Here and there but not quite everywhere!
We spent most of the day in and around the Tiergarten, a large park on the west side of Berlin’s city center. We started out at the Brandenburger Tor, checked out the exterior of the Reichstag, and walked through part of the park. We saw various monuments and memorials and ultimately ended up at the southwest corner of the park by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
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Today, we mostly visited portions that remain of the Berlin Wall. While doing so, we also saw Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous crossing between East and West Berlin. And we spent some time at the Topography of Terror, a Dokumentationszentrum (Documentation Center) that covers the Nazis’ rise to power and the evils that they committed. There is also some special focus on this particular site as it is where the Gestapo headquarters was located.
Continue reading “Remnants of the Berlin Wall”
After taking the ICE to Berlin, we dropped off our bags at The Westin Grand and started to walk to the east on Unter den Linden (Under the Linden). We walked to the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) before backtracking by U-Bahn. We unexpectedly encountered Christopher Street Day, a large pride event that was going on today. We spent a little bit of time at the event before walking through the nearby Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. We then kept on walking to Potsdamer Platz where we saw our first Berlin Wall segments. We then took another brief U-Bahn ride followed by a short walk back to our hotel to end the day.
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Yesterday, we visited part of Nürnberg’s Altstadt (Old Town). Today, we started off at Kaiserburg Nürnberg, the Imperial Castle that sits atop a hill on the northern end of the Altstadt. It is quite a large castle and attached to vast remnants of the city wall. Afterwards, we went to the Dutzendteich area where we visited the Documentation Center, a museum that focuses on what the Nazis did here and why this area was important to their rise to power in Germany. We then walked around the area which currently consists of beautiful parkland with huge dilapidated Nazi constructed structures before heading back into the Altstadt to end the day.
Continue reading “Kaiserburg Nürnberg and the Dutzendteich”
After taking the ICE from Frankfurt Airport, we arrived in Nürnberg, or Nuremberg in English, before noon. After checking into our hotel, the Le Meridien Grand Hotel, right next to the train station, we headed over to see the courtroom where the Nürnberg trials took place after World War II. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking through part of the Altstadt, or old town, in the middle of the city.
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