Day 1 & 2 - Berlin

I was so exhausted last night that I could not type after three sentences!  I kept falling asleep and waking up to see sentences that made no sense!  So, here is a recap of our first 2 days which really seem like one to us!

Our plane left Houston at  3:00 local time on Friday afternoon and arrived around midnight in Amsterdam (7:00 a.m. local time)!  We then boarded another plane for an hour and a half flight to Berlin.  We arrived at about 10 a.m. (3:00 am Houston time), and waited for two hours for another group to arrive.  We then loaded our luggage onto our bus and drove down to the city center where we walked around in the hot sun for what seemed like forever!!

We learned a few interesting facts throughout the day:

White rabbits lived in the area between the walls!  Not only were the people trapped in East or West Berlin when the walls went up in the middle of the night, but the rabbits were burrowed underground and also trapped when they came up the next morning!  Apparently, they were very happy living in the space undistrubed by people, but there were A LOT of them by the end of the Nazi reign and .....

Things we saw on our tour:

A beautiful protestant church with a fabulous organ.  We even got to hear the organ being played!

We stopped at the Topography of Terror Museum which included an original section of the Berlin Wall.  We took turns taking our pictures with the wall, but we got some even better ones today!  We did not have much time in the museum to really read, but we are getting bits and pieces of the awful times in Germany's history everywhere we go.  You really can't get away from it!

Amplemann is on all of the walk/don't walk signs instead of just a stick figure.  He was actually a part of East Berlin and was incorporated into all of Berlin when it was reunited.

We stopped by the train station where the first children were saved from the Nazis in 1938.  This statue depicts the ones who were not saved and eventually had to live through (or die) in the Holocaust.

On the opposite side are these children who thankfully made it out safely before having to go through all the torture.  However, we were reminded that these children left without their families, and had to start a whole new life with people they didn't know.  Even their story can be tragic!

There are many places in Berlin where the country has tried to memorialize the Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust.  One of those ways was placing these "stumbling blocks" at the entrance to each house where Jews lived in the Jewish quarter.  Each block has the name of the family who lived there and where they went when they left their homes (which concentration camp, etc.).  They are called stumbling blocks because they are raised a little so that you literally stumble over them a when you pass and are reminded to look down and remember - not just Jews in general, but the names!  These stones can be found in most of the countries where Jews were exhiled.

We spent a very short time in the Jewish quarter learning a little about the people who tried to save others.  One man was made known for helping disabled people learn to make brooms and other equipment - trying to give them a trade or job so they weren't seen as worthless.

170,000 Jews lived in the Jewish quarter before the Nazi invasion.  Only 4000 remained after!  They are now coming back slowly.  About 20,000 Jews now live in Berlin.


We did a walking tour of downtown and then ended with a dinner of sausages and potatoes.  Lastly, we boarded the bus and were in our hotel rooms by about 8:30 p.m.  Then, we crashed until this morning!!  The "first" day is always the hardest because they are trying to keep us up and moving constantly so we will quickly get acclamated to the time change.

We all felt better this morning and were grateful for cool weather and a lot of time on the bus!