Miles and Smiles Away: August 22: Berlin, Germany

Today started off with brunch in the sun at Andy's Diner. It was SO good! We then walked down the street and went to the Holocaust Memorial. It was unbelievable. It was very, very sad, yet extremely eye-opening. When you walk up to the memorial you see 2,711 concrete blocks that are street level. Then on the opposite side, there's the entrance that leads you underground to the memorial. There are eight rooms throughout the memorial. The first room is one long timeline that has text and images listed beneath the dates. Reading this gave me major chills. Beside the timeline there are six large photographs that have six different people on them. These six portraits represent the six million victims who were murdered during the Holocaust. The second room consisted of diary entries and letters written during the Holocaust. These entries were on the floor in a sealed box. The box contained the original letter, the typed out version of it, translated version, and then a short description of the person who wrote it. The details in these entries were heartbreaking. The next room is where they read the names of the murdered victims. Naming each victim would take six years, seven months, and 27 days. The next room has a map of Europe and pin points all of the crime sites. There were photos and short videos showing close ups of each site. There was approximately 220 crime sites. The next three rooms had more visuals set up on the walls, along with computers. People could get on the computers and search for other Holocaust memorials, museums, or sites. As sad as this experience was, I am so glad we had the opportunity to see it and get a better understanding of what actually happened during those horrible times.

After leaving the memorial, we headed up the street and found the town square. I'm not sure if that's what it's called, but it's shaped like a square and had a lot of people wandering around, so why not call it The Square. Anyway, we decided to rent some bikes and bike up a ways to the Berlin Wall Memorial. Only, we didn't know how to work the dang machine. So we settled for someone else biking us up to the memorial. It was about a 20 minute ride, and it was mostly uphill... poor guy. Once we got to the memorial, we went up to the top of the viewing area, which was about five stories high, and saw the wall. From our view, you could see that part of the wall perfectly. We went downstairs and looked at all the photos, films, and visuals. This was also very sad. There were films of people trying to escape. You could see them get shot at multiple times. Very few people successfully escaped. At least 136 people had died at the Berlin Wall, whether it was because they were caught escaping and got shot down, or because they had taken their own lives. It's all very sad.

After that emotional morning, we went back to our hotel and got some drinks. After some beer and wine, we decided to go take a walk through the park. It was supposed to take 30 minutes to get there, but of course we got lost and it took almost an hour and a half. Aside from being hot, it wasn't all that bad. There were guys skate boarding, girls roller blading, families biking, hippies sun bathing, kids swinging, and couples canoodling. We were pretty entertained as we were walking by. We finally got to Viktoriapark and found the waterfall that we've been looking for. It was much smaller than I anticipated, but nonetheless, just as pretty.

We ended up grabbing dinner over by the park at this Italian restaurant. From the street the place looks completely empty so we originally walked passed it. But we saw a couple walk into this alley, so we turned around and followed them (That sounded creepy). The restaurant was in the back and it was just the cutest. To top it off, they had three guys serenade everyone with their Italian music.

Tomorrow we don't leave Germany until the afternoon, so we should be doing a little more sight seeing in the morning. Then we'll be off to Amsterdam!