Our first morning in Berlin we found a great little cafe right across the street from our hotel, Karaca and headed immediately to the Reichstag, home of parliament. We were able to get tickets to take a tour of the famous dome. This building, much like many buildings in Berlin, is full of history. We spent the morning learning a lot of that history and learning about other parts of the city while overlooking different parts from the roof top.
As we were walking out to walk through other parts of the city, we came across a little known, memorial, the memorial of the murdered members of the Reichstag. The things this city had gone through over the years was hard to comprehend and there were reminders of it around every corner.
As we made our way to our Underground tour , we had the opportunity to walk by the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism. Jews were not the only group that was targeted during the War and Berlin did a great job in helping to remember others that lost their lives at the hands of the Nazi's.
The rain had started to pick up so we hit the Underground tour at the perfect time. Yvonne was our guide and she was phenomenal. We can not speak highly enough about her and the entire company. It was an amazing way to understand what life was like living in bunkers during World War II. We learned who was allowed, who was not allowed and what the living situations were like. It is hard to imagine what must of been going through peoples minds and what their life was truly like.
Yvonne took us into a fallout room and had us all get as comfortable as we could as she walked us through some of the thoughts and fears when an alarm would go off and everyone would be lead into these rooms. The panic and fear set in for all of us quickly. It is an experience I will not soon forget. She did a great job of making us fell and experience the best should could what it was like for the fortunate ones.
When we left the Underground, we were ready for the fresh air, clouds and any weather the outside world had to offer. We headed into the direction for some local fare for lunch and on our way found famous currywurst at Konnopke's Imbiss. I wish I could say I was able to muster up the courage to try it, but I chickened out on this too. But in both cities, from the reaction of Eric, Audrey & Jed, I was glad I passed. (Although, Jed did like the currywurst.)
Thankfully the place we were looking to eat lunch was about a block away and it was great. We tried doner kabobs at Mustafas Gemusekebap.
After lunch it was time to make our way to the Berlin Wall Memorial. I had spent a few months watching documentaries about the wall and I was ready to go see this Memorial. Again, it was another heavy part of this cities history and was difficult to fully grasp and will take awhile to continue to process.
During our walk around the footprint of the wall, we spent time at different memorials to people that had lost their lives trying to get over the wall. We saw the footprint of homes and churches that there cut in half by the wall. We read stories of families that jumped from windows to get to the other side of the wall and we sat in a church that had been placed right by the wall after the original church was destroyed in the making of the wall. It was all very sobering.
After we explored the area for a while, we stopped to regroup and decompress from all we had seen and read at Mauer Cafe. We grabbed a drink and snacks and spent time hanging out in there little courtyard that over looked remnants of the Wall.
We tried to quicken out pace and make it to Museum Island before the museums closed. Audrey was trying to get to one in particular in hopes to get art postcards for a few friends. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the museum before it closed but it was a pretty area and we spent some time walking around and enjoying the beautiful afternoon.
One of the places we wanted to check out in the city was AquaDom in Radisson Blu. They have a huge fish tank in the lobby and we headed over there to see what all the hype was about.
It was impressive and we could have taken an elevator right through the center of the tank but we decided it was a lot more then we wanted to pay for the experience so we decided that admiring it from the lobby was enough for us.
Once we were done checking out the fish and the souvenir shops on the same block, we took off to the Top of Berliner Fernsehturm. The Berliner Fernsehturm use to be a TV tower in the center of town. From the top you realized how large the city was and I couldn't help but sit by a window and think about all this city had been through. Not just once when it was destroyed during World War II but after it was rebuilt how it was devastated again during the Cold World. I thought about the resilience of the people of Berlin. How strong they all must be to choose to stay and rebuild. To continue to fight for their city against great odds and how so much of what this city had gone through was not that long ago. How can you not fall in love with a city like this and a people that have gone through and fought so much?
We headed off to dinner after the Berliner Fernsehturm and we were excited to find a real deal German restaurant, Georgbraeu Brauhaus. This was another home run experience. The food was great, people were super nice and we spend hours just enjoying the evening. We sat in the window table and people watched and talked about all the things we had done that day while planning for the days to come. It was an emotional and at times heavy day but it was great to be experiencing all of this together and having people to talk about all we had seem.
The night was perfect as we headed back home to our hotel for the evening to hit reset for another full day of Berlin in the morning.
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