Berlin

For all the times I've been to Germany, I'd never been to Berlin.  We took a break from work one afternoon while we were there to walk around a little bit so that I could actually see the city.  Maple had been before, so she knew where to go.

First, we went to Checkpoint Charlie.  When the city was divided, there were several checkpoints where a person (with the right kind of passport...) could pass from east/west or west/east.  While there were also Alpha and Bravo checkpoints, Charlie was the most famous one.  It led into the American sector of West Berlin (in contrast to the French or British sectors).  They still have it set up with soldiers and an American flag and the border sign.  

On "the eastern" side of Checkpoint Charlie is an open air museum that shows the history of the wall and the checkpoint.  This map shows how the city was divided.

This wall had pictures and explanations with a timeline about how the wall and checkpoints were built, and things that happened at them during the almost 30 years it was up.

I never thought I'd get my picture taken with JFK!!!

A picture of the standoff between Soviet and US tanks in 1961.

I'm pointing to a "you are here" on the map.

We walked on from Checkpoint Charlie and passed this building that had every single window boarded up!  Creepy.

On our way to the Brandenburg Gate, we passed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  It was made of 2711 concrete slabs of different sizes and heights on a field of sloped alleys.  It's really intense to walk through.  A slab could be waist high, and suddenly they're over your head and you can't see anything but slabs all around.

There's Maple's head peeping out.

It was eerily quiet when you were in the memorial.

I lost Maple and couldn't find her.

There she is!

You can sort of see the sloping of the ground.

We got out of there and headed on to the Brandenburg Gate.  I've seen a lot of big victorious gates in cities, so I was sort of like...meh.

All over the city, you could see markers of where the Wall had been.  Here's one.

The cobblestone lines on the road below are the marker of where the Wall had been.  This photo showed people sitting on the wall looking at the Reichstag behind, with the modern day Reichstag in the background.

The Reichstag.  Maple told me that they rebuilt it after the war with that glass dome so that the government could never again hide what they were doing...fully exposed to even the heavens.  I think that's cool.

A photo of what it looked like after the war before being rebuilt.

We walked on to the Memorial to the Berlin Wall.  They left a portion of it standing, with some steel pipes to show where it continued on.

This part showed photos of all the people who died at the wall.

On the east side of the wall looking through the pipes to the west side.

Everything about the Wall made me sad.  While we were at Checkpoint Charlie, we discussed how unlucky a family would have been to have owned an apartment on the wrong side of the street.  I hate to think of how the city was divided for a whole generation.  But I was also encouraged to remember as I walked through the city and saw that corrupt governments and division was a part of their past, not their present, and hopefully not their future.  After having spent several weeks seeing the Germans' open, welcoming character to the refugees, I was encouraged to remember that not only can people change...but whole governments and cultures can too.

The same country that cast out a people and divided a people is now working to welcome a people and unite through integration.  That's pretty amazing.