After four fun filled and exhausting days in London, we traveled over to Berlin for our next stop of the trip. Immediately, when we arrived in Germany, I felt a little bit of culture shock. Looking around, I could not read any of the signs and it sort of took me aback for a minute. It was already so different from London, not just the language aspect, but even the people seemed to have a different attitude about them and they didn’t appear to be as laid back as the people in London were. However, I decided to embrace everything that Germany had to offer and was excited for the days ahead even if that did mean many confusing German conversations. Once we arrived in Berlin after a full day of traveling, we walked a few blocks from our hotel to visit the Kaiser Wilhelm church. The church was beautiful and had ornately detailed ceilings that you couldn’t help but stare in awe at. The next day our class split up into two groups and took a walking tour of Berlin with a tour guide. On this tour we saw many historical and important monuments that contributed to Berlin’s rich history such as, where the Berlin wall once stood, the Holocaust memorial, checkpoint Charlie, and the place where Hitler’s bunker once was.
What really stuck out to me on the tour was when we went to the site of Hitler’s bunker. Walking up to it you would never know that this was once the place where the horrific and monumental dictator once lived, hid, and eventually took his own life. Currently, in 2015 this area of land is now a high end apartment complex and parking lot. Other than the small sign off to the side, near the sidewalk, that depicts the layout of the bunker and explains a little bit of the history, it looks like a completely normal apartment complex. It is very easy to just walk right by it without even realizing that this was the place where one of the most heinous and powerful men in all of history once occupied. However, the tour guide began to explain that they did it this way so that the area would not become somewhat of a shrine to Hitler and a place that would draw a lot of negative attention and supporters. After the walking tour, we went to the checkpoint Charlie museum. The museum had such a plethora of information that it was a little bit overwhelming and was a lot to take in all at once. Nonetheless, it was very interesting to see the history behind the Berlin wall and read some of the amazing escape stories.
The next morning we toured Deutsche Welle, a German broadcasting studio, went to the DDR museum, and heard from a former East German typesetter that escaped East Germany. I found the DDR museum to be extremely interesting and informational. One of the things that I learned on the tour was that TV played a central role in unifying the East and West. 95% of East Germany watched West Germany TV because the TV signals reached to the East side and did not stop at the iron curtain. East Germany’s government only allowed two TV channels so by watching West Germany’s TV channels, East Germans could “escape” the dictatorship for a little while. In addition to TV, another form of media that East Germany’s government controlled was the newspaper. East Germany had 39 newspapers to make it seem like the citizens had a choice in what they wanted to read. However, every newspaper had the same information in it and they all looked pretty much the same.
Visiting the DDR museum and the Checkpoint Charlie museum really made me realize just how different the East and West sides of Germany actually were. In the Fall we learned a little bit about the two sides and their differences but to actually go to these museums and see pictures of the East side versus the West side and to hear from a man that had actually gone through it and lived on both sides, really put it into perspective. It is just crazy to think about how a simple wall can separate a country into two and cause such immense differences. One example that the tour guide gave to show how different the two sides were, was when he talked about cars. People on the East side of Germany had to order their car almost 17 years in advance and only had one option of cars, a trabant. However, in West Germany, people could get any kind of car that they wanted, when they wanted, there were no restrictions on cars, and basically no restrictions on anything.
-Kelsey Krug