The Berliner Mauer

Well, yesterday turned out to be the first day I didn't post, and it was because the picture below summed up about all of the interesting things that happened to me yesterday.

This dude is in the U-bahn station about once a week playing a saw

But today was the best day yet in the city. Every Wednesday (except the first and last ones), our class will be making an "excursion" out into the city. Basically a field trip. Today was the first one, and boy was it awesome. We went to the memorial for the Berlin Wall on Bernauer str. My day started out a bit tough because the S42 (which runs in a counterclockwise ring around the city) was stopped up for some reason. The train arrived...then someone said something over the loud speakers that I didn't catch...then people started getting off. I was planning on getting to the start of our excursion 15 minutes early, but that time gap quickly evaporated as I went down to the U-bahn station, then rode it somewhere, then got onto another one, then on an S-bahn. I got there just before 10, 15 minutes after we were supposed to meet and 30 minutes after I was planning on arriving, but luckily still before the movie started. My teacher didn't mind.

We watched two films about the Mauer. The first was more about the history of the wall, and what it was like living inside the wall. The second was a digital reconstruction of the wall and all of the measures used to keep the people in. I remembered the second video from watching it Junior year in high school, and liked it very much. I was also glad that I watched a YouTube video of the Modern Marvel's episode on the wall, because I knew a lot about the generations that it had gone through. After the videos, we exited the main building and went to the Bernauer straße memorial. 

The gaps in the wall were filled with these stakes...also disconcerting

This memorial ran along Bernauer str., one of the most famous streets due to the fact that some apartment buildings were right next to the wall when it first went up, and people used them to jump to the west until the Soviets bricked up all the windows and evicted the residents. The memorial is about 1 km long, and includes the spot where a church was in the middle of the Death Strip (the grass you see above is the Death Strip between the two walls) until it was destroyed by the Soviets to make escaping less possible.

A cool map of the area

Being this close to such recent history was really impressive. This was easily the most intense thing I have seen here, and it really was a feat of engineering that made this wall so effective. It is unbelievable that a country, in order to keep its people in, actually constructed a WALL around its entire border, and in the most popular place to cross made it nearly impenetrable.

At one end of the memorial was a preserved section of the wall, including a watch tower, death strip, both walls (3rd and 4th generation) and the posts where the electric barbed wire was. That was the most powerful thing for me. It was just so impenetrable. And so real. So crazy.

You could see it through the far wall, and above the wall. The side of the memorial was slightly reflective giving the impression of an infinite wall in both directions

After the wall, we went to a cafe on a nearby street and had some great German food. It rained some, but that didn't effect us much because we were under a very large umbrella. Mavia had to charge her wheelchair a bit, so we hung out there waiting for the rain to pass.

The Intensiv B2 class: (left to right) Varun, Melissa, Claire, Xiner, Helena, Mavia,
Georg (the professor), Cam, Nick, Logan

After the rain and a short ice cream break, we went to the East Side Gallery. It is a just longer than 1 km long section of the wall that has been painted by many professional and amateur artists. This was a very interesting exhibition of paint and freedom, with many iconic photos and paintings. 

Many awesome works of art. I took pictures of a few of them.

After the wall, the excursion ended, but Xiner and I decided to visit the Stasi museum. It was located in the actual office of the chief of the Stasi (Erich Mielke). For me it was mostly very interesting to see all of the spy gadgets they had engineered. It was amazing how much they could do with some very small cameras.

Including a trashcan camera!

I finally made it back home and collapsed. My legs were spent, and my stored up happiness too. Time to recharge for another day of school tomorrow. On Sunday, I am going to go on the official FUBiS Wall Tour, so I am excited to see what else I can learn while on that!

Many pictures have been placed in my album, the link to which is now located on the side of the blog at the top.