Anseth Family Adventures: Checking in

Sunday, June 19th, 2022 was Father’s Day. What better way to spend the morning then on a bus to Berlin. We stopped at the US embassy (McDonalds) for fries and a shake to break up the ride a little bit.

Once we arrives in Berlin the traffic wasn’t bad. A lot of services are closed on Sunday which really lighten the load and allowed us to get around without much hassle.

This statue near the bus

This statue still damaged from WWII

Our first destination was the Topography of Terror museum. This museum has a beautiful modern design. It is build on the site of the old headquarters of the Gestapo. It also has one of the remaining segments of the Berlin Wall standing in front as well.

Topography of Terror Museum

Inside the museum

Some of the exhibit

Time magazine covers from the past.

This museum was very well organized and I thought the content was excellent. We just ran out of time to enjoy it as much as we wanted

The Berlin Wall in front of the Topography of Terror

The other side of the Berlin wall with graffiti.

We met our guide Josef, who has a PhD in Tourism/History. He was great. His energy and excitement about the history was a real pick me up after our long bus ride.

Our first stop was the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. There are other Memorials within the city for other groups as well. The memorial was created by Peter Eisenmen and Buro Happold.

Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe

Within the memorial

Katie’s picture from the Memorial

Another angle. It is quite a powerful memorial. As we talked about it amongst ourselves we had several different opinions on what it meant to us. Our guide shared one that as each stone got progressively big it represented the challenges of living as a Jew during this time. The lower could represent “you can’t be a doctor or a lawyer. “. Has the war progress the hurdles get higher until you were hunted simply for being Jewish. That is symbolized the the blocks that are bigger then a person and when you in the section there is very little sun.

Next we traveled to the site of Hitler’s bunker and the location where the Russian army found his partially burned body. The Russian delayed notifying the other Allies for 1 week as they consolidated territory in Berlin. This has led to many conspiracy theories about Hitler’s whereabouts. Our guide did not make much of that idea. The site is really just a plaque and a gravel parking lot. The bunkers have sunk and been filled in with sand because Berlin is essentially built on a bog. The actual site looks like a dusty parking lot like you might find in Augusta, Montana.

This is the sign at the site.

After the sign we all headed for the Bradenburg Gate. Built in the 18th century on the orders of Prussian king Fredrick William II after restoring Orangist power by suppressing the Dutch uprising. It has 12 columns and is based off of Propylaea, the gateway at the Acropolis.

The top sculpture is a chariot pulled by four horses and driven by Victoria, the Roman goddess of Victory. It was damaged in WW II and one of the original quadrigia horse heads is on display at the Markisches Museum. The gate was located in the Soviet occupation zone and subsequently on the East German side of the Berlin Wall. It is one of the most impressive structures I have seen in person

Brandenburg Gate

Brandenburg from a distance

Statues on the side of the gate

You can see where the bullet holes and shrapnel damage has been patched.

After the gate we visited the Reichstag Building which houses German Parliament, which is definitely not the Parliament Funkadelic.

Reichstag building

Katie and I love Parliament. Yeah democracy.

A different view of Reichstag.

There was a Ukrainian rally near the Reichstag as well

Our last tour stop was Checkpoint Charlie, the access point to cross from West Berlin to East Berlin during the Cold War. It is a little commercialized at this point but still cool.