The Holocaust Memorial

We had briefly stopped the night before to see the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe from the edge, but it was nothing compared to walking around inside of it. Before we were allowed to explore the memorial, we visited another exhibition which was so incredibly sad that I was crying from about the second room (oddly, I was the only one). 

The memorial is made up of 2,711 concrete boxes varying in height. Some of them were massive. It felt as though I was trapped and at some times I even felt claustrophobic, which is I guess the intended effect.

For more information about the memorial click here.

The Story of Berlin

Our first stop was at The Story of Berlin Exhibit, which was interesting although to actually get much out of it a LOT of reading was involved. Not sure what the significance of this piano is, but I liked the photo, so I decided to put it on the blog...

For more information go to: www.story-of-berlin.de

Bus Tour round Berlin

I'm not sure what I was expecting we'd do during the day, but I can tell you that I did not expect that we'd travel around in a bus for half the day...

We had a very good guide, but it's still not the same as being outside the whole day, not that the weather was particularly nice, but still. Here are two photos that I got from the bus. 

The Hotel Transit

Here's two pictures of the place where we ate breakfast and dinner. 

The first night the dessert looked like salad dressing and we all looked at it like, "WHAT is that!?" Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer and I went up and took some into a bowl. Thank goodness it wasn't salad dressing, it was custard. :)

Hotel/Hostel (??) Room

I was sharing a room with 4 of my friends; Ellie, Fiona, Emilie and Amelia. The Hotel 'Transit' was in between a hotel and a hostel. The beds were made when we went there = hotel. A housekeeper came each day to tidy up = hotel. Kind of in the middle of nowhere = hostel. Majority of the people staying there were kids/school groups = hostel. You get the point...

We were really lucky because our room looked out to Berlin instead of into a courtyard where everyone else faced. 

Ellie and Amelia

Berlin at Night

Here's some photos of our walk around Berlin at night: 

The Reichstag building (German parliament) from afar...
Random point of useless info: In 1933 a Dutch communist set fire to the Reichstag Building and Hitler used it to say that communists were EVIL and VIOLENT

The facade of the Reichstag building... 

The Brandenburg Gate - the Berlin wall used to run just in front of it....
This is a Wikipedia link if you wanna know more...

Berlin Trip

Waking up at 6 in the morning is not fun, but waking up at 6 in the morning and then spending 12 hours on a school bus is even worse. Thursday the 29th of March was spent on the bus to Berlin. We passed the time watching movies and playing cards.
The Berlin trip was a History trip to do with Hitler's rise to power, which we had been studying the past year in History. 

From L-R = Amelia, Fiona, Emilie, Zoe

When we finally arrived in Berlin we stopped at our hotel and ditched our stuff, had dinner and then went to catch the metro to the center of Berlin to see the center lit up at night. 

From L-R = Emile, Fiona, Amelia, Ellie, Ines, Saskia