We got home really late so Colette slept the whole dayy! She was supposed to meet me at two but never did so I went to the wall memorial near my hostel. They had a wall that showed the people that were shot and killed trying to escape and get over the wall. the saddest one was a 5 yr old boy. I'm not sure how he could have been escaping. One guy was shot and laid there dying bc no one would help him not even the Americans.
We finally got to go on a pub crawl that night even though we were exhausted. We met these three guys, one from holland one from France and one from Belgium. They were awesome. Two guys from Georgia joined our little group and the boys decided we were a wolf pack. So the whole night through all the bars all you heard was wolf pack!!!! It was a great night, we went to three or four bars and one giant club. I kept losing Colette all night so that got annoying. There were two army guys on the pub crawl they are stationed in Germany. Colette had never had southern comfort so I bought us and the army boys some soco and lime shots. I started asking everyone where they were from at the club so I met Irish and holland and German people and who knows who else. It was a ridiculous night. I lost Colette and just went around the club like four times and finally gave up and left. The sun was on its way up. I stopped down in the train station and got some delicious pizza. I think it was about 6 when I got home.
I got up at noon and took the tram our near the Berlin radio tower and found a hop on hop off bus bc I'm so sick of walking around so much. Guess who got on the same bus!? The two ga guys. They were just going to ride the bus bc they didn't get the whole day pass so I got off at the holocaust memorial. It's a bunch of concrete rectangles in various sizes. It really ticked me off because people were running all over the tops of them. It's not a playground it's a memorial to all of the murdered Jews. Thankfully they had guards there to tell people to get off. I mean how could they even think that's ever ok to do??
I am learning so much today! I am doing a walking tour through Berlin and unlike the 3 hours that the other one was this is like 7 or so. We have seen buildings that were damaged by the war and either left as they were or repaired or torn down and prefab concrete apartments were put up. I learned a lot about the Berlin wall. I couldn't figure out why people were escaping to go to the west side. in one night the soviets put up a barb wire fence around the west Berlin area which was held by the French the brits and us. Basically the soviets held all of east Germany except for those parts in west Berlin and people didn't like how the soviets did things. They would come to the us held portion of Berlin and we would basically give them a free ticket into west Germany. So many people were leaving so the soviets put the wall up to stop it. International travelers could still get to east Berlin if they wanted to but east Germans and east Berliners couldn't leave. At one point during the cold war one usd was worth 4.25 trillion German marks. Lots of the soldiers would go from west Berlin into east Berlin bc 1 west German mark was worth 10 or something east German marks. So they would go to the east to party and play. Families were separated by the wall and maybe didn't see each other for 10 or 15 years. I didn't understand who was escaping the other day, but it was the people in east Berlin trying to get into the west which was held by us.
Now it's Sunday and I've forgotten all the fun facts that I learned yesterday. We stood over hitlers bunker that he killed himself in. You can't go in bc it's flooded with water and super deep in the ground. After his people found him dead, they took him up to the surface and burned the mess out of him. When the Russians found him they had to have a dentist check his teeth to make sure it was really him. They also cleaned it up so no one could know where his body had been so there wouldn't be any shrines to him on that spot.
Did you know that for the last few weeks of his life he was such a chicken that he hid in his bunker eating chocolate cake?? Like a stupid 5 yr old that didn't want to face this giant mess he caused.
There is a comedy movie that was made a few yrs ago about hitler I forget what the guide said the name of it was tho. Anyways they were filming in a spot that he used to use to make speeches so they had a bunch of swastika flags and stuff up in this area. They put up signs saying don't worry we are just making a movie so that people wouldn't freak out, but they were only in German. Our guide said that tourist that came couldn't always read German so they got totally freaked out thinking omg they are back!! It was really funny the way he told it.
On my last night there, I went out with some people from the hostel. One it from Australia seriously looked like Johnny Depp it was crazy, so that's what I called him all night. We could never find a good bar so most of the night was spent walking around. At one point everyone was just drinking in a park bc they said none of the clubs would be fun until 1am. So it was fun but lame at the same time. I made some new friends from finland. They were such awesome girls and invited me up to Finland and said I could crash on their couch! That's got to be the best part of this type of travel is the people you meet once and then you end up going there or traveling around with them. Kinda like what I'm doing with Colette, I had no plans after berlin but now I'm going to cologne cuz that's where she went and told me to go meet her there.
No comments:
Post a Comment