Berlin Day 3 (Part 2) - Pick a train, ANY train!

First I stopped off close by to the station, to a ruined church (WWII victim again), that might have been torn down completely, if it wasn't for the efforts of the citizens. They wanted to put up something a little more modern, but the citizens said no, so they put the modern buildings AROUND the church! (#2-14) Don't they just look lovely! Well, come to find out it was closed, and if they were closed by 11am, they probably wouldn't open at all that day, plus the sign #8, kind of helped with that too. :-)

Well, I wanted to see more of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe". So I took a look at the map, and started riding. Get to see the entrance to the zoo (#15 - 17), but I KNEW I had no time to see Knut (the local attraction from what I hear), so I continued along. Passed by a statue of Richard Wagner on the border of the city "park" (more like inner forest) (#18-19), as well as, a few others, but I knew I was running out of time.

So I get to the "Memorial", its free to the public, and it was a humble sight to see folks. From pictures #20-38, I tried to capture just a small fragment of what's to see here. The focus of the Memorial is on the Jews themselves, not to the horrors that they faced. Obviously they put a little bit of history down, just so that you know (if you didn't already), but the focus was on those that did and did not survive. Picture number 28 was the "Room of Dimensions". It showed little bits of paper that the Jews used throughout the time, and a little bit about the authors of such writtings. The room was breathtaking in my opinion. Next #31, was the "Room of Families", showing just a few families that were torn apart, if not totally destroyed, from the war. They basically had columns coming down from the ceiling (not touching the floor), that gave information about each family, the lives they lived. Basically it was to tell you about their lives. What little they had to go by anyway (if you didn't already know, quite a few records were destroyed back then). After that was the "Room of Names", Number #33 & 34. It's almost a pitch black room, with three blocks for you to sit on, while an announcer in both German and English gives the name of a victim and a little information about the person. It didn't go for more than a minute per person. Then they had a room for most of the major concentration camps, as well as, first hand experience from voice recordings of those that experienced them in some way. Then after that was a room that had a database for various information, didn't have time to check out the database itself. So I continued on my way.

Next stop, a dark hallway (#39)! I'm heading towards the light(#40)! ha ha Just Kidding. Tried visiting her the night before, but couldn't get up into the tower, but now, I was able to come face to face with #66, the Golden Goddess. From #41 to 71, I took photos of the view that you could see from both terraces. The lower platform was similar in the higher platform in that you had a 360 view of Berlin. But along with that you had a glorious painting on wall of the lower platform that I thought was just amazing. Some examples were #54 & 55 for instance. So I started climbing...#58, and climbing #59, and "oh look, more steps!" #61 & #62 (Not sure if I got the quote right from "Barefoot in the park", starring Robert Redford, great lines, but ending kind of sucked for me. Oh well)

But the view as you can see was fantastic! #63 to #68 Oh look, the fashion show! :-) I would have asked someone to take a picture of me with the goddess in the background, but it was standing room only at the top, and hardly any room for such elaborate pictures. So I took them myself. I think I did it okay, if I do say so myself. :-)