Junge Erbsen!

First real day in Berlin! We decided to do a walking tour of this city so we could learn the history and walk around the city. It ended up being a really great temperature for walking around, it did rain a tiny bit but not too bad. The tour ended up being so great and we loved our tour guide! It was a 5 hour walking tour which at first I thought would be a really long time ( I know I know how pathetic of me) but ended up going by sooo quickly. There is so much history in Berlin and it was fascinating to learn about the Berlin wall and the division of east and west Berlin. We started in former east Berlin and were shown how there is still construction going on from the devastation of all the bombing in Berlin. He also showed us how many of the buildings that did survive had the characteristic “drab” grey and brown colors on the buildings which was common in communist east Berlin. I had no idea that 68,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Berlin during the war. We got to see some of the buildings that did survive and you can see the bullet marks on the stone work still. We were told how in 1933 there were 165,000 Jews living in Berlin and that number was reduced to 5,000 after the holocaust. In Berlin today there are around 22,000 religious Jews living in the city, clearly not even close to the number it was before. We went by museum island which houses quite a few museums as well as the Supreme Parish Church, Old neoclassical museum, the “space needle” looking TV tower which represented socialism to Berlin residents and what used to be the Royal Castle which was bombed by communists. When we made our way over to check point Charlie which was one of the gates in the Berlin wall we learned about all the checkpoints and how they worked, the west side entrance being manned by soviets and the east side by the communist secret police. We learned how hard it was to cross and how the initial wall which was composed of just barbed wire was literally put up in the middle of the night dividing the city and keeping people from jobs, family, friends etc. if they were on the other side of the wall. We were able to see a remaining part of the wall which we all expectd to be much wider but we learned how there was an inner wall and an outer wall and what was in between those two was called the death strip. It contained ways to prevent people from crossing it and trying to escape. Some of those deterrents were raked sand to look for footprints, spiked grass, guards walking up and down, dogs, and fencing with a signaling capability where if touched it signaled to a guard down the way, and bright lights which made the area daylight during the night. There were 4 upgrades to the outer wall while it was in use and they had plans for a 5th scheduled for year 2000 but obviously the wall was ordered to be taken down in 1989. It just amazes me that all of this was so recent and the whole tour that is all Jenna, Nathalie and I could think about is how it feels like all this turmoil should have taken place so long ago and yet it was such a recent event in our history. There were 5,000 recorded successful escapes past the Berlin wall and 2000 of them were border guards. They say the most secure way of escaping was in the boot (trunk) of a diplomats car. People would basically offer the diplomat a large sum of money in return for being able to cross the border and since diplomats had immunity they were not searched. However, this was very expensive and most people didn’t have the money or the contacts to do this. 88 people were shot during the 28 years, 26 being in the first year. We also went to the square where Hitler conducted one of his large book burning exhibitions, and it was so eerie to stand there and think that Hitler was there having books and art by Jewish authors and artists burned because of their race. During this intense history lesson we were listening to Michael our tour guide explain this propaganda painting portraying the beauty of socialism when Jenna, Nathalie, and I got fully distracted by the most peculiar thing. It looked like a bar/table on wheels with a big umbrella on top, but at each “barstool” around the bar it was a bike, so literally it was a bar on wheels where everyone pedaled. It was the craziest thing we have ever seen and we were so thoroughly distracted by it that we completely walked away from our tour for the moment to take pictures and flip video this awesome vehicle that we called the “beer bike”! Shows where our priorities were at eh? We proceeded to also get the phone number on the beer bike in case we might want to go on an excursion later! We also decided this would be a great business venture and vowed to bring it to the states! After going back to our history lesson and getting our mind off the booze we continued on to some more sights one being Hitlers bunker and the Holocaust survivors memorial. Hitlers bunker was actually a parking lot and what used to be Hitlers bunker. We were shown a picture of what it looked like at the time but there was only one little post about it at the site, clearly showing how embarrassed Germany is by their history during this time. The holocaust survivors memorial however was a different story. It was a huge square filled with abstract cement boxes which to me looked like tombs or coffins. Here we learned that during the holocaust 2.7 million Jews escaped, 6 million were killed, 1.5 of those being children. The gas chambers that were used in the horrific internment camps had the capacity to hold 2000 people. The memorial was constructed without explanation because the artist wanted each person to interpret it for themselves and come to their own conclusion of what it meant to them. It was an eerie feeling being here to because it was so sad to think of the devastation that the Jews went through. This year there was a protest by about 659 neo Nazis which was met by 10000 people who were opposed to them, pretty amazing. At the end of the tour we ended up by where the embassies were and where another famous monument stood. Also in this square was the Adlon hotel which is the fanciest hotel in Berlin, the penthouse costing 15,000 euros a night!!!! That is sooo absurd!!! As Nathalie, Jenna, and I said, that penthouse better change your life for that price! We also said maybe that is the bar that we should go to tonight because I bet there are some pretty fabulous people at that hotel bar! It is also the hotel made infamous for the “baby dangling” incident by Michael Jackson. When we were told that I instantly had to take a picture for Tiffany, her being such a Michael Jackson fanatic and all! That concluded our historical part of the day and now it was time to experience some fun for the evening. We decided to go to a bar we had seen when walking around near our hotel and get a beer. Here we had some funny conversations one being the explanation to Jenna on how to say Danke Schoen which means thank you in German. We were trying to tell her how to pronounce it the Schoen part and after we told her how to say it she said “Danke, like donka part of badonka donk” FREAKIN HILARIOUS and yet another moment that we became the loud Americans with our laughter! Jenna also during that cocktail happy hour asked if her hair looked like a girl walking by who I think was trying to channel Amy Winehouse with her bouffant nasty hair, we asked Jenna if she was serious and she replied with “yes, I think I have hair dysmorphia” After cocktails we went to this little Italian restaurant that the guy at our hotel told us about and it turned out to be a great restaurant and we had a blast! We ended up eating and drinking a bunch , surprise surprise and we made friends with the owner of the restaurant who became quite smitten with Jenna. He spoke very little English but we tried to communicate with him and did a decent job. I proceeded to ask him how to say about a million different things in German (surely annoying the heck out of him) and at one point Nathalie and I were asking him what erbsen means and we could not figure out what he was trying to say and so he disappeared in to the kitched and brought back a can of peas so we would know what it was. In our intoxicated state we decided this was a great souvenir and asked him if we could keep it which he looked at us somewhat weird and said sure. Yet again the weird American tourists. We hung out with him for a couple hours and ended up almost closing the place up. It was so much fun and we had many laughs at that restaurant. From there we went to the internet café really quick because we needed some waters and it had a little convenient store and it was the only place we knew that was open 24 hours. We were quite the site wandering to the store and laughing hysterically the whole way about how Jennas “Italian Germanic Lover” was so obsessed with her and how he tried to kiss her at the table in front of us and how she was like no no no! On our way back to the hotel from the internet café we found a shopping cart and decided it was a great idea for me to get in it, Jenna to push me down the sidewalk and for Nathalie to videotape this excursion. It was all going fine until we hit the first street crossing and tried to get over the curb, where my life flashed before my eyes as I almost got tossed out of the shopping cart. We almost pee’d our pants with laughter at this too, good thing we had popped a squat in some bushes on the way to the internet café, this being our third non-restroom potty break in Europe, I don’t know what has come over us! We made it back to the hotel safe and got our stuff together because the next day we were going to have a 6 hour drive ahead of us to get to Kelmis where Nathalie is staying. Another fun day ahead im sure, even though driving isn’t always perceived as fun, we make it a blast! Ta ta!