Berlin (3 weeks late...)

So much for being a devoted blogger. I've wanted to blog several times in the past month, but little things kept getting in the way. Lemme break this down.

BERLIN!

Incredible. An amazing city. Siomha and I really bonded with the kids that came with us--Catie, Christina, and Pat. Traveling in small groups really made getting to know each other easier. When we arrived in Berlin, we somehow figured out what train we needed to grab in order to quickly get into the city. We arrived at the train station with about 8 minutes until our train left. Plenty of time, right? Oh but wait! We couldn't find our platform. We were platform 6, but the platform numbers seemed to skip from 1-3, to 7-9. Not helpful. After studying the train map for 15 minutes to try to figure out which train to take, we ended up just jumping on a train and hoping it got us there okay. Luckily, it did! After our first messy experience with the train, Pat and I mastered the train system and became the group's trusted navigators. We only made ONE mistake for the rest of the trip, and it was easily fixable.                                                                                                    

Sorry to brag.

We had a quick bite to eat at a cute little family-owned restaurant. Schnitzel was a bit weird, but the meatballs and sausages were great. So much for my diet! Then we rushed back to the hostel to get ready for the New Europe pubcrawl. It was a great night--met lots of new friends--a couple from England, a bunch of guys from Quebec, and some Argentinean guys with boundary issues. The Berlin "pub" scene is more like a "dark-smokey-artsy-lounge-with-funk-music" scene. We ended the night at a very hip, slightly stripper-filled night club. I have to say the highlight of the night was when the five of us ended up in a ridiculous cage, dancing to Barbra Streisand. We got a lot of questions about Pat from all the guys we met--"Is that guy gay?" "Is that guy your boyfriend?" "Why is that guy surrounded by four girls?" Some of our answers: "He's the son of an oil baron," "He's related to Hugh Hefner," or simply "We're all fighting over him." To end the night, we had several delicious brats from the vendor outside the train station on the way home.

Pub Crawl!

We started the morning out right with more delicious brats. We decided that there's no point in spending money on meals in restaurants...the street vendor brats were better than anything we could get in a fancy restaurant. Then we hurried to the famous Brandenburg Tor for a 3 hour New Europe tour of Berlin.

Brandenburg Tor

Berlin has such a fascinating history--I wish I could remember it all and spill it out into this blog.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

But most of what I remember are the feelings, the images--staring at the famous Reichstag that Hitler burned down to seize power; seeing the layout of the Berlin wall zigzagging across the roads and sidewalks of a brand new, united Berlin; seeing the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; passing Checkpoint Charlie; comparing Nazi propaganda murals of Berlin in the 50s to the chilling photographs of the 1953 uprising; standing on top of Hiter's bunker, right next to a trashcan placed rather ironcially over the permanently sealed entrance...

I had a tight, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach for the entire tour. A chilling, heavy atmosphere pervaded rainy Berlin--it was the right kind of weather for such a powerful tour!

Gendarmenmarkt

That isn't to say Berlin doesn't have it's beautiful areas. It certainly does! Gendarmenmarkt is one of the most beautiful squares I've ever seen--in the summer, they have a huge classical music festival. I wish I could go back and see the city in the sunshine!

Berlin Cathedral

One of my favorite buildings was the Cathedral--I took SO many pictures of it. Lots of architects think it's a horrible building--apparently it's a
 poor mishmash of different styles through the centuries. But I really don't care! It's gorgeous! Inside and out!

The famous Berlin greenman! (Ampelmannchen--funny little crosswalk guy created for kids by a "traffic psychologist")

We ended the night at a funky little hookah bar near our hostel--recommended by our extremely indie tour guide Zabi. Pat unfortunately left the next morning--he had to get back for the super bowl (whatever!). The girls and I went to Sachsenhausen, one of the first ever concentration camps, just outside of Berlin.

Sachsenhausen was also one of the original test grounds for the gas chambers--the outline of the shower room still exists. The camp's triangular shape was actually used as a "model" for all future concentration camps, and was a training ground for SS officers. The Nazis took great care in recruiting men with very very low IQs and with strong psychopathic tendencies to train to become SS officers--Hitler definitely knew what he was doing. He knew only ignorant, cruel men would be able to support his cause.

If we thought Berlin was depressing, we were in for a real treat at Sachsenhausen. The day was dark, windy, damp, and cold--very fitting for what we were about to see. We approached Guard Tower "A"--the same guard tower that the prisoners would have approached. Except this time, the time on the guard tower was wrong--it was set to 11:08--the exact minute soviet guards liberated the camp in 1945. We stood in the courtyard where the criminals, gypsies, communists, homosexuals, and jews were stripped down, robbed, shaved, beaten, cleaned, and dressed in jumpsuits with a number. We walked through the same gate they all walked through--on the gate were the words "arbeit macht frei," meaning "Work brings freedom"....yeah. right.

I've never really appreciated the horrors of the concentration camps...I feel like it's something you have to see to believe. And even now, after seeing it, I can't fully believe it. It is so shocking. The guards played psychological mind games on the prisoners by throwing their hats into a "neutral" zone, then ordering them to fetch it. If a prisoner was caught in a neutral zone, the guards were to shoot them, since it was assumed that they were either trying to escape or attempt suicide, and neither were allowed. So, naturally, the prisoner would not go to the neutral zone. But, then again, if they did not go fetch their hat, they would be disobeying a direct order, and would therefore be tortured or killed.

Sick. Disgusting.

The prisoners got 45 minutes to eat breakfast, wash themselves, and make it outside for daily roll call. This proved difficult. At times, there were up to 300 men in cabins built for 60. There were not enough toilets for all the men to go to the bathroom in 45 minutes, and they would be shot if they went to the bathroom on the floor. Three men were drowned by the S.S. guards in the wash basin for trying to rinse their dirty feet. Essentially, the S.S. guards used torture in any way they could, even in simple morning routines. Then, when the men reached roll call, attendance would last at least 2 hours--the men were forced to stand outside in the bitter Berlin winters with only their cotton jumpsuits to keep them warm. One roll call lasted 14 hours--dozens dropped dead of hypothermia. Then when all that was done, they were in for a day of hard labor, interspersed with random torture. The political prisoners were held in a top security building surrounded by a high brick wall, in which they were tortured daily and eventually killed--apparently that was the most dreaded place in Sachsenhausen. The ordinary prisoners never got to see what went on behind that mysterious wall--they only heard their screams.

photograph of roll call

Finally, we checked out station Z. I bet you can all guess what happened there. The execution site began as a simple firing squad, but the all the men waiting in line to be shot got a little hysterical (shocker..) and were difficult to control as they were being dragged to their death. Plus, the S.S. officers dealing with the desperate prisoners, begging for their lives, were experiencing "psychological trauma." We wouldn't want them to feel bad about killing people, now would we? So Hitler and his buddies figured there had to be a more efficient, and less "traumatic" way to kill people. Cool.

They set up a complex building that looked quite a bit like an ordinary doctor's office from the outside. The prisoners would walk into a pleasant waiting room that had loud music playing, and would be asked to sit down. Then, one at a time, they would be escorted to the next room, where they would go through a routine medical examination. First, the "doctor" would check out their teeth--if they had any gold fillings, the "doctor" would draw a little cross on their arm. Then, he would take their height. He lined up the prisoner against one of those old fashioned measuring sticks that you adjust from the top. When he took the prisoner's height, a little hole opened up in the back of the height gauge. In the room directly behind the height gaugue, was an S.S. officer pointing a gun directly into the little hole in the wall. He would shoot the prisoner in the neck, the prisoner would be killed immediately and moved to the next room, and the S.S. officer would never have to see his victim's face. Then the next prisoner would enter, unsuspecting (the loud music covered up the sound of the gun shot), and the whole process would begin again. The prisoner would then get his gold fillings removed (waste not!) and put into the ovens.

 A perfect system, really.

the device they used to take their "heights" 

After four emotionally exhausting hours, we ended our tour of Sachsenhausen. I would absolutely recommend that everyone visit a concentration camp if you can. Definitely not the most enjoyable experience in the world, but it's something everyone should see.