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| Brandenburg Tor |
The good news is that today's low daytime temperature was only -7 degrees. The bad news is that today's high was -6 degrees! Kind of hard to enjoy being outside too long, and not conducive to a walking tour, which was one idea for today. Yesterday we spent the morning at the National Jewish Museum, an amazing chronicle of the journey of the Jewish people in Europe through the centuries. There is almost nothing they were not blamed for. The exhibition didn't only concentrate on the holocaust, but all the same it was very moving. We were impressed at the complete honesty that seemed to be present - there was no fudging of the facts from what we could see. The word "murder" was used in all descriptions of those who were killed in the death camps.
The next place for us was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, at the "House at Checkpoint Charlie". Established in 1962, only a year after the wall went up, right from the start it was a place to exhibit and draw attention to the plight of east Berliners who tried to escape to the west. (Before the wall was built, more that 2 million East Germans escaped - they needed a more permanent solution). We both found it quite an emotional experience, reading story after story of people who wanted a choice. The inventiveness of those who escaped is incredible. The first personal underwater propulsion system (there must be one word for all that but I can't think of it) was first used to escape via the Baltic Sea, and it was developed extensively after that for other uses. There is an amazing photo of a border guard letting a child through the wire (before the wall days) - apparently a great number of the border guards sympathised with the east Berliners, aiming to miss when they shot and deliberately looking the other way.
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| Near the Reichstag |
Today it was snowing and very cold so we visited the Medical History museum - Dad, you'd have loved it. It had thousands of specimens preserved from decades of research, some rather freakish but really interesting. I even got to see what my L4-5 spinal fusion looks like!
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| Who needs a pram in this weather? |
We tried to find a few geocaches, but it was near impossible in the snow. There is supposed to be one hidden in the giant Lego giraffe outside LegoLand, but there were too many people around for a good look and also there are hundreds of police everywhere (LegoLand is not far from the Bundestag), so it probably wasn't smart to be seen closely investigating anything with a gadget in our hands!
The next place for us was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, at the "House at Checkpoint Charlie". Established in 1962, only a year after the wall went up, right from the start it was a place to exhibit and draw attention to the plight of east Berliners who tried to escape to the west. (Before the wall was built, more that 2 million East Germans escaped - they needed a more permanent solution). We both found it quite an emotional experience, reading story after story of people who wanted a choice. The inventiveness of those who escaped is incredible. The first personal underwater propulsion system (there must be one word for all that but I can't think of it) was first used to escape via the Baltic Sea, and it was developed extensively after that for other uses. There is an amazing photo of a border guard letting a child through the wire (before the wall days) - apparently a great number of the border guards sympathised with the east Berliners, aiming to miss when they shot and deliberately looking the other way.
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