front left) inspecting the Wehrmacht transit camp for prisoners of war and civilians in Minsk in August 1941.  At times 40,000 male civilian prisoners, jews and non-Jews, and up to 100,000 prisoners of war were crowded into the camp under catastrophic conditions.  That same day, Himmler participated as a spectator in the mass shooting of Jews outside Minsk.

a Jewish prisoner of war identified by the "yellow star" of David

Public humiliation of a woman who had been taken into "protective custody" by the Gestapo because she was accused of intimate contact with a Polish man.  Under Himmler's orders in January 1940, her head was shorn and she was led as a criminal through the city "as a warning to all women and girls who forget their duties".

the public execution of 11 "foreign labourers" of various nationalities was intended as a deterrent

One prisoner was too tall and his feet actually touched the ground.  You can see one officer holding his feet off the ground to effect his death.  Horrible photo.

as an act of public humiliation, Gestapo men sheer the heard of an arrested Jew in Warsaw 1939

shocking photo, I hate to think what is going through this poor  guy's head

the Nazi's were so hell bent on publicising their atrocities, sicko's

Reich SS Leader and Chief of the German Police Heinrich Himmler and the Chief of the Reich Security Main Office, Reinhard Heydrich.  Both on the cover of the US news magazine Time in 1943 and 1942 respectively.

Although there were many a shocking photo such as the one above, there was one photo that I particularly took great pleasure in looking at for a good 5 minutes, the death of Heinrich Himmler.  

Himmler was dismissed as Reich Minister in May 1945 by Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, whom Hitler had designated as his successor.  He fled with false papers a few days later, but was arrested on May 21 at a bridge checkpoint and subsequently passed through several British POW camps before his true identity was discovered.  Faced with an imminent body search, he bit down on a cyanide capsule concealed in his mouth at the last minute.  Suffer in your jocks you piece of manure.

index cards from RSHA investigation card files kept by the police

Towards the end of the exhibition, it was quite horrible and painful to read about how many Nazi members went unpunished.

Initially members of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) were tried by Allied courts in Germany after 1945 in the Nuremburg Major War Criminals Trial.  15 death sentences as well as 2 life sentences and 5 several years' imprisonments were handed out, however many of those sentenced were pardoned in the 1950's.  It was only in 1963 that the chief public prosecutor in Berlin began to systematically carry out investigations against former members of the RSHA.  Personal data of around 7,000 employees of the RSHA was collected, yet charges were only brought against 16 RSHA members in four trials.

Outside the Topography of Terrors museum was a separate exhibition containing more information, this time predominantly about Hitler himself.  The photo below is of a young Hitler in 1923.

Austrain-born Hitler became chairman of the Nazi Party in 1921.  In November 1923 he made a failed attempt to topple the Bavarian government and was subsequently imprisoned and the party banned.  After an early release in 1925, he refunded the Nazi Party and built it into a mass organisation.  In 1932 he received German citizenship and after being appointed Reich chancellor in 1933, he began to install the most horrible of dictatorships, as mentioned above.  He committed suicide on 30 April 1945.

massive gathering to commemorate Hitler's receival of German citizenship

Hitler addressing thousands of his followers at one of Berlin's main airfields

A prayer for Adolf Hitler based on "Our Father", printed in an exercise book for the first primary school class - can you believe it??!!

Hitler's 50th birthday was declared a national holiday and celebrated with enormous extravagance

Hitler in the Kroll Opera House, 1 September 1939.  He announces the beginning of the war with the words, "We have been shooting back since 5:45am." 

Anna's first curry wurst experience.  I think she enjoyed it a little more than I did.

It had been another really long day and we both couldn't wait to get home to put our feet up.  It wasn't long however, before I was getting thirsty, so I popped down stairs to have a few beers with a couple of randoms.  Those few beers turned into a few more and before I knew it, we were in the downstairs bar choosing which songs to sing for Saturday Karaoke night haha.

Anna came down and joined in for a while, we had a bite to eat from the nearby take-away pasta joint (which was really tasty) and then I was back downstairs with my new mate Joe from America to tackle the microphone.

Plenty of beers later and a couple of Karaoke songs down, including Piano Man by Billy Joel and Paradise City by Guns n' Roses, and I was well and truly cooked and trying to decided what to do with the rest of the night.  It was close to 2am and they way I recall it is that Joe and a few others were going to some huge nightclub, so it was either go with them or go to bed.  I mustn't have been that drunk because I obviously had the common sense to call it a night rather than ruin my bank account and the next day!

Sunday took a bit of a different tone to the previous few days.  We had done a serious amount of cultural activities, that we decided to chill for the day and recharge our batteries.  We had a great breakfast at the cafe where Hannah works in Friedrichshain, which was perfect because the Boxhagener market was on just around the corner.

Somehow Hanna's shift had been double booked and didn't have to work after all so she joined us for a stroll around the market stalls which circumnavigated the actual Boxhagener Platz.  The square attracted an interesting and broad mix off people; families, students, punks, buskers and hipsters all congregated around to drink coffee or beers, lounge in the grass, or do a bit of shopping.

The flea market had a surprisingly versatile selection of stalls from antique dealers selling old shit, young creatives selling weird shit, gypsies selling general shit and the odd stall that was selling some pretty cool stuff, but not quite as cheap as we were expecting.

the coolest dog in Berlin

We then said goodbye to Hannah as she went back home and we headed off to the more famous and popular Mauerpark Market.  We had heard multiple opinions about this market that is known by absolutely everyone.  It is either hated by those who think it's overcrowded, expensive and commercial and loved by those who love the chilled atmosphere with great stylish things to buy.

I think by the end of it we were somewhere in the middle.  It was definitely worth a visit, but it wouldn't be something we would frequent every Sunday if we lived in Berlin.  I did manage to score a beanie for 2 euro though, so it wasn't all bad!

Something that we would go to literally every Sunday afternoon though would be the bearpit karaoke, located right next door to the market in a small old school amphitheatre.

Every Sunday afternoon - weather permitting - Irish bike messenger Joe Hatchiban rocks up to the amphitheatre in the Mauerpark with his karaoke equipment.  A thousand or so people then cram themselves around to cheer on brave amateur singers.

The quality of singing isn't a priority, but passion and a willingness to shamelessly entertain are rewarded with the biggest cheers, as was the case with local funny guy Martin!

Next up was an old guy who is supposedly a weekly regular, singing the same song every week (My Way by Frank Sinatra).  He was pretty shocking, but it was still funny and entertaining.  At one stage I thought he was going to have a heart attack, luckily there happened to be an ambulance passing at that very moment just in case.

Without a doubt the best performance of the evening went to a bird from New York who got up with so much gusto and energy and proceeded to pull off the most amazing rendition of Sir Mix-a-Lot's 'I like big butts' word for word, it was absolutely amazing and the crowd went bonkers!

people in the crowd were literally jumping over each other to give Joe a tip, he must make a small fortune! 

There was such an amazing vibe around the place, it was like everyone had the same goal in mind; just to have fun.  No one got booed or criticised for being shit, it was just all embraced.  Anna and I both remarked how cool it would be to have something like this in Melbourne, but then both realised it wouldn't work because they are just too many dickheads around that would spoil it.

The final highlight of the evening went to the big fat bloke from the UK who got up and started dancing around like a woman as this weird music started playing.  I had no idea what the song was until about 2-minutes in of dancing when I realised it was Donna Summer's 'I feel love'.  Hahah it was absolutely hilarious, you couldn't pick a worse song for karaoke, it literally has less than 10 words in the whole song.  Nevertheless I am still laughing about it now as I type over a month later, so I guess he did something right!

beautiful skyline

We got back to the hostel at around 6pm and again had just enough time for a rest before we were back up and joining the 7:30pm night-time tour of Berlin's festival of lights.

Running for the 8th year in a row, the festival lasted 12 days and we were lucky enough to catch the final show on a perfect night.

Berlin was transformed into a magical illuminated city, with a breathtaking array of colours lighting up many monuments around the German Capital.  We had no chance of covering each site, but we were taken to the main ones and I was able to take some really awesome photo's.

The lighting of the Berlin Cathedral took up nearly half an hour of our time as it went through so many different transformations, my camera was going crazy!

The other highlight was the Brandenburg Gate which was lit up like a rainbow.  I don't know how they did it, but it looked wicked.

We met some began Aussie dude from Perth on our tour and he tagged along with us after the tour for a cheap and easy meal and then we all headed back to the hostel, we were knackered!

Up early the next morning, a quick breakfast at the hostel and off to visit the Reichstag building.  It was funny to pass under the Brandenburg Gate which now looked petty boring compared to how it had looks the previous night!

The Reichstag building was constructed to house the parliament of the German Empire.  It was opened in 1894 and housed the Reichstag (parliament) until 1933 when it was severely damaged by a fire that is almost certain to have been started by Hitler as it was this very instance that led to the rise in Nazi power.

The ruined building was made safe again and partially refurbished in the 1960's, but no attempt at full restoration was made until after the German reunification on October 3 1990 when it underwent a reconstruction led by internationally renowned architect Norman Foster.  After its completion in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the German parliament, the modern 'Bundestag'.

The large glass dome at the very top of the Reichstag has a 360-degree view of the surrounding Berlin cityscape.  The main hall of the parliament below can also be seen from inside the dome.  A large sun shield tracks the movement of the sun electronically and blocks direct sunlight which would otherwise dazzle those below.

For all the effort we had to go through to schedule a pre-determined time slot and go through all the security checks etc, it really wasn't worth the effort.  It was interesting to see the inside of the dome, a pretty interesting design, but we both would have loved an extra 2-hours sleep!

East Side / West Side

Berlin TV tower @ Alexanderplatz

We managed to get an hour of shopping in between the tour of the Reichstag building and the Alternative Berlin tour, which was starting at 1pm.

Although quite similar to the street art tour I had done a few days earlier, I was promised that we would hardly cover any of the stories or street art that I had already seen. Apart from Little Lucy of course who was just everywhere.

Little Lucy taking her cat for a snorkel........without the snorkel

cat kebab again

Little Lucy at the cat wash

psssss ssshhhhhhh!

Little Lucy has a present for the kitty, a gun hah

Alana our guide was really cool and had some really interesting stories.  The one about the abandoned theme park has us pondering about whether or not it was too scary to brake in, the huge gang known as the 1up crew that are notorious around town had us second guessing whether to use the metro again and the guy known as "Mr 6" who has managed to paint the number 6 over 650,000 times all over the city had us searching the streets for an old grey haired guy with a paint brush.  The whole afternoon was a lot of fun!

Two important pieces of art that were both paid for by the city of Berlin.  The one on the right is specially important as it relates to East and West Berlin pulling each others masks off to symbolise the reunification of Berlin.

We then crossed the river into the Kreuzberg area which has emerged from its history as one of the poorest quarters in Berlin in the late 1970's, during which it was an isolated section of West Berlin, to one of Berlin's cultural centres in the middle of the now reunified city.

no one knows what this mural is supposed to signify, but it's still pretty cool

A pretty impressive piece of art was the astronaut.  Not so much for the work of art as it looked during the day (although it was still pretty clever), but we were told that at night time the car dealership across the road had a big flagpole that was lit up and it case a flag-like shadow right up through the right hand of the astronaut, hah awesome!

We arrived back at our hostel that early afternoon to one of the most horrible smells of all time.  The older guy (I'm guessing at least 35) in the corner of our dorm-room mustn't have washed his towel for a solid few months (either that or he had a dread body wrapped up in it for a few weeks) because it absolutely stank like nothing has even stank before, it was horrible haha!

Another Aussie bloke by the name of Jock, who we had become friendly with, was sleeping right underneath it and could not handle it anymore so he had written the guy a note and put the towel outside on the balcony.  Too funny, but seriously disgusting.......aahhhhh the hostel life!

I then headed off to Crossfit again for another session and Anna and Jock stayed in the hostel room gasbagging about whatever, and probably blocking their noses.

some of the Crossfit boxes I have been to have had some great things posted up on their walls

That night was Monday night which meant it was free keg night!  We met Jock and a few other people down in the bar for a few free froffies before we headed out to a nearby pub/restaurant that we had been advised served really good Southern German fare.

We were after only one thing........pork knuckle!

Thank goodness it was on the menu and thank goodness it was absolutely delicious!  It was a great way to end our time in Germany.

The next morning we commenced a 4-5hr train ride into the Czech Republic.  These border crossings were getting more and more frequent, which meant we were getting very stressed more frequently, but luck was again on our side and by the afternoon we were checking into our hostel in Prague.