Getting to know Berlin

Our London resident (Emma) joined us for our "Berlin tour of duty" and, in keeping with my planning, I pre booked a few tours/ activities. I selected all of these primarily after looking at suggestions/ recommendations on TripAdvisor and tried to get a selection of different tour groups.

Even though my knees do not like me for this, I really feel the best way to see things is to walk or wander /gallivant and discover things as you go.  The "so many days" tour groups do fill a very important market but it really isn't our style.  We like to wander unrestricted and not be like a SWAT team that zooms in, gets a targeted view of an area and then moves on to the next selected site/ city.  I don't mean to sound unkind by this comment.  It is just different styles for different people.  Even though it might be a bit scarey at times, we do like to wander without quite knowing where we are and in this way we have found the most beautiful places. We are so very fortunate to have each other as many things are simply too difficult when you are on your own.

We do think that walking tours ( generally 2.5 /3 sometimes 4 hours) are superb ways to discover more about a place and its people. 

For Berlin, I chose the following:

History of Berlin

This excellent "museum" was near to where we were staying and has a selection of material to show 800 years of the history of Berlin. It is right in the middle of a shopping area/ seemingly part of an office building and I doubt we would have stumbled across it if we weren't already aware of it. 

 Beneath the building, adjacent to the underground car park is a bunker that was built for a few thousand people during the Cold War, in case of a nuclear attack.

The bunker was designed for people to stay in these confined spaces for about 3 weeks.

Outside of the bunker was the wonderful Museum

Symbolic of destroyed books - actual books where you could feel the edges of them when you touched the floor

Faltering signature of the madman who committed such dreadful crimes against his fellow men

As you approached the glass window with the word for Jew written on it, there was the chilling sound of glass being smashed.  It made me jump with fright each time.

Typical furnishings of East and West Berlin apartments

Some of the images from the East / West Berlin Wall era

Section of the wall in the Museum

We spent hours in here and felt immersed in each era as we moved from one area to another.

Sandemans - General walking tour of Berlin

You know the old saying "A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum".  Well, for some peculiar reason we went to the wrong Starbucks for the starting point of the morning tour, so we did our own wanderings and joined the afternoon 2pm slot. This meant that in the morning we had a pleasant time to wander and discover - and it turned out that we wouldn't have found these places if we hadn't delayed our first tour.

Insider -Third Reich walking tour

Our guide was the excellent Nigel.  Ex UK military, current guide in several countries and advisor to history channel etc, etc.  I wonder how anyone could do all the things he said he does or did but in any case, he was very entertaining, knowledgable, helpful and the time went all too quickly.

Isherwood's neighbourhood walking tour

Now not too many people would know about this one. 

Even though I'm not in the "theatre crazy" category like the rest of my family, this was a walking tour that I would recommend to anyone.  It is run by a one man operation ( Brendan Nash) and grew from Brendan's love of exploring and learning more about Christopher Isherwood who, amongst other things was the writer of the musical Cabaret.

While all of this was interesting to me, the most engrossing aspect of this walking tour was that it was such a lovely, interesting and fascinating stroll around a neighbourhood.  The guide Brendan and his wife live in the area which is in an outer suburb and is a place where a lot of gays live.  Not "glitzy" gays but "homey" gays ( for the most part from what I saw) ie guys walking the dog, going to the supermarket in their matching jeans, some couples ( like some middle aged husbands and wives) wearing the same colour clothes, same colour glasses etc just doing normal everyday things but being in a neighbourhood where there were more male couples (  I didn't see any female couples) than other couples.

Brendan spoke about the history of the buildings and the neighbourhood and he was the only guide who pointed out small markers in the pavement.  (This could be because this was the only tour that we were on that was in a neighbourhood.)

These "markers" are on the pavement outside the houses where known Jewish people lived before they were taken away by the Nazis.  The plaque contains details about them.  

I felt a great honour to have seen some of these acknowledgements of life so dreadfully destroyed.