The elevator doors opened, and we shambled out into the bright early morning light. With Franz and Helga—and fatigue—weighing us down, we found ourselves in the middle of an overgrown field with some crumbling structures near by.

Hmmm. That’s a weird first look at Berlin.

To get to Berlin from Munich, we did something kind of weird and crazy for us—we took an overnight train. It was kind of ridiculous, being on a train for 11 hours and making ourselves sleep on it, when the express train covers that distance in just a couple hours. However, it was something like 100 euro total for the two of us, which was a good bit cheaper than the express train. Plus, it included a place to stay for the night!

Now, though, emerging bleary eyed from the subway, it didn’t seem worth the savings. Oh well, time to perk up and seize this day. We shuffled zombie-like across the field, and half a block down to where our hotel awaited us.

Walking Tour of Berlin

Seize the day we did. After leaving our bags at the hotel, and grabbing a quick breakfast, we hiked the 2 kilometers to the famous Brandenburger Tor. There, it was time for the next in our series of Sandeman’s free walking tours.

Our tour guide, Martin, was fun and knowledgeable, and took us on a great tour of Berlin. Not surprisingly, a lot of the tour was pretty Third Reich—and communist era—focused, that being fairly recent and important history. This included the once infamous Checkpoint Charlie, which has now been reduced to a ridiculous tourist trap. But it also included the remains of the Berlin Wall, which has been turned into an excellent museum that we would visit later.

On the tour, Martin took us through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Holocaust memorial opened in Berlin back in 2005. The monument is a large field of 2,711 concrete slabs of varying heights. As you wander into it, the terrain slopes downward, and the slabs grow taller above you, leaving you small and lost among them.

It’s strangely harrowing and affecting! Obviously, it’s meant to be metaphorical, and your mind can’t help but start thinking and interpreting it. For me, lost amongst the tall slabs, barely able to see the sky, it seemed to speak of humanity having lost its way, unable to see its way out, buried deep in the madness of that period in time. You feel a weight come off as you find your way to the other side, feeling the sun on you again.

Martin finished his tour in front of the Staatsoper Opera House, in Bebelplatz. Bebelplatz has historically been a public meeting space, but was also infamously the site of one of the major Nazi book burning ceremonies.

Tiergarten

Despite walking all day already, this was the summer of walking across Europe, and Erika and I hadn’t had enough yet. So, we walked the 1.5 kilometers back to Brandenburger Tor. From there, we crossed the plaza and entered the large Berlin city park, the Tiergarten.

The Tiergarten is fine… but it’s no Englischer Garten, Munich’s beautiful, awesome public park. We spent most of our time there bemoaning that fact. However, we did have one weird experience there. Soon after entering the park, we wandered to the Soviet War Memorial.

Built shortly after Berlin was captured by the Soviets in 1945, it functions as both a memorial to the Soviet soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin, as well as the burial ground for many of those soldiers. And the damn thing looks like a Soviet style memorial too, complete with Soviet tanks and all. It’s pretty weird, really. But, it also contained a lot of plaques with good information, and was interesting to browse.

While we were there, a half dozen Russians, in impeccable suits, came to the memorial. They had a professional photographer with them, who was photographing them reading the plaques and otherwise observing the memorial. Maybe the Russian ambassador there for a photo-op or something? I know maybe 10 words of Russian, so eavesdropping wasn’t doing any good.

Topographie des Terrors

The next morning, we took the short walk to the Topographie des Terrors, the museum built around what remains of the Berlin Wall. In painstaking, thorough, riveting detail, it covers the rise of the Nazi party to power, their campaign of horror and terror throughout World War II, and their eventual fall.

It’s a superb museum, one of the best I’ve seen. And, it’s free! A good portion of the museum is outdoors, along the remains of the Wall. And that day it was scorching hot and extremely sunny outside. Never the less, we couldn’t help but patiently read all the content, risking our skin being burned.

Reading about the Nazi programs of propaganda, misinformation, vilification of minority groups, attacks on the press… it all sounded so terribly familiar to us current-day Americans. Walking alongside the remains of the Berlin Wall, that symbol of oppression and division, I couldn’t help but think of a certain idiot back at home droning on and on about walls.

The history in Berlin all feels very present, and intense–because it is present and intense. It’s one thing touring ancient castles or ruins, learning of intrigue and atrocity of centuries past, but it’s quite another when there are still so many people alive who lived that history. Their lives, and our world, are directly shaped by all that was terrible that went down in Germany over that half century or so. And we do them a disservice by learning nothing, and ineptly wandering into the same terrible mistakes.

The Topographie des Terrors is a fantastic museum, and a must-visit in Berlin.

Alexanderplatz and Markthalle Neun

<re-write this part taking into account that we subwayed there, but then walked all over creation afterwards>

After the museum, we took a short subway ride across town to Alexanderplatz, the large public square with the famous TV tower. This took us deep into the part of the city that was formerly East German. And, it looked it. The square still has a very distinct Soviet character. That is to say, drab. Giant, gray, Soviet-bloc apartment buildings surround a concrete plaza. It’s interesting to see the difference from West Berlin.

We walked all around the plaza, down past City Hall, along the river, and back all the way to the plaza. It was far more than enough walking, so we took the subway out to our spot for dinner–Markthalle Neun. It’s a supremely hipster food hall, in a gritty hipster neighborhood–but man, we got some good food in there! Meatballs, cheeses, good craft beers for cheap, it was excellent.

Berlin, it turns out, is a supremely hipster town. The previous night, we took the subway across town to a different hipster neighborhood in search for a Vietnamese restaurant we heard about. It was great, and got us excited for when we’d finally get to South-east Asia!

What’s Next?

Our too-short stay (the theme of our European travels) in Berlin was over, as was our time in Germany. The next day, we were taking the train to Copenhagen, to begin a speedy tour of northern Europe that we hoped wouldn’t break the bank. We hope you enjoyed this story from Berlin!