As I was exploring the city of Berlin and listening to my tour guide tell me hundreds of interesting facts about the history of Germany and more specifically, about Berlin, I realized that Berlin might have been my favorite city and Germany my favorite country.
Just in the past 100 years the history of Germany has changed so much, they have gone through so many different forms of government that it is hard to keep it all straight.
From what I saw and from what I have heard, the city of Berlin is the most hip city in Germany. Full of young people and artists the city seems to never sleep and never become boring.
The picture above seems to be nothing but a starbucks coffee building, which sadly, are all over Europe.
But I was informed that this building used to be the Stasi police head quarters back when the East side of Berlin was communist controlled. We discussed how ironic it was for a group of people who were so against capitalism to now have their old building be taken over with one of the biggest corporations in the world.
The Berlin wall.
I found it funny that the wall that was once built to "protect" East Germany from the rest must now be protected from tourists who try and take pieces of this historical monument.
TV tower.
This memorial located on the ground of one of the main city squares in Berlin was created in memory of the famous book burning that took place during WWII.
The story of the book burning is basically that a few Nazi police went into the university in Berlin and encouraged the students to do their part in cleansing the country. The students then left the classroom and went to their own library and took all of the books written by Jewish authors and burnt them in the square.
Today there is a nonprofit group at the University that stands outside the school every day selling books that were written by the authors of the books that were burnt on that day.
The Holocaust museum in Berlin.
My cute little hostel in Berlin was a cozy place to stay even though my roommate situation caused one of the more awkward moments of my life.
"we discussed how ironic it was for a group of people who were so against capitalism to now have their old building be taken over with one of the biggest corporations." Sounds like a really neat discussion. Berlin has one of the best & largest electronica cultures, sounds like an awesome city. What happened with yr hostel roommate situation?
ReplyDeletei forgot to ask you if i could see any pictures you havent already posted! i think you should keep blogging here. ive really enjoyed reading about your travels and would love to read what you have to say about your trip now that youre back/ your thoughts on being in america again after being away for so long.
ReplyDelete