Heart may not be ready for goodbye but the feet need a rest!

 Today was our last day in Berlin. We started our day by going to the checkpoint Charlie museum. It's a great museum that takes you through what life was like when the wall was up. People went through extraordinary measures to escape from the east to the west. Their drastic attempts demonstrate how much they wanted to escape.  That tells me that the east was a miserable place to live. After that we headed to the topography of terror that gave a timeline and details of what happened. It also had an original section of the wall still up. I still can't believe, even after 3 days with different reminders, that this happened in my lifetime. Unreal. Hard to comprehend. Hopefully we have learned our lesson from this history. We ended the day after a late lunch at the Sony center, where movie premiers are shown in Berlin. No movie stars today though.  That would have been a perfect ending to this trip!  

 

   

 

Great group.  Great city.  Great time!

Berlin: The wall...

The wall....a part of history that occurred during my lifetime.  Mind blowing.  Saw a great short movie about it that helped fill in some blanks on the history of it for me.  Just thinking of that wall dictating so much of one's life.  The haves and the have nots, through no fault of their own- just where they happened to be when the wall went up.  Hearing Art and Olga talk about it, from their own memories is just  shocking.  Someone I was with, said something I hadn't thought about:  "Many people who tried to escape were late teens and early twenties.  They had their whole life in front of them.  If someone was 18 years old when it went up, they were 46 when it came down.  The prime of their life, their career, them starting a family would have past." We went to the Berlin Wall memorial.  It has some of the original wall remaining.  It's put up posts where the wall has come down so you could get a perspective.  Where we walked was the "Death Strip" because it was the space between the walls.  Chances are if you made it over the wall you would be shot by one of the guards before you could make it across the space, or you would step on a land mine.   

After that very meaningful morning we headed to museum island and saw some old stuff. :)   We went to the Pergamon Museum which has the eighth gate to Babylon reconstructed in it.  Half of the museum is being renovated.  So in 2019, watch out- it will be even more mind boggling.  Then we went to the Neues Museum which had the head of Nefertiti (no picture allowed of her). Saw a few things there but then was on museum overload so we decided to go and take a boat tour.It was a great way to end the day!  

 

Trains before and after the wall to East Berlin

 

The marking is for where they bricked up the entrance so no one could escape.

 

 

Didn't feel like I could smile??

 

The other photo was so menacing looking, I thought I better smile in the next one.

 

 

 

Love this guy (he's the street light guy who tells you it's ok to walk)

 

Trying out for KISS?  Making superhero masks?  Nope, just passing time on a Sat night with a drink and a face mask :)   AND ICE!!  See the bucket of ice we scored?!?  NICE!!

 

 

Another stellar day in Berlin........even if the world around isn't so great at the moment

Today started and ended on a somber note..... We started at the Jewish Museum of Berlin.  Another very WELL DONE museum.  Your heart aches to see the transformation in treatment of the Jewish people.  The real life accounts and personal belongings were very very moving.  It was almost too much for the mind and heart to handle in one visit.  Then, on a much lighter note, we went to Kadewe a HUGE shopping store.  We ate lunch at one of the multitude of food offerings on one of the floors.  I was a little overwhelmed with all the choices.  I split a brat at the brat stand, had some cucumber salad from the deli and then finished it off with a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of raspberry at the crepe place.  Did a little damage shopping and then walked (didn't think that through w/the shopping bag from beforehand) to the bombed out church.  They left the bombed out church as a reminder and built the new church next to it.  From the outside the new church isn't very church like or striking but inside is another story.  Blue glass everywhere.  Stunning.  Had to sit in a pew for a bit and take it all in.  To end the night we went to the cathedral to hear an organ concert.  Was feeling pretty upbeat until we made it back to the hotel and heard about the shootings in Munich, where we just were a few days ago. Let's all say a prayer that good wins over evil and that we don't repeat the horrors of the past.........  

 

Had to lighten the mood after so much heaviness and heartache...

 

2nd stop of the day much lighter......SHOPPING!

 

Somber again....bombed out church

 

Bombed church......new church

 

Last thing of the day....organ concert in the cathedral