Berlin 4 & 5 July

Hi Everyone,

This morning we went to the RER (the train) to go to Charles de Gaulle airport to fly to Berlin. We flew lufthansa airways. We went to Berlin to explore and learn some history and to see one of our favourite bands Pearl Jam in concert at the Berlin O2 World stadium.

We flew in to Berlin at around 11.30am. When we arrived we got straight on to a bendy bus into the city. First we got off at the Brandenburg Gates. These are famous gates that have played an in important role in many wars and political history in Berlin.

We saw lots of bullet holes from WW2 (World War 2) that had been covered with cement. We read an information board on the gates. It talked about what it was like during war times back then. On top of the gates there was a statue that had 4 horses pulling a lady, the lady had lost her head from a bomb. The gates were near the famous Berlin Wall.

You may be wondering what wall we're talking about. The wall that we are talking about is the wall that the Soviet Union (inc Russia) built to separate east and west Berlin after the second world war. People wrote messages of freedom on the wall. Lots of people tried to climb over the wall but they would have got shot straight away. Some of the people had families on the other side of the wall.

There was a place called Checkpoint Charlie where if you were to cross from the east side to the west side or the west side to the east side you and the vehicle you were traveling in had to be completely checked. Only those with special approval could cross. The wall was taken down about 20 years ago when east and west was united. A man named Adolf Hitler, an evil German leader, started the second world war. The Germans took over a few countries. They were about to take over England but United States, France, Australia and the United Kingdom and some other ally countries fought back and to finish them off they bombed the life out of Germany particularly Berlin!

Then we got on to the open top tour bus and went around Berlin and saw all the main sights. We stopped and had lunch. We had giant pretzels and sandwiches. Then we went back on the open top bus, this time we had earphones as the last time we had a German guy who spoke only English sometimes and told terrible jokes.

Then we went and saw a saved section of the Berlin Wall and the checkpoint charlie memorial. There was a display there called the topography of terror. You can imagine what this was about. It was very interesting. We found out that for some people who tried to climb the wall, instead of getting shot straight away they were used to show people what would happen if they tried to climb the wall.

After we looked at the memorial we went to our apartment and had a sleep and then had dinner. We stayed at the Singer 109 Apartments which is like an up market backpackers. We had the best room in the place. It was pretty flash.

Then we went to the Pearl Jam concert. Pearl Jam is a rock band from America. It is also mum's fave band. The lead singer is Eddie Vedder. Elodie loved Keep On Rockin In The Free World and Holly and Erin both loved Got Some. Mum liked all of them including Indifference, and dad liked Alive and Just Breath and The End. We kept on rocking till 11.30pm and got home at 12.30am.

When we got home we went to bed. We had a sleep in and woke up at 9.00am. We went down to the restaurant to have breakfast before the 10.00am checkout. We had coco pops, eggs and bacon, peaches and yoghurt, hot chocolate, toast, apple and orange juice, apple and coffee.

Then we walked around Berlin. We saw many buildings with bullet holes and bomb schrapnel marks in them. We went to the famous Pergamon museum. We looked at the Pergamon forum and the Babylon gates of Ishtar, dating back almost 3000 years ago. They were incredible.

The Babylon gates had pictures on the walls like lions and donkeys and one of the animals had a snake like head and body, a lions hind legs, a tail with a scorpions sting in the tail and the front legs were a bird's legs.

We also looked at the Egyptian and middle east artifacts and statues which were very interesting and old. Then we had lunch.

Then we briskly walked to the bus stop to go to the airport. When we got on the bus we realised that we had a very moody bus driver. He stopped the bus and pretended that the bus broke down. He quickly sped off when everyone got off. Not sure what was going on there. Another bus came along and we got to the airport. Then we got on our plane to go back to Paris. Our plane got grounded for 1 hour due to big storms on route and in Paris. On the plane we got cheese sandwiches and coke. We didn't like them much but dad ate pretty much all of them. When we got to the Paris airport we went straight to the RER train but they said that everyone had to evacuate the station because something was wrong. There were police and machine gun carrying soldiers everywhere. We were delayed about an hour. We got back home, had a snack and went to bed.

We had a fun couple of days. Berlin was a beautiful city and a little more relaxed than Rome and Paris. There were a lot of contrasts particularly old and new. Much of the city had been rebuilt, some nice buildings, some pretty boxy. Our favourite part was the concert. Dad also liked checkpoint Charlie because he was in Berlin as a tourist in 1979 when it was a divided city. He went through checkpoint Charlie into east Berlin through the "iron curtain". He also visited the pergamon back then. It brought back some memories for him. He said it was very scary back then.

Love Elodie, Holly and Erin ;)

P.S.

This is some information that we got from the internet about World War Two, it helped us understand all the things we were seeing in Berlin:

The 2nd world war happened from 1939-1945. It was between (Nazi) Germany (with a few other countries like Italy) versus much of the rest of the world including England, United States, France, Russia, and the ANZACs. Nazi Germany was led by dictator Adolf Hitler.

Germany started the war by taking over countries and killing hundreds of thousands of people including people from certain countries and religions. They ultimately wanted to control the world. They were winning for a while but then the allied forces pushed them back when they got to France and Belgium. The allied forces including Russia ultimately pushed the Germans all the way back to Berlin. Massive battles took place throughout the war in many countries and later in the war Germany and Berlin in turn was pounded by allied ground warfare, air raids and bombing. Millions of civilians and soldiers lost their lives during the war including ANZACs.

Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, was subject to 363 air raids during the war. In 1945 as allied forces stormed into Berlin, the Germans surrendered and Hitler committed suicide there. The war was over. The allied countries then had the job of re-establishing Germany. In 1945, following World War II, Germany was divided into two countries - East Germany and West Germany. East Germany was controlled by the communist regime of the Soviet Union while West Germany became a democracy supported by the United States. Berlin, the former capital city, although entirely within East German borders, was also split into two.

On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) decided to block off East Berlin and West Berlin by means of a barbed wire fence. Streets were torn up, and barricades erected. Rail lines and the subway between East and West Berlin was torn up. People of East Berlin and the GDR were no longer allowed to enter West Berlin. Within the year, construction work began to build a solid wall separating the two cities.

The wall was over 100 kms long. The wall was made up of concrete segments erected to a height of four metres with an additional concrete tube on top.

On the side of East Berlin bright illumination lit up the entire area. A trench was dug to prevent vehicles from breaking through. The area was patrolled day and night, with a separate corridor guarded by vicious guard dogs, watchtowers, guards with machine guns, and a second wall. If by chance some one did manage to cross these barriers, they were shot without a warning. Hundreds of German people died trying to get across the wall.

Many families were separated by the erection of this barricade. Relatives who wanted to see their loved ones in East Berlin had to have a valid permit. For 28 years the Wall was a physical separator and created a figurative Iron curtain. There were only a few “gates” or checkpoints where people could cross. People had to have an extremely good reason and approval to cross. One of those checkpoints was Checkpoint Charlie.

In 1989 East Germany decided to open the barrier. On the day it opened, the entire world watched some truly amazing scenes on TV as East Berliners poured through the checkpoints to be greeted by West Berliners. Champagne flowed and people danced on the wall and at Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic gateway between the two cities. Later in 1989 demolition work on the wall began. Souvenir hunters hammered out pieces of the wall and chunks of the wall were even sold.

In 1990 a union between East and West Germany was formed uniting the two cities and countries. The only reminder of the wall is a red line painted on the pavement at the former 'Checkpoint Charlie' to mark the course of the former Berlin wall and a checkpoint charlie and wall memorial built in 1998. The wall memorial was inaugurated at the Bernauer Strasse (former GDR) and includes a portion of the Berlin wall.