Berlin & Copenhagen

When I left off my last blog post (Two months ago! I'm so sorry, I've been quite busy. I just moved into a new apartment!), we had just spent our last night in Prague at the campsite. In the morning on June 7, we left the Czech Republic for Germany.

Our ultimate destination that day was Berlin, but we made a lunch stop in Dresden. Dresden had been completely leveled by World War II, but they tried really hard to replicate the city as it had been before the war. They even used some of the same stones, so if you can see dark or blackened stones in the photos below, those stones are survivors of the bombing.

Dresden, Germany

The Dresden Frauenkirche

The church above is a Lutheran church, dedicated to Martin Luther himself. Luther was born in Saxony, the region of which Dresden is now the capital.

We then continued on to Berlin. Our hostel in Berlin was in what would have been East Berlin back when the wall was still up, which was a pretty cool feeling for a history lover like me. I wouldn't have been able to go there 30 years ago. Since we were entering the city from the east, the first stop we made was at one of the few remaining Soviet war memorials in all of Germany, which was surprisingly lovely.

Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park

Continuing farther into East Berlin, we took a quick walking tour of our neighborhood to get our bearings. I especially enjoyed seeing the East Side Gallery, a mile long stretch of art painted on a replica of the Berlin Wall. We then checked into our hostel, which was the nicest of the trip up to that point. After taking some time to freshen up, my tour group met in the hostel restaurant for dinner and just hung out in the hostel afterward. We had a big day ahead of us.

In the morning, many of us had signed up to do the Third Reich walking tour, which was a historical tour about what it would have been like to live in Berlin while Hitler was in power. Needless to say, I loved it. Furthermore, everyone on the tour agreed that we had an incredible guide. Shoutout to Lorna because she was amazing.

Lorna took us to see most of the main sights of Berlin, including the numerous Holocaust memorials in the city. One of the many things I love about Germany (including the food, which I still have dreams about) is that they don't try to hide what happened in the Holocaust. They take ownership of it, and it's part of every German student's curriculum to visit a concentration camp. Part of the tour was actually a stop at the former site of Hitler's bunker where he killed himself. I don't have photos, and I say "the former site" because the German government made sure it was completely destroyed, and Hitler's ashes were scattered in the Biederitz river. In fact, Hitler's bunker is now a parking lot for a rather nice apartment complex. Therefore Hitler has no resting place, nor any appropriate place for Neo-Nazis to create a shrine to him. To say that this care and effort by the German government impressed me would be an understatement.

The Reichstag building

Holocaust memorial for Roma and Sinti

Posing with the Brandenburg Gate

Holocaust memorial for homosexuals

Trabi car, a crappy Soviet car that has become a symbol of East Berlin

Checkpoint Charlie

Topography of Terror, aka Nazi headquarters, with the remains of the Berlin wall in front

For me, the Roma and Sinti Holocaust memorial was beautiful and very moving, especially because they piped in violin music from the trees. The homosexual memorial was underwhelming at best, which Lorna said is partially because homosexuality is still so taboo, even today. But I was both highly impressed and sort of disturbed by the Holocaust memorial for Jewish people. On the outskirts of the memorial, it doesn't look like anything spectacular. It's a bunch of stone pillars in varying sizes and heights. According to the artist, none of them are exactly the same. He never gave a technical explanation of the meaning of the memorial; he left it up to the visitor to decide, so I figured I'd share with you what I felt like when I ventured in. First though, here are the photos:

From the edge of the memorial

Deep in the middle

When I first entered the memorial, the pillars were only about as high as my ankles, but it felt like only a moment before their height swallowed me up. I couldn't help but think that's probably what many Jewish people felt during the rise of Naziism. Furthermore, it felt like it took much longer to get out of the shadowy and claustrophobic part than it did to get in. Also, I went into the memorial with several other people from my tour group, but as you can see above, once you get inside, it's incredibly isolating. It was hard to even hear each other or communicate at all, let alone see each other among all of these concrete pillars. I don't even want to imagine the comparisons for the people imprisoned in concentration camps or in hiding from the Nazis. I was actually deeply unsettled by the experience, which I admittedly took to be a good thing. I think the artist had the desired effect, at least on me.

Lorna left us at Checkpoint Charlie, and I doubled back with some of the other tour group members to visit the Topography of Terror, which is in a photo above. Formerly the site of Nazi headquarters, it's since become a free museum about Nazi Berlin. 

We stopped for lunch to try some pork knuckle, or what I would probably call a ham hock (No matter what it's called, it's delicious), potato dumplings, and beer, because what else should one eat in Germany? We then crossed over Museum Island, which is in fact an island in the river Spree which is covered in--you guessed it--museums. Five of them, to be exact. Museum Island is also home to the Berlin Cathedral, aka the Berliner Dom.

Pork knuckle lunch

Humboldt University

Museum Island

Posing with the Berliner Dom (with the Fernsehturm TV tower in the background)

Posing with Amplemann, a symbol of East Berlin

Buddy Bears are also a symbol of Berlin

As I was captioning those photos, I had to laugh because I didn't realize there were so many symbols of Berlin. It didn't register at the time that there was just one after the other.

We then continued on to Alexanderplatz to go shopping. We were going on a pub crawl that night, and my tour director suggested that everyone wear bad t-shirts, so most of us stopped at a Primark to get something cheap but hideous (I decided on a nightshirt that had a picture of a cow on it and it said "I Love Moo." In case you're wondering, I laughed about that god-awful, nonsensical pun literally all night long.).

Only eight people in this photo are not Australian

Our pub crawl actually started off as an "alternative walking tour," during which a really laid-back guy who cursed constantly showed us a bunch of street art and graffiti and talked about how amazing Berlin was for free spirits because it was basically a judgment-free city (Lucky for me, considering that I was going out on the town in literally a cow nightgown.). That description really doesn't do it justice though because it was a really awesome tour. My favorite piece of street art is pictured below.

Pretty neat stuff. And the pub crawl was pretty fun too.

In the morning, it was already time to leave Berlin. We spent most of the day on various kinds of transportation. First, a bus to the ferry port, then a ferry to Denmark, then back on the bus to get to Copenhagen. It was a long day, and we were also camping in Copenhagen, so we disembarked from the bus and immediately set up camp. After dinner, it had started to drizzle, so we were taking a short driving tour of the city. I basically had to drag myself back on the bus because I was pretty exhausted. But boy, was I glad I did. The beauty of Copenhagen can't be overstated. I'm so glad I went on that driving tour.

Copenhagen Harbor

The Little Mermaid statue

I slept very well that night, but when I was really disappointed to see storm clouds when I woke up. Sure enough, during breakfast, the skies opened up on us. But the good news is that the bad weather didn't last, of course, because I have absurdly good luck with weather all the time.

Our campsite was outside of the city, so our bus driver drove us in and dropped us off in the center of the city. One of my tour friends, Ellie, and I decided to take our own version of a walking tour around basically the entirety of center city Copenhagen, and can I just say again that Copenhagen is stupidly beautiful?

Downtown Copenhagen

Canals of Copenhagen

Church of Our Savior 

Part of our wander included Christiania, a small section of the city famous for its drug culture. Photos aren't allowed inside but I got a huge kick out of wandering through it, although I refrained from doing any shopping.

Outside Christiania

Entrance to Christiania 

We then continued our wander, in search of the most famous canal in Copenhagen. But I didn't mind getting a little lost in this fairytale city, I assure you.

Isn't it so pretty?

It doesn't even look real to me, and I'm the one who took this photo.

I want to live in Copenhagen.

Nyhavn Canal, the most famous in Copenhagen

Nyhavn Canal made out of Legos (which were invented in Denmark)

Hans Christian Andersen memorial

No wonder Hans wrote so many fairytales. I would too if I lived in Copenhagen. 

We then visited the National Museum of Denmark, a free museum that had a bunch of really cool Viking artifacts (And they also had really fast WiFi, which, as a traveling camper at this point, I so appreciated). Side note: Viking instruments look like they were created by Dr. Seuss.

Leif Eriksson knows how to play the Flu Flooper

Solid silver Viking cauldron

Solid gold Viking drinking horns

Our last stop in the city center was to visit Tivoli Gardens, the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world. Ellie and I paid to go inside despite not going on any rides, just because we wanted to see it. As soon as I heard that Walt Disney took inspiration from Tivoli, I was sold. We just walked around and then sat on a bench eating popcorn. It was a lovely end to a busy day.

Entrance to Tivoli Gardens

Inside the park

A pirate ship restaurant

We met up with the rest of our tour group to get a ride back to the campsite. Our group was lucky because right across the street from the campsite, a little carnival was set up. They had food and rides, and it just a ton of fun. I particularly enjoyed hanging out with some of my tour friends who had sampled some of the delicacies from Christiania. I prefer a different kind of brownie myself but to say they were hilarious would be an understatement. The most memorable part of the evening was going on a scrambler ride with them. I don't think I stopped laughing for the entire thing.

The last installment of the Woman of La Mancha blog will be about the final destinations of my trip: a brief return to Germany via Hamburg, as well as Amsterdam and London!