Dachau

After Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I left Oberammergau and the beautiful Alps behind, we headed towards Munich to pick up Darren from the airport. The drive was fine and smooth sailing until we got into Munich, and then it completely bogged down. We sat in traffic for a long time and were about an hour late picking up Darren from the airport. We did finally break free of the traffic jam, though, picked him up, and then headed towards the town of Dachau and the more sobering part of our trip.

Dachau was the site of the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, and was used as a model for the rest of the concentration camps they set up throughout the territory they conquered. It was a little surreal to go from beautiful mountain scenery and fun castle site-seeing to such a grim reminder of what people are capable of doing to each other. It had been on my list of places I wanted to see, though, since I think it is important to go see places like this so that it is not forgotten. My mom, Doreen, and I took an audio tour through the memorial site while Darren entertained Mikayla.

Part of the Memorial inside the old camp

The gates to the concentration camp, which reads "Work will make you free." It was both a way to mock the prisoners as they entered the camp and a way to promote the propaganda to the outside world that it was a "work rehabilitation camp" and not a death camp.

Sculpture that is part of the memorial

Wall behind the maintenance building that served as the location for execution by firing squad

A replica of one of the barracks that housed the prisoners

View out the window of the replica barrack, looking at the foundations that mark where the original barracks were located.

One of the church memorials located on site.

Berlin

When Darren's parents were here visiting, they gave Darren and I the opportunity to get away by ourselves for a couple of days. It was the first time that both of us had been away from Mikayla at the same time for the night since she was born, so it was a little hard to get away at first, but it was good to be able to spend the time together. We took the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Berlin, since that was a city I really wanted to go. We flew out of Cologne early on Friday morning, stayed Friday night, and then came home late afternoon on Saturday. We had thought about staying one more night, but wanted to get back and have a day with Darren's parents before they had to go back home.

The Cologne regional airport

We had a great time on our little trip. It would have been nice wherever we went because it was good to have time with just the two of us, but we really enjoyed the city of Berlin. We took the opportunity to do a lot of sight-seeing and do things at a pace that we couldn't have with a toddler with us. There was so much to see that we couldn't possibly fit it in the two days that we were there. We have a long list of things that we would like to do or see next time we go back... whenever that might be.

Berlin is a large city with 3.5 million people living there, but with a footprint of a much larger city so there is a lot of space for everything. With the fall of the Berlin wall only 20 years past, there is still a lot of construction and rebuilding happening. It was interesting to see the city and what they are doing for memorials of both the war and the wall, and interesting to see how the new city is taking shape as the capitol of the reunified Germany. Much of the art and sculptures that we saw around the city centered around the theme of the four different parts of the city (the parts that were divided between France, Russia, Great Britain, and the USA after the war) trying to come together.

We took quite a few pictures on our trip (although be didn't quite match Darren's dad's feat of 1000 pictures on the weekend before). I am including a few here to highlight some of what we saw.

Funny little car that we saw when we first got in to the main part of the city

We weren't really sure where to start our sight seeing once we got in to the main part of the city from the airport, but finally settled on seeing "Check Point Charlie" first. It was one of the checkpoints to get between the east and west parts of the city when the wall was in place, and the one where they have set up a museum dedicated to the wall, its history, and some of the escape attempts that happened. They have set up a replica of the U. S. Army post that was there while the wall was in place, although the replica is much smaller than the original.

Part of the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Strasse, which shows in pictures and in words the history of both the wall and its fall. We learned a lot that I hadn't known about this period in history.

Checkpoint Charlie, with a replica of the sign that was posted at the original check point. You can see the replica of the guard house in the background, complete with fake "American" soldiers who you could pay to have a picture taken with. The whole area was really touristy, but it was worth seeing.

Darren "escaping" from the east to the west

The cobblestones mark the location that the wall used to be in Potsdamer Platz. The entire square is now a bustling intersection and new modern buildings are bringing the place back to life. It is hard to believe that not so long ago the entire area had nothing on it but the wall and 150 feet of "no man's land."

Darren straddling east and west

Darren and I with one of the remaining pieces of the wall still standing. There are only 13 places in the city that you can see small parts of this wall that once divided an entire city.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe near the Brandenburg Gate

Close up of the memorial

After seeing a few sights by walking around, we decided that there wasn't any way that we would be able to see everything on our own by walking or even taking the subway between sights. So, we bought tickets on one of the many double-decker city tour buses that we saw and hopped on board. It was a nice was to see the main sights of the city and get a better understanding of what we were seeing through the tour guide's words. It was also a good way for us to decide what we wanted to go back and see in more detail.

Darren and I on the bus

The tour guide

The Deutscher Dom in Gendarmenmarkt

Berliner Dom - a Protestant cathedral

The massive TV tower that the East Germans built to display their superiority over the West

One of the museums on Museumsinsel

The Reichstag, the country's parliament building and the symbolic heart of German democracy

Darren and I in front of the Reichstag

The new Parliament buildings. They straddle the river, which once divided East Germany from West Germany, with bridges in between to symbolize the two parts coming together.

A sculpture

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It was built originally as a memorial to Germany's first emperor. Bombed during World War II, its ruins have been left standing with a new bell tower and chapel built in either side of it. It is still a memorial, but now to the horror of war.

Brandenburg Gate

St. Hedwig's Cathedral

A window looking down on rows of empty bookshelves below Bebelplatz, a memorial of the day in 1933 when the Nazi minister for propaganda and public enlightenment organized a book burning, when more than 20,000 books by Jews, Communists, and Pacifists burned on a pyre in the middle of the square.

Figure on the railing of a bridge over the river Spree

The front facade of the Berliner Dom

The back of the Berliner Dom, with the sunset over the river Spree

Darren in a Trabi car in the museum about how life was in East Germany. The car was built of a plastic hybrid and maxed out at 60 mph.

One of the many construction sites in the city. The engineer in me couldn't resist posting this.

Random Spider Man sighting... I am not even sure what the building was, but I thought it was funny to see when we walked by.

When we got into Berlin, we found out that the World Championships for Track and Field were being held here in the city and that the opening day was on Saturday. While we were walking around on Friday we saw athletes from all over the world walking around. It was pretty amazing to see. We saw some of the opening ceremonies that were being held near the Brandenburg Gate on Friday evening and we took part of some of the things they had available for those of us not competing.

Picture of an opening ceremonies concert

Darren posing on the track at the opening ceremonies

Darren testing out the javelin booth. He threw the farthest of anyone we saw while we were standing there, so he was pretty happy about that.

Me on the subway on our way back to the airport. We had a great visit and hope to get back to see more someday.

Vogelsang IP

On the same day that Mikayla and I visited Bad Münstereifel, Darren I decided after he got home from work to do another outing. We had heard that there was a site that wasn't too far away that used to be a training facility for Nazi leaders. Here is a little blurb about it from their website, "A forgotten monument to Hitler's ideology has emerged from a 70-year time warp -- a castle built in the 1930s to train a new Nazi elite. Vacated by the Belgian army last year (2006), it sheds light on the systematic brainwashing that churned out a generation of fanatics. Now it's being spruced up to teach visitors about the perils of indoctrination." Vogelsang college was built to resemble a medieval castle so that the students would feel like it was an elite environment and to "link" them with their past.

We did not get to tour around as much as we would have liked to, since we got there fairly late in the evening. On the website it said that it stayed open until dusk, but since it stays light until about 10 or 10:30 pm here, we weren't sure what time that would be. We got there at about 7:45 pm only to find out that it closed at 8 pm. So, we quickly put Mikayla in the Ergo carrier and walked to see as much as we could. We were the only car in the parking lot and the only people walking around. It was a little eerie to be the only ones there, and a little eerie to think of the history of the place, but I think that it was a good experience and one that we would like to go back and visit a little more thoroughly if we get the chance.

The former entrance and guardhouse structure


The tower, which contains a narrow "Cult Chamber" where the students worshiped fallen heroes of the Nazi party.


View from Volgelsang overlooking the valley below. On the hill in the distance used to be the village of Wollseifen, which was evacuated by the British Army in 1946 so that the area could be used for military training exercises.

Mikayla and I looking out over the valley