12 march

germany part 2:
tuesday 22/2
today we took a walking tour of berlin with the GREATEST tourguide known to man - george from missouri. yes i am going to marry him ok, he was hilarious and knew so much and was obviously incredibly passionate about history. he knew so many anecdotes and odd facts about things; we saw the brandenburg gate and holocaust memorial (again), then the carpark where hitler's bunker stood, remnants of the wall including another look at checkpoint charlie, the war ministry, bebelplatz where the book burnings occurred under nazi control, and we were taken through the history of east germany while under soviet occupation up until the fall of the berlin wall. it was so fascinating and (like in year 10 and 11 history with mr allan as i'm sure my parents are aware) having someone who knows so much, is clearly fascinated by it and has numerous facts to share entrusted with teaching us about it made the day fly by.

we then walked back to our hostel visiting mcdonalds on the way where yve and i sampled vegetarian burgers, and crashed for a few hours before going out for dinner.

wednesday 23/2
today we visited sachsenhausen concentration camp which is about an hours train ride out of berlin. to say it was confronting would be an understatement. it was a really interesting day and once again we learned a lot but i was so drained by the end of it - especially when the last 5 minutes involved a mad dash sprinting up the street to make the last train for the day. i feel like being in europe for the year it's a really important thing to see and to acknowledge the horrors of our history so it isn't forgotten etc.
the others then headed back to the hostel while yve, rose and i carried on to visit the visitor centre of the holocaust memorial. again, i think "enjoyed" is the wrong word, but it was incredible to see and read all the first hand accounts of life during the 1940s.
that evening we met a group of people from melbourne! it was so good to meet people who know all the places we know and made it really easy to make friends.

thursday 24/2
georgie and i woke up late and had a leisurely breakfast in the hostel while the others went to go on a tour of potsdam. we decided to walk to the east side gallery and 3km later we reached it. it's basically 1.5km of the berlin wall still standing in its original position; but it has been entirely decorated with commissioned artworks and all of them have a very political message. my photos of the gallery still wont upload but they will be up on facebook soon. i really loved being there, it is one of my favourite memories of berlin.

friday 25/2
i'm a little bit ashamed to say that georgie, janet and i slept most of our last day away after a busy thursday night which didn't see us in bed until the sun was about to come up. at 3pm we all woke up in a panic and went out for lunch. then georgie and janet went for a walk while i wrote some postcards and my travel journal.

can you tell i'm sick of writing about this holiday now? it was amazing, berlin is beautiful and cool and really interesting, there are so many things i would like to do that we just didn't have time for and i would love to go back some time soon.