I arrived incredibly parched and sick in Berlin after the trains cafeterria man informed me that no i could not buy a bottle of water unless i could pay with credit card. So after running to the nearest store and drinking a bottle of water in one gulp i bought myself a tram ticket and headed in search of my contiki hotel.
Now what google maps does not tell you is that although it will tell you which tram goes where it will not tell you that in Berlin, there are two trams with the same number, each going opposite ways on the same line... you can probably guess which tram i got on. haha.
luckily enough i had a compassionate tram driver who not only let me stay on the tram while he was servicing it. but in broken english and german managed to deliver me to my hotel after having to chase me down when i got off at the wrong stop haha.
finally! i was at my hotel, i was safe and i was only an hour behind schedual. time to party!!
the first night wasnt to crazy everyone was crowded around the hotel bar meetingand greeting. i instantly loved everyone. what a crazy eclectic bunch of people everyone turned out to be. I arrived back in my hotel room wondering how it could possibly get any better when there unpacking her things was stacey. ahhh her aussie accent was like music to my ears! it was so long since i had heard my 'own language' haha. she and i talked and talked and talked before turning in for the night.
Day one:
Today we awoke early and boarded the contiki bus for the first time. It was also the first time we listened to our contiki song- Dance with somebody. by Mandio Diao. Every morning it was played to us so that in some distant day in the future, when the song came on the radio, we would remember our contiki trip.
After bopping along to our song we quietened on our way to the Sachsenhausen Concerntration camp just outside Berlin. Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945.Today it is a mueseum open to the public and a very powerful reminder of the evils of the history of men.
Entrance to the Camp
Walking through this place was oddly numbing. All i could think of was how many people would have spent their last few days here in this place i was now. There are many information boards with survivors testaments about life in the concertration camps. The most chilling that i read was accounts of people describing the sound that dead bodies make as they are rolled out of the back of a gas chamber truck and into a mass grave. It took a lot of time to walk around on my own here. At any moement i felt like my heart was going to break. I almost lost myself as i stood infront of the hanging posts and the gas chambers.
It literally left me speechless to read about the punishments that were handed out to prisoners- whippings, being suspended by your arms for hour, being strung up by your long hair and the list goes on.
The gasing chamber and the Hanging/ firing range. Most inmates were forced to watch the hangings, you were whipped if you closed your eyes to long.
I departed incredibly sombre and unnaturally cold. I was so thankful for my life that it was as if i had the injustice of the not so lucky jewish peoples weighing on my shoulders... I was very glad to be back on that bus.
It was now close to lunch time and the begginning of our free time. After being dropped back into the city centre i oined a couple of people heading upto the Berlin Tower. The elevator did nothing to help my irrational fear of heights (and stupidly terrorism) but my was the view amazing! It was a bit of a shame that the windows were caked in snow. The same snow which just a few minutes earlier we wereso happy to see falling. But it wasnt so great when you are trying to take photos after waiting half hour to get up the crazy expensive tower haha.
That being said the view was quite incredibly. The architecture from the birds eye view was so incredibly diverse that it seemed to be a random cluster of eras jumbled into one city.
After the tower and a quick bite to eat we made our way towarsd the Brandeburg Gate- the only remaining gate of a series through which Berlin was once entered and the place where a) Hitler would hold his many war parades and b) where the Prussian Kings and Queens used to enter and exit the city through.
Once we managed to escape the many gypsies that harrased us for money we possed for pictures infront of the gate and i managed to hug a giant bear walking around. A lovely and very well to do french couple were so kind as to offer to take group photos for us that when they started crouching on the ground to get good angles for the shots i had to suppress a fit of giggles. It was so refreshing to see a bit of enthusiam and the photos were fantastic quality!
On our way back to the bus we managed to get a few quick photos infront of the German Parliment building which is unfortunately closed until further notice after a recieving a series of terrorist threats. damned terrorism.
Dinner that night was fantastic. i found myself sitting with the boys at the mexican resturant next door to our hotel where i discovered the amazing taste of desperados beer! its beer with tequila essence haha! after the boys departed i shuffeled on over to the girls table for some chit chat, everyone fell in love with the story of how i fell in love with mike haha. the moment was however somewhat runined when the group of boy who had recently departed tapped on the window to show us they had found a place that sells desperado's beer (and their huge smiles at this discovery haha).
But we could not stay and chat forever, we had a walking tour to get to!
The Eye Spy tour took us to a few significant places that focused on the times of communist Berlin, we saw one of the "Dead zones' from the Berlin wall. A Dead zone is the part directly before the wall that was laiden with mines, guard dogs, razor wire, and which dozens of trained men had the guns pointed at. Therefore making escape over the wall impossible.
We did however learn of a sucessful escape under the Berlin wall staged by students as well as how many people became informers on their own families during communist times. You can apparently collect any files on yourself along with the names of who was ratting on you today. Although its proved not to popular as the general rule of thumb seems to be 'forget and remain silent for many topics in Germany'.
following the berlin wall and scavenger hunting through berlin!
Its quite crazy to believe that the Berlin wall only took 6 weeks to complete and that some parts- those that were situated between exisiting buildings went up over night! Today there is a stone path memorial that serves as a marking to where the original wall stood. We followed the trail of the wall to our first pub and then we began our scavenger hunt! After discovering the small clues that led us to a tiny tabacco store in what looked like an abaondend railway i was selected to go in and deliver a secret code word and recieve a newspaper containing directions to the next pub. the word was sauerkraut, and the man just laughed at me and refused haha. we managed to find the pub in the end and after a lot of drinking and fun we headed out clubbing where we danced the night away and ate fresh, hot, salty pretzels from our beloved tour guide Tim.
At 3am we crawled into bed soon to begin day 2....
