The Third Reich | Day 28

How to spend the one full day I had in Berlin? I think my Great Uncle would kill me if I was in Berlin and didn’t do some type of historical tour. It was mid morning and started with the normal routine. I looked through Viator and came across a 3 hour walking tour seeing major sites of the Third Reich and the Nazis in Berlin. That seemed really fascinating and decided to sign up for that. The tour wasn’t until 2:30pm so I had some time to go out and explore. I had seen this really cool elevator in a photo somewhere and wanted to check that out. I scowered the internet to try and find this place. Finally with the right keywords I landed on a location. It wasn’t to far from the hotel so grabbed all my gear and headed out the door. I bailed on the tripod and figured since it was full sun and it would just be an extra thing to carry on the tour I would just leave it in the room. The elevator was located in the Ludwig Erhard House about 3.5 miles from my hotel.

As I exited the hotel across the street I could see one of the Lime bikes. I opened the app and got one of the hour passes. I should start doing longer passes as I always go over the time but I never know exactly how long these rides will take. I did see as well that there was a sandwich shop sort of in the direction of the elevators so diverted and went to get lunch first. The streets were busy and this was the first city I have been in that actually felt like a big city. There were interesting buildings but as a whole it felt like a big, crowded city. I traversed the streets and 10 minutes later was at the food spot. This has happened before, but in the spirit of exploration, I just head towards these places without much research. When I got there it didn’t particularly have any sandwiches I was that interested in. They were mostly artisan sandwiches and was more hoping for a turkey, ham, or club sandwich. I moved on and the next spot I came to happened to be a Hawaiian Poke Bowl restaurant. I could mess with a poke bowl for sure. I went in and found out that place was owned by someone from Hawaii but he wasn’t in which was a shame. I looked over the menu and to my surprise they didn’t offer tuna. It was all salmon oriented. I probably should have rolled with that but I love me some ahi and didn’t want a substitute. I continued on my journey for food and I saw a Subway. It certainly wasn’t ideal but I knew what to expect. I walked in a stood in line. I went with the footlong tuna on wheat and a orange Fanta. I sat outside and enjoyed the fresh air and watching all the people go by. I ate the first half and wrapped the second half for later. I headed back to the bike and started the 3.5 mile ride to the elevators. The ride was pretty easy and along the way I passed Victory Column, which I would return to, and rode through Tiergarden. I arrived at the building, parked the bike, and walked across the street to the front door. I walked in and there was a receptionist but I could see the elevators just behind her. There were people walking about so I skipped talking to them and tried to find how to get to the main atrium. I looked all over but couldn’t spot a door that took me there. I succumbed to defeat and went to go talk to the receptionist. She told me that I was close but I had to walk up the stairs and that would take me to a glass door where I could access the atrium. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what they did in the building but it appeared as it was an educational building. The atrium was empty and the metal pill shaped elevators were going up and down. The building was 8 stories tall and looked like something from a science fiction movie. I stayed in the atrium for about 45 minutes photographing the architecture and the elevators. I waited for those perfect moments where the 3 elevators would line up in various directions. It was really neat and I was the only one in there so that made it even better. I sufficiently shot that location and had about an hour to get back across town to start the tour. I headed out of the building and hopped on the bike and off I went.

On the way to the tour meeting spot I passed the Victory Column and I had to stop. It is located in the middle of a giant round about and stands 220ft tall. I parked the bike and these particular ones before, and after, you ride them you have to pull out, and insert, a pin in to the back wheel. This locks or unlikes the bike and then it can be ridden or parked. When I got off I ended the ride and a message appeared asking if I had inserted the pin. I hadn’t so I did. I clicked the OK button and a error message came up saying I couldn’t park the bike here. I attempted to take the pin out but it was locked. The meter was running of course and I tried every button on the app to stop the ride or unlock the pin. Nothing worked and I didn’t know what to do. I attempted to quit the app and restart it thinking that would diffuse it, but no. I went to the help section and there was a place to say what the error was but nothing to rectify the problem. I then said screw it and walked off. I made my way across the 3 lane round about and found one of the metro station tunnels that was looking directly at the front of it. The metro station stairs, and walls, framed it perfectly and was really really cool. I didn’t have to much time so I lined up the shot and grabbed a few brackets. I wish I had a tripod and more time to sit there and capture the clouds blur as the move overhead. Regardless, it was really cool to stand there and shoot the monument with no one else around. I packed up my stuff and headed back towards the bike that presumably was locked and still charging me haha. When I got there and opened the app it had ended my ride and I was able to scan the bike for a new ride. I wonder if it sees that you walked off and knows you aren’t coming back so it just automatically ends the ride. I guess I will never know lol. I scanned the bike and it unlocked the pin and I was back in business. For a moment when I looked at the map there were no bikes, or scooters, anywhere close and with the time press it wasn’t looking good. Thank goodness I could unlock the bike and continue on my journey. I followed my maps but I kept hitting literal road blocks on a majority of the route. There were tons of police and roadblocks stopping you from entering the Tiergarden. It took extra time to go around all of that but finally made it to the meet up spot 10 minutes before the tour was supposed to begin.

The Viator booking said to meet at Tranenpalast museum. The time was approaching and some people showed up but they were all German speakers. I didn’t think that was the correct tour so I reached out to the number provided to let them know I was here and what I was wearing. Shortly after I received a phone call and it was someone from the tour company. The informed me that I just needed to walk around to the square and look for someone with a yellow umbrella and talk to them. I walked around the corner and sure enough there was a group of about 15 standing next to a man with an umbrella. I approached them and asked the gentleman if I was in the right place, to which I was. The tour was to be a 3hr walking tour where we would learn about the Third Reich and the final days of WWII. We would get to stop at many sites along the way including the Holocaust Memorial, Hitler’s former bunker, and the Reichstag Building. The tour started at the Trains to Life – Trains to Death monument. The monument has two depictions. The first is a pair of children representing the 10,000 children that were saved by the Kindertransport. Kinderstransport brought these children fo varying countries from what would soon be Holocaust camps. The other is a group of 5 children representing the 1.6 million Jewish, and non-Jewish, children that were taken by Holocaust trains to concentration camps and later killed. So there is a way to start a tour. We talked about the rise of Hitler and how he came to be the Fuhrer. We proceeded from the monument to the Reichstag Building. This building was the last Nazi stronghold to fall ending the war. The building is the legislative building in Berlin. Four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany the Reichstag was set on fire. A Dutch “Council Communist” was blamed for the fire and Hitler stated that the Communists were plotting against the German government leading to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree. This decree suspended civil liberties and start a confrontation with the Communists. What a fascinating building!!

The tour rolled on and we got to walk a part of the outer Berlin Wall. The area was now a road but there was inlaid bricks in the street that was part of the the wall’s foundation. This road led us to the Soviet War Memorial which was built to recognize the soviet soldiers that had been killed in the war, especially the 80,000 that were killed in the Battle of Berlin. It was a huge plaza and on the other side is the Brandenburg Gate. This large monument is built on the site of the former Berlin city gate and marks the start of the trail leading to Brandenburg. We continued on stopping next at the Holocaust Memorial. Consisting of 2711 cuboid steles the memorial honors the roughly 6 millions Jews who were murdered under Hitler. They are laid in rows and columns and have varying heights. If you walk through them you will reach a point where you lose the skyline all together and can see nothing but the sky. Likewise you will be walking through and catch a glimpse of someone down a row and when you look back they are gone. You get a ghost like feeling and that in turn is what it felt like to be a Jew. You are there and then you are gone. That place was pretty incredible and one everyone should go see if they are in Berlin. The next stop was real interesting. We walked a few blocks and landed in a gravel shitty parking lot. There was a street that ran by it on the opposite side was a field that wasn’t maintained and had nothing going for it. We took a seat under a tree and were asked why we thought we stopped at this place that clearly has nothing. Only one person knew and I loved this kid haha. They pop up in historical tours mostly but they are the ones that know most everything about the history of whatever it is. He walked next to the tour guide between stops telling him about the Nazis and asking question after question. So certainly he knew what was here. For the rest of us it wasn’t very obvious. We came to learn that this whole blank shitty piece of land sits above Hitler’s bunker where he would go on to kill himself in. When it was all said and done the KGB would collapse the bunker so no one could ever go in again. Hitler ate a cyanide pill and the shot himself. His officers then burned his body and buried him in a shallow grave where a small tree was now. The KGB found his remains in this grave and secretly hid them until April 2009 where they produced a piece of Hitler’s skull with a bullet hole in it. Every nation has confirmed that this is authentic. It is a bit amusing that all of the various groups that suffered terribly all have really beautiful memorials, but Hitler’s resting place is just a shit piece of land with nothing signifying anything about it.

The final stop on the tour was the Detlev Rohwedder Building. This building went virtually untouched throughout the bombing raids on Berlin. It’s size is absolutely incredible. The floor space of the building is just ove 1.2 million square feet, which is roughly 28 acres. It originally was home to the Reich Aviation Ministry, and Hitler’s office. There are more than 2,100 offices, which can be reached via 6.8km of corridors, 17 staircases, four elevators and three paternoster lifts. Next door to the building is a small field with a grey building on the far side. This plot of land was where the headquarters for the SS was along with the GeStaPo secret police. Sunken just below the street between buildings is ruins of underground torture cells that were used by the GeStaPo police. It is said that 99% of people that were interrogated there would die there. The headquarter building had been destroyed during the bombing raids but now there grey building on the far side is home to the Topography of Terror museum. This museum is an in depth look at the SS and GeStaPo secret police. With that last stop our tour was over. It was incredibly informative and Xavier, our tour guide, did a fantastic job. I would have been pretty sad to have missed this tour and history of Berlin.

The group disbanded and I headed off to find a Lime bike. There was a nice shaded spot along one of the buildings and I decided to sit and have the second half of my sandwich. The 6 mile bike ride and 3hr walking tour left me feeling a bit hungry haha. It didn’t take long to finish that. I wrapped it all and headed for a bike. There was one close by and I wanted to catch one last thing before a thunderstorm was supposedly coming in. I had seen it as I rode around town but wanted to see the Berlin TV Tower up close. I pedaled across town and the tv tower isn’t hard to miss. The ride took about 20 minutes and when I arrived the square was packed. It is one of the biggest landmarks in Germany and it stands just over 1200ft tall. It was completed in 1969 and was the 2nd tallest tv tower in the world. It receives a million visitors a year and is home to multiple tv and radio broadcasters. The clouds were starting to roll in and thunder could be heard off in the distance. I got a few shots of it and then decided to hustle back before the rain. There was a small market next to where the bikes were so the temptation to grab a Redbull was high. I thought I had time before the rain but that in fact wasn’t so. Right when I got to the bike it started raining. I had a 2 mile bike ride home which it poured the whole way back. This is my second time getting caught in the rain on a commute home and you would think I would have learned that lesson from the last time, but nope. I just gotta get that photo haha. I arrived at the hotel and was still early. My Great Uncle had told me about a club that he went to in the early 60’s called the Resi Bar and I told him that if I made it to Berlin I would go check it out if it was around. The rain put a damped on all of that. When I got back to the hotel I dried off and swapped clothes and headed down to the lobby for a beer. I looked around the internet for this place and couldn’t seemingly find it. Finally there was 1 article that talked about it but said it had closed in ’78 and the building had been demolished. It continued to rain so I threw in the towel and just stuck around the hotel. After a couple of beers at the bar I headed back up to my room and called it a day. I had a train tomorrow morning to Amsterdam to see what all the hype was about haha. Will wake up and do this all again tomorrow!