Thursday 28th: walking tour, topology of terror, random wanderings

I went for a walking tour on this day. I'd heard from two people that the walking tour in Berlin is pretty good.

I was a bit worried that I wouldn't make it to the place in time. I was going to walk, but then I realised that there wouldn't be enough time. So I rode the train. But I got there in time.

There were only 10-15 people on the walking tour. The lady doing the tour was from Adelaide, Australia, and there was a couple also from Adelaide, Australia. Strange odds.

The walking tour was really good. It went for about 3 hours plus some time to stop and eat. The person leading the tour knew lots of information about the things we passed. She pointed out that you can still see lots of bullet marks on the Altes Museum and black marks from smoke etc. These were also on some other monuments. The place got shot up pretty badly toward the end of world war two apparently. There was a cool monument to the place outside one of the universities in Berlin where they did some book burning: they have created a big space underneath the level of the ground where it happened, then they have put glass over top so you can look down, and down there, there are empty book shelves with enough space for the number of books that were burned there. It's a neat concept.

A university. Einstein did some stuff here, and a whole bunch of other cool people.

Checkpoint charlie. Bit tokenistic looking now.

Some wall. On the right there is some of the building that was the main government building for the nazis. Apparently 'Goebbels' did some stuff in there, and then later the East German government thought it was a pretty good building to use.

Hitler died under there.

We saw some of the wall. We also saw the place beneath which was the bunker that hitler died in. It's strange because it is a very average carpark for a set of apartment buildings from the east berlin times. Supposedly they don't want to turn it into some kind of shrine.

Jewish memorial.

These things smelled strange. I wonder what they are.

The Jewish memorial felt a bit eerie to me. There are lots of stone blocks, arranged in a grid, that get taller toward the centre. You can walk through it, and you get lost in the blocks. Apparently some people think the memorial is too cold and unemotional. But I imagined that all these blocks were some kind of abstract representation of all the people that were lost, and so the effect of being lost and surround within all of the plain unformed stones gave me a bit of a chill to relate it to all the people that were lost and never able to live out their life and have some kind of impact on the world. I found it to be quite sad and moving.

Then we walked toward the Brandenburg Tor and that ended the tour. We saw lots of great things and having the background added to the buildings was really good I think.

After that I walked back to the place where we had stopped for lunch. When we were there earlier, I had purchased a sandwich which was one of the best I have had: sundried tomato, lettuce, cheese, and some other stuff. So I had to go back to get another one. It was worth it.

At this place, in something like 1951 (forgotten exact date) some East Berlin people were getting annoyed at the working conditions, so they decided to protest. I think that the result was something like, they were all killed, or a lot were. So this is a memory of these people. Really sad to think of this kind of stuff. Not all people in this photo were killed though, since, the tour guide told us that some time ago she led a tour and a guy pointed out himself in this photo.

This is a mural put onto the wall when the East Germans took over. It's showing some kind of dream for the communists or socialists to strive toward. The memorial in the previous photo is placed in front of this, in the same proportions, as some kind of comparison.  My tour guide was a little anti-communist, which annoyed me a bit. I think that the ideals presented in this mural are worth striving for, and are not the cause of the deaths of those protestors.

Then I walked toward the Topology of Terror museum. On the way I stopped at a museum which was talking about the information gathering done by the Police during the time of East Germany. They did a lot of information gathering to try and stop people challenging the government and that kind of thing. Supposedly, after the wall came down, they tried to destroy the evidence, but people were able to stop them. I think all this stuff was not so good. But I also think that the other side was similarly paranoid in some ways, and that both sides were not always unjustified.

Then I went the rest of the way to the Topology of Terror. This is a museum about the SS police. It is situated at a place next to the Berlin wall where the SS police had their offices set up I think. Supposedly a lot of bad stuff happened or was planned at these offices, so they call it the topology of terror. The museum is free and describes various aspects about how the situation developed. I find that to be fascinating. I stayed for a few hours until my feet started to hurt and then I headed on.

Guy playing piano.

Altes Museum. According to the tour guide, Hitler got rid of all this grass and turned into a big parade ground. Supposedly this is where a lot of big rallies happened, with Hitler standing by those columns I guess.

Bullet damage from gunfire etc.

Guy on horse, stepping on lion.

Lion biting horse with girl on top.

I guess this is where hitler would have delivered some speeches. Strange. I was sitting here for a while and then I realised that the strawberries in my bag had turned to mush and the mush had leaked into my bag. Terrible. I tried to clean it for a while. A lady gave me some strange looks. Also, from here I listened to the piano guy for a while. He was playing a whole lot of licks directly from Keith Jarrett's Sun Bear Concerts recordings, and maybe from his Koln concert and some others. But he had trouble turning them into meaningful and well developed sections. He played one lick and then a few moments later he moved to another one. It was a bit frustrating. But to attempt to emulate Keith Jarrett is huge.

I headed toward the Altes Museum because the tour guide told us that it would stay open until 9pm this night. I got there and it turned out that it was not open at any later times. Strange. So I didn't go in, because I would have had only half an hour or so.

Before I got to the museum, I noticed that outside there was a guy with a grand piano playing some songs. That was a cool concept I think. People were sitting around and listening to him. I sat for a while too.

I think that after this I walked somewhere to find food. I think I bought a sandwich from subway. I love that in Germany lots of people understand English very well. They even know what a capsicum is.

Also, during the tour this day, I met two guys from Canada near Toronto. They were cool people.

I went back home and I think I probably talked with the two girls from Italy for a while. They are very strange. They are addicted to talking.