Berlin Day 3

On Sunday we got up and visited the East Side Gallery, a long portion of the Berlin wall that still stands and has been painted. I have my own opinions on this, but I post the pictures and you can form your own opinions.

The Romans strike again!

This view looked very different not that long ago

Pokeball?

More like flew too slow, Rome to Berlin

On the one hand with the wall, I understand turning a negative symbol into a positive one, or at least one that teaches hope not hate. However, some of those paintings were modern (2004) and below had emails and websites of the artists. It disgusts me to think people could be making money off the Berlin wall. Isn't it swell Berlin was once divided into East and West so that they left a nice canvas for modern artists to make some coin? Mixed feelings about how the wall should be displayed. We left the East Side Gallery and went to one of the big flea markets in Berlin, which was really cool.

An old friend

Left the flee market and made it back to Austin's apartment for mass at 12, then I caught the 2 bus to the airport.

 In case I ever get an instagram, I grabbed some classic airplane photos on the flight home

Oh hey Tiber

Then it was back to Rome and bed. And that was the trip. Tomorrow I provide my overall commentary on the trip and Berlin. Like the Keenan review, it'll be censored.

Germany Day 2

So I'm going to do these next two posts a little differently. Several of you have expressed interest in getting my opinions on things. I have a lot of those, and my thought is to present them at the end. For now, I'll provide a basic narrative and lots of photos for today and tomorrow's post (detailing Saturday and Sunday in Berlin) and Friday evening I'll recount my adventures from this week and write a little reflection on my feelings after Berlin.Saturday and Sunday had some troubling sights, so I would rather write a somewhat cohesive review on one day, then separate my thoughts. Here goes.

Saturday we got up and went adventuring in East Berlin. There's some stuff by the spreeriver we wanted to check out so we did that and got some decent photos of things in rural Berlin.

He was happy to see me, even though I got him up at crack of dawn everyday

Near the bars. Didn't scare away the hipsters, since reading stickers is too mainstream

Universal headquarters Berlin. Depressing location

We then went back to downtown Berlin.

Sony center, big film location. Mark Whalberg was here a week before I was for the premier of transformers

We then took a tour of the Berlin concentration camp...

350+ to a room

The overseers would let the kitchen staff decorate their work environments

They believed this would make them more productive.

Somehow the shower in the first image of fruit is much more sinister when you consider what showers were being used for

Spot for execution by firing range

End of the line for many

Ovens for burning of human bodies

Captured Soviet soldiers

Upon entering this zone, prisoners would be shot

Work will set you free

I'll talk about the camp on Friday. I'm troubled by a lot of things I saw there, but just blown away that an operation of that scale was allowed to happen all over Europe. We returned to Berlin and explored the city some more.

There were members of Parliament who voted against Hitler. They were killed, and this is now their memorial

Memorial to the slain Jews

Street where Hitler and the three other big four German leaders had their offices

A more natural looking wall than what will be seen at East side gallery

This is all for now. Take this all in, if you have questions fire them my way. Know Friday that I'm going to be ranting. I'm troubled deeply by some aspects of Berlin, and these photos help remind me of all the worrisome things I saw. More to come