Berlin!

So here I am in Berlin! I'm trying to fit everything there is to do in Berlin in just a few days, so I have long and hectic days here. My only real complaint, though, is that it's TOO COLD FOR MAY. I'd really love to be able to put my coat away for good.

Yesterday I went on a free walking tour that goes to most of the historic/important landmarks in the city. I had a CRAZY tour guide named Summer who is from Southern California and is really into performance art.

We started at the Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor):


We visited the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, more accurately known as Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe:



We walked over the site where Hitler's bunker once existed. It's now an unmarked parking lot where Berliners take their dogs to do their business.

We saw a small part of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie is actually incredibly lame because it has been completely reconstructed and it's all fake and touristy.

But, I did very much enjoy Gendarmenmarkt, a public square containing the French Cathedral (Französischer Dom) and the German Cathedral (Deutscher Dom), as well as the Konzerthaus Berlin. Both cathedrals are Protestant, but since the French were Calvinists and the Germans were Lutherans, they practiced separately, and so the square with the two nearly identical cathedrals facing each other represents religious tolerance.


We moved on to Bebelplatz, a square ringed in by the Berlin State Opera, St. Hedwig's Cathedral, and Humboldt University. This was the site of a large Nazi book burning demonstration in 1933.

A plaque displays a famous quote by the German Jewish author Heinrich Heine:


In German: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
Rough English translation: "That was just a prelude; when books are burnt, you end by burning people."
Written in 1820.

On a much happier note, we passed by Fassbender and Rausch, Chocolatiers that always display huge chocolate scupltures of famous buildings in their windows:


Chocolate Reichstag = Better than real Reichstag???
Probably.

We saw the New Guard House (Neue Wache), which now houses a monument to the victims of war and tyranny:


And the official end of the tour was on the steps of the Berlin Cathedral:


After the tour, I went with a group of Australians, a USC student, and our tour guide to get schnitzel and beer. Delicious.

Then, on our way to the East Side Gallery, I met some Arizonans on the S-Bahn. They were from Tucson and Phoenix, just a few years old than I am. The world is too small sometimes.

East Side Gallery, the longest remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, covered in huge murals:



Berlin is great. And I still have so much to see.
(I repeat my plea that the weather gets warmer/sunnier/SPRINGIER)

Miss you all dearly.