Darkness

As per Stephanie's suggestion, we woke up really early to go see the Reichstag before the rest of Berlin's tourist population woke up. Nadine, Laura and I were out of the house by 8 AM and at the Reichstag by 830 AM. The glorious benefit of this was that we had no line to wait in and got inside immediately. Security still took 20 minutes, but still - we were on our free English audio guides before 9 AM. Pretty impressive.

Some quick background: the Reichstag is Germany's "White House", it is their symbol of political democracy. Shortly prior to WWII, the Reichstag burned down. Hitler blamed it on a communist and used that as "proof" of a budding communist revolution. He used this fear to gain emergency rights of power. He used these emergency power to hold a vote to give him permanent absolute power. With his temporary power, he put his competition and other people he didn't like in jail. Thus, only people he liked were still in the government and of course these people all voted to give Hitler absolute power. Ergo, this building was instrumental to his immediate political success. After WWII the building was rebuilt (something Hitler of course never bothered to do while he was in power, even though "somebody else" burned it down. It is now widely believed that the Nazis were the perpetrators of the burning of the Reichstag).

The Reichstag has a huge dome on top which was built above the room that the Senate does a majority of their work in. The architectural idea here is that the "people are on top" and if the government officials ever forget who they are working for, all they have to do is look up. Stephanie's joke here was that they'll look up and see tourists, haha. Civilians are allowed to visit this amazing building for free, and there are spiral walkways going up and down the sides of this huge dome, which lends fantastic panoramic views of Berlin. It was a bit foggy, but With the free audio guide tour, I learned a lot about the Reichstag and the buildings in Berlin's 360 degree panorama.

We finished touring the Reichstag only to see a MASSIVE line of people already waiting outside at 930 AM. So glad we beat the rush! We had about an hour to kill in which we found a cheap, fresh baguette and some cheese and a bathroom so that we would be well prepared for the rest of our day.

At 1030 AM we met back where the free city tour was yesterday, but today we were joining Stephanie on a paid guided tour of Sachsenhausen. This tour is supposed to be the most important site/tour in Berlin, and we knew that Stephanie was guiding it so we were more than willing to pay 11 euros. The tour was quite large, close to 40 people, but it was really good. I am very glad I went, though it threw me into a bit of a shocked emotional and psychological state, somehow compacting everything I'd seen and learned at Auschwitz.

Since it's quite depressing, but I do think it's important to write about it, I will write more about it later in the space below.

[Sachsenhausen tour notes.]

During the tour, we met a Canadian couple named Andy and Ashley. We invited them to join Nadine and Laura and I for the rest of the evening. We had plans to go to the Topography of Terror museum (the one and only museum more from the Nazi's point of view rather than the victims') and then out to dinner. They were more than happy to come with us, and we're always excited to have new friends!

Topography of Terror was not quite what I thought it would be. It's a museum located where everything bad about WWII was actually discussed and decided. It's where they did all the dirty planning work. Stephanie described the local as the scariest address in the world. It was more of a story board layout of Hitler's rise to power, history about the SS, old propaganda paraphernalia and newspaper articles, many photographs, etc. The worst part though for me was a caption of Nazis smiling and laughing that LITERALLY said "Nazis taking a break from mass murdering outside the Auschwitz camp." REALLY? REALLY? Who thought that caption was a good idea? The other thing that really surprised me were how many women were involved in Hitler's efforts! There were pictures of women getting the death sentence and they just looked completely complacent, verging on proud. That really caught me off guard as well - I pictured only men doing all these terrible things to other men. It was strange to walk outside afterward and walk down the same street that I'd just seen a picture of Hitler parading down. We also accidentally walked into a protest or riot or something that I think was for Greece, but it was right outside of the old Nazi air force building. Really eerie to just see a ton of police and a mass of people after a museum like that and not understand what's going on.

Anyway, after this long day we were all ready for food. We found a nice looking Spanish restaurant and then had a therapy session about everything we saw today. I am so glad too, because I think I would have gone crazy if we hadn't talked about it all. It's going to be pretty impossible to really relate to anybody back home about the things we've seen here, but we seriously spent an hour or more having an in depth discussion about the impact it had on us and other lingering thoughts. Something REALLY interesting that came up was that Andy's grandfather was a Nazi; he was an intelligence officer - pretty freaking creepy. Andy knows essentially nothing about what his grandfather knew or what he did for the Nazis because the only thing his grandfather really told anybody in their whole family was how happy he was to surrender to the Brits. It was crazy intense, but it was an amazing conversation and I am so glad we had that opportunity to talk with people about it.

After that, we made it back to Steph's completely drained. As I said, psychologically and emotionally I was not doing well. Seemingly simple things like undressing and taking a shower sent my mind reeling. I had a hard time falling asleep and had nightmares once I did.