BERLIN
2008


DAY THREE

Breakfast in the HOTEL -

We planned today well in advance.......

Simon had expressed a desire to visit Sachsenhausen and since we all have assigned to each other "our day" while in Berlin, we looked into available tours on the internet. We decided to approach




who have a good package including a morning guided tour of the city with lunch.

Here is the information from their website:

"After we pick you up at your accommodation in the morning, we will take you on an exciting and interesting Berlin sightseeing tour through the historic center and the modern parts of the city.

Thereby we will visit places such as: East Side Gallery, Unter den Linden, government district, Reichstag, Brandenburger Gate, Ku'damm, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler's bunker, Potsdamer Square, Holocaust memorial, the remains of the Berlin Wall and much more.

After this informative sightseeing tour we will enjoy some typical Berlin food. Once we filled our stomaches we will head on to second part of the tour - to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp which is situated about an hour outside of Berlin.

The camp was built in 1936 as one of the first concentration camps. It was designed and planned by architects of the SS to be an ideal camp. Between 1936 and 1945, over 200,000 people were imprisoned here of which tens of thousands were murdered. They died of hunger, exhaustion, illness, the cold, abuse, medical experiments or in mass murders or public executions. The tragic history continued when between 1945 to 1950 the Soviets followed the Nazi’s footsteps. They erected one of their Special Camps here which they used for denazification and to detain political enemies. Again thousands of people were killed during this period.

Once we went on this memorable and impressive tour through the concentration camp we will head back to the city where we will drop you off back at your accommodation or somewhere in the city center where you can spend the rest of the day."


We have been on numerous Rundfahrts but in this case it was more personal, having a driver who would take us round with a verbal commentary and not just a recorded system where we had to wear earphones.

So we booked via internet and were informed by e-mails that we would expect the mini coach at 8.15 AM. We were up early and had a good breakfast.




The people-carrier was on time with Jonas the driver, a student who spoke perfect English. However Simon and I were happy to try out our German and Jonas was helpful and answered our questions as we saw all the sights.



The Huntlys at the Dom


We did the grand tour, seeing what we have seen before plus much we hadn't, all described and explained by Jonas.




We were able to take stops for photographs and the loo anytime we wanted so we amassed a lot of pictures through which we are still ploughing. We process them and load them onto CDs for viewing on our TV/DVD player.

The main stops were at Checkpoint Charlie , the Reichstag and the Lustgarten.




The vehicle had very clean windows so instead of getting out into the cold we took some from inside !

We visited Karl Marx Allee (Previously known as Stalin Allee) to see the Russian Style architecture.

After two and a half hours (which had flown by) we set out for Sachsenhausen which took about 45 minutes.

Once there, we had some lunch and then joined another party to be shown round led by Chris who proved to be another very good guide and knew all the facts. It took three hours to do the full tour and the weather was very cold but no one seemed to mind.





The house above (the library and entrance) is marked by the orange dot below.




The First Observation Tower


The Observation Tower close up


The Second Observation Tower


The Main Camp Entrance


The Camp Gate stating "Work Makes Freedom"


The Main Camp Parade Ground



The Camp Memorial Piller


The Memorial From the Rear



The Victims Memorial



The Memorial Inscription



Barracks 38 and 39


Barracks 38 and 39 close up

We then were driven back to the hotel where we thanked Jonas for an excellent day.

At night we went to another one of our favourite restaurants by taxi. This is the



Restaurant La Riva Spreeufer 2 10178 Berlin - Mitte - Nikolaiviertel

where we ate, drank and got warm again. We took a taxi back to the hotel for a nightcap.

OUR NEXT DAY
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