History of Berlin

So, I wrote all of this last night and it was deleted before I posted :(  This post should obviously go before the previous post, but I put off rewriting it. 

Side note: It has been an interesting experience being in Europe during the World Cup. Business owners will rent large TVs and post them outside their business for people to watch. There are couches in the middle of sidewalks with people intently watching the games. Cheers can be heard all over..people will drive by and honk every place they see the World Cup being showed. It's definitely been interesting. 

Apparently one of the girls on our tour decided it would be funny to draw a Hitler mustache on her face after the Germany game (must have been heavily intoxicated). We heard the bartender came up to her yelling and kicked her out/banned her from the bar. She did not show up the next morning for the walking tour of Berlin history...no one was surprised. 

Now for some history...

Our tour guide was awesome..very funny. We started by the Karl Marxx statue where she went over an overview of WW2 history and the separation of Berlin. 

Our next stop was the Altes Museum and the Berlin Cathedral. She told us how Berlin was desperate to have a cathedral that could be as great as St. Peter's Basilica (didn't happen). They also created the TV tower in hopes to become equal in the technology advancement department as other countries. The tower was designed by an atheist, and ironically, upon completion, when the sun shines on the tower you can see a crucifix shine from any part of th city. She said they called this the pope's revenge. 

You can see it shining below. 

 

We then traveled over to Humboldt University. Einstein taught here briefly. This was also the site for the burning of books in Berlin. There is a plaque on the ground with a quote written 100 years before the Holocaust, stating: "that was only the prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people" There is a cool memorial created in the ground that allows you to look down and see several empty bookshelves. There are enough empty bookshelves to hold the 20,000 burned books. 

Next was the Bradenburg Gate. This use to have th Berlin Wall on both sides. It was th gate to travel from the east to the west. You can currently see a huge set up behind it where they have been showing the World Cup every night. 

About halfway through the tour we stopped at the remains of the Berlin Wall. Our guide told us an interesting story of a family that got over the wall by ziplining from the Ministry of Magic..oops I mean Ministry of Ministries (behind the wall) over to the other side. The night guards saw them, but they though they were sent by the government so they didn't shoot them. That was the one positive story of the day. 

We walked over to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial has no explanation of the interpretation of it. Apparently there was controversy over this, as many people didn't feel like they understood it. You would be surprised at the number of people taking selfies at this memorial...

Our last stop was Checkpoint Charlie. Not much is left of this checkpoint. 

We also stopped at Hitler's bunker (where he committed suicide), which is now a car park. We thought it was strange that it was unmarked and turned into a parking lot, but our guide told us that they did not want people to turn it into a shrine for Hitler. Makes sense. 

Bonus pictures: 

The hotel where Michael Jackson held his baby over the balcony. 

They had painted bears all over Berlin. Bears are part of the Berlin flag.