Ich Bin Ein Berliner

As with everything, all good things must come to an end. As morning dawned on the last day of the tour we said goodbye to our friends who would be ending the tour in Warsaw and boarded the bus for the last time and a lovely 10 hour bus journey to the German capital Berlin. The bus was only half full so there was ample opportunity to stretch out and relax and catch up on some well needed zz's. By this point I was pretty sick with Contiki flu so every minute of sleep was needed!

We arrived in Berlin late afternoon and were dropped off at Berlin Plus hostel. This is where I had stayed before the tour so it made sense to stay again. Somehow I had lucked out and got a room by myself even though I had paid for a quad. I was thankful that I wouldn't have to stifle my coughs! That night some of us who were staying met up for some dinner and drinks in the hotel bar. A few people were heading to a club - I really wanted to go but I being so ill I decided it wasn't wise. Instead myself and few others took the subway into the city to visit Berlin Fernsehturm - also known as the 'TV Tower'. It is the tallest structure in Germany and has great views of the city. It was originally built by the Soviet 'side' of Berlin as a kind of symbol of power. It was kinda cool, had a glass of champagne and all that. But I've been up quite a few of these things now and nothing beats the CN tower or the Empire State :).

That night I tried to get a good nights sleep in preparation for a busy day of sightseeing. I was surprised to be woken at 6am by someone coming into my room. I was confused initially and though it was a late arriving roommate but then I realised it was a drunken German man. He was really weird and sat on the other bed and tried to hug me. Thank God I managed to make him leave, didn't feel like screaming the house down at 6am. I spoke the managers and they said I hadn't closed the door properly. BUT I've stayed in hostels and hotels around the world and I always check the door (and it was double locked) and the same thing happened to other people that night - therefore they have faulty locks. So basically if you stay at Hostel Plus Berlin be careful!

Anyway, back to sightseeing. That day I decided to take the opportunity to visit a concentration camp. I had never heard of Sachsenhausen before but it turns out it is only a 30 minute train ride out of the city and there was an organisation offering walking tours. So I met up with a few other people at the meeting point and headed there.

To get there you take a train to a place called Oranienburg and then it's about a 15 minute walk through some houses and then you are at the gates. Very odd - the houses used to be for the SS offices and their families, imagine living so close to all that suffering.

Saschenhausen was actually a really important camp and was where all SS officers came to be trained. Ironically on the site now there is a police training centre. 

Lot's when on at this place. The camp was in many ways a test camp, to try things out before rolling them out to the others. It's main function was not as an extermination camp but there were mass murders and crematoria were built - the ruins of which remain. It was also a place where many medical experiments were carried out and those buildings still stand. This is also the camp where the famous Nazi counterfeiting operation took place. The Nazi's had a plan to destabilize the pound and dollar by counterfeiting large amounts of notes and flooding the countries with them. They used the best Jewish artists and printers and were somewhat successful in producing the notes but never finished the plan. There is a movie called 'The Counterfeiters'  about it which is a good watch. This is also a track for testing shoes where inmates where forced to walk for days without a break whilst carrying heavy loads and whipped or shot if they fell - one of those manufacturers is what is now Addidas. One other interesting fact is that this camp is one of the few where the sign Arbeit macht frei can still be seen today.

Shoe testing track

Remains of the crematoria

After the war the Soviets preserved the camp as a reminder of what had happened and built monuments in memory of those who died. Once Germany was reunified there was also a museum opened on the site and it is still under renovation and there are many buildings, including those used by the SS officers, which will hopefully be opened eventually.

After our visit we took the train back into the city. It was late afternoon but we were still determined to see as much as we could.

We decided to head to the famous checkpoint Charlie first and see where Berlin was once split. We got to see some guys dressed up in costume and had a HUGE yummy (if very hot) Bratwurst. Next we walked to the Topography of Terror which is a museum about terrorism and houses a reconstruction of the Berlin wall. Quite a solemn place actually and quiet for being in the city. It is built on the site that housed the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, which I find quite apt.

Next stop was the Iconic Brandenburg gate - oh what events that structure has seen! Originally built in the 18th century, it is amazing that is has survived. The gate is now in the middle of an open square type area which there were lots of things going on whilst we were there. 

Near to the gate is the Holocaust memorial which is a serious of concrete blocks of differing sizes built in straight lines. It is designed to give you the feeling of lost and hopelessness that Jewish people felt during the holocaust. It works, you feel very alone walking around there even when surrounded by people.

Lastly we visited the Reichstag. As a history student I had read so much about events in and around this building that to see it was strange - how could such a small place have such a big history? We wanted to go inside but recently the rules have changed and you need to be approved - thanks terrorist. That said, it is still impressive from the outside. I bought some postcards of what it looked like at the end of the war and it is truly amazing that the structure still stands today.

Well, that was Berlin in 24 hours. Not too shabby for a sick girl :) I said my final goodbyes to my last Contiki friends and headed back for my last night in the hostel. Thankfully no visitors this time. The next morning I headed to the airport and back home to normality.

Next step....... AUSTRALIA! Summer 2012 (okay winter in your hemisphere!) - watch out Aussies you won't know what's hit you :D.

PS - note to this posts name. In Berlin a 'Berliner' is a kind of doughnut. So when President Kennedy famously said 'Ich bin ein Berliner' they found it very funny :)

Eastern Block Party - Belarus and Poland

So we leave Moscow on another sunny morning (got pretty lucky with our weather in Russia!) for an anticipated long drive to our next country, Belarus.


A fairly uneventful drive was punctuated by the dodgiest lunch stop so far. We had to stop a 'hotel' (that's being generous) as there was no where else to stop on out drive - Russia needs to work on service stations!. Now apparently Contiki actually used to do a night stop there but ended that after complaints about the, shall we say, ladies of the night? Turns out the hotel is frequented by truckers and well truckers need company . . .


We had lunch (more chicken kiev - yay . . .) in a weird dining room with a stage. The walls were painted with strange pictures of cowboy types dancing and women. I wonder what goes on on that stage! Next we made a short drive to the border where we got to wait in large queues, get stared at by border guards, wait ages for them to do god-knows-what with our passports until we were finally free to enter the amazing BELARUS!!


Okay, I'll be honest. Prior to this trip my only knowledge of Minsk was that Phoebe's boyfriend went to live there. Driving into Minsk was a bit odd. I mean, I really felt like I was in Eastern Europe, which is hard to quanitfy but imagine very soviet era, Eurovision-esque, posters showing happy little Belarussians. Minsk the city was actually designed as a model city by the Soviets after WW2 which is why it seem modern with wide open streets and imposing buildings.

Soviet era statues in Minsk

We had our hotel changed at the last minute but apparently this was good as we were closer to the town (not that I planned on going a-wander). So everything in Belarus was a bit dodgy. Starters the hotel - I'll get to the worst later but lets say it has a certain clientele who are looking for a certain something at 1am . . .

When we arrived we went to our rooms, more odd spaces with more crazy built in wooden beds (these were everywhere - really wish I had taken photos!) but it was only for one night so I got refreshed and headed downstairs to change the last of my Russian cash in to Belarussian roubles. We were only spending the night but I had about £10-15 worth left so I figured I spend it on a few drinks and then buy some items from the supermarket to use up the rest. Now firstly, the exchange rate is crazy. Belarussian money is worth nothing, todays exchange rate to the £ is12857.52440! So my few Russian notes turned into a pile of Belarussian ones. My biggest note was 20000 (but they go up to 5MILLION!).

Money money money

So I took this huge pile of notes to the next door supermarket to buy a few things (I knew dinner would be awful - it was) and it was so cheap it was impossible to spend the money and when I did I was handed back an even bigger pile of smaller notes! It would be laughable if it wasn't the way people had to live. Our city guide told up everyone is paid in US$ and all big purchases (cars, homes) are in US$ too as the currency is unstable. Not that they earn much anyway, but more on that later.

After our strange dinner, which began with some odd kind of terrine, we met with our local guide who was going to give us a short walking tour of Minsk (I nearly bailed as I was feeling iffy but I'm glad I manned up and went - some girls just went to bed. So you go all the way to Minsk and sleep without seeing any of it??).

The city is quite beautiful, it was mostly destroyed during World War II and the Soviets rebuilt it as a modern cities with wide sweeping streets and parks. There is also a metro system there and we saw lots of churches. There are also lots of security people - they are paranoid! Large groups meeting are banned, our guide needed special dispensation to take large groups around. Also guides often have 'minders' so they don't say the 'wrong' thing. 

Belarus has not exactly embraced democracy, I came to understand the president is pretty much a dicator and by the sounds of it is a bit of a playboy (I seem to remember he arrives at work at about 10 and leaves early afternoon). People are really poorly paid, they are lots of fancy expensive flats being built in the city that its residents could never afford. Belarus seems to be still suffering from years of occupation but hopefully with young people like our tour guide things might change in the future.

At the end of our tour we visited the Island of Tears memorial which is in memory of those lost during the Afghan war. It is built like a little church with four entrances and surrounded by huge figures of weeping women. It's a very moving place, quite eerily quiet.

Later we sat at a local bar and had 80p beers (yay) and bought dodgy souvenirs from dodgier

 guy (and I left my bank card in the cashpoint - bad idea in any country). Before hitting the 

sack, although we were rudely awoken by the local 'girls' ringing all our rooms at 1am offering

 'sex massage'. Nice.

The next day we were heading back in the EU and Poland. Our lunch stop was the town of

 Brest, famous for it's part in WWII. Odd place, inside there are GIANT statues and as you walk 

through the star shaped entrance Soviet type music is blasted at you. Oh, and they had squat 

toilets, not my cup of tea! Really strange place . . .

We continued on our journey and after another fun border crossing we finally made it into the 

Polish capital Warsaw. I'd been to Warsaw already a couple of times but it was nice to be

back in the EU and have some sense of normalcy! Starting with a proper hotel with real

beds! We enjoyed our first night in with pizza and cough syrup (we were all getting sick by this 

point!).

The next day we took a whirlwind city tour where we saw the Euro 2012 stadium, the Chopin

memorial, Warsaw Uprising memorial, Holocaust memorial, Palace of Science and Culture and 

the old town.

One side of the holocaust memorial

Okay, quick Warsaw facts! Pre WWII, Poland had a huge Jewish population and as a result

when the Nazi's invaded they ended up have a huge ghetto where the Jew's were forced to

live and where Jew's from other parts of Europe were forced to go. I won't give you a history 

lesson but I recommend you read the book The Pianist, or watch the film, there is also a book

called 'Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust' which explains it better than I ever can. The ghetto 

was a staging point for sending people to concentration and extermination camps and was

gradually made smaller until it decided it should be 'liquidated'. The people inside bravely fought

back with the primative weapons they had but the place was eventually raised. Most of

the city was in fact destroyed and what is actually the 'old town' now is a post WWII 

reconstruction made from photographs and paintings. The area that was the ghetto is now

full of tower blocks from Soviet times and is a popular place to visit for Jewish people - 

while we were there there was a youth group from Israel visiting.

Whilst in Warsaw I sampled (for the first time) the famour Polish perogies! They are like

little dumplings either baked or fried, yum! I spend the afternoon wandering around and doing 

little shopping before our final group dinner. We then headed back to the hotel to change and

went out for some last night drinks at a local cocktail bar called 'Paprazzi'. I really wanted to stay

up late but my illness was taking it's toll and I had to admit defeat at midnight and hit the sack, 

ready for the long drive back to our starting point, Berlin!

Next time, Ich Bin Eirn Berliner, highlights of Berlin in 12 hours while sick and the joys of 

drunken people walking into your hostel room...