Dresden and BerlinMay 17, 2011
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| Dresden Okay so a little bit about Dresden. I dont know much as I will only be here for about a day and a half. The town was virtually flattened during a two day bombing offensive during WWII. Much of the old town has been rebuilt to look old, even though nothing is more than 65 years old. About 20,000 people were killed during the bombings. It seems a cool place, my hostel is really cheap and is on a street where there are a lot of Turkish restaurants, and African shop that also does braids and dreads and a place called Soul Sisters. Not to mention the numerous porn shops and a couple of nudie bars. Berlin In some places it seems like a freaking ghost town. It has a small population (3.5 million) for the capital city of a major country; but is also quite large in size. The city was flattened during WWII and all the buildings are new. There is still major construction going on everywhere. It is not at all like being in a 1000 year old city. Of the buildings that have survived, they are riddled with bullet holes. There are numerous monuments relating to WWII and also to divided Germany and the Berlin wall. At Bebelplatz, a plaza where the Nazis burned 20,000 books, many of them one of a kind; there is an area where you can look down at a room full of empty bookshelves. Of course, I shed a few tears here. People burning books just doesnt sit right with me. There is the Holocaust Memorial which is filled with over 2000 grave markers said to symbolize the mass graves where Jews were interned during the war. It is quite eerie there. As you get farther in the ground slopes down and the graves are taller than your head blocking out the light and dulling all sounds. There is also the Jewish Museum which details Jewish life in Germany before, during and after the Holocaust. The Topography of Terror is another museum that details the actions of the Nazi regime towards Jews, dissenters, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and those in the countries that they conquered. It is very graphic and also very honest about what happened and who was responsible. Numerous times it states in writing that nothing that the Nazis dead would have been possible without the full support of the majority of the German people.There is also the East Side Gallery which is about a kilometer long section of the Berlin Wall which has been turned into an Art Gallery promoting peace. All in all |
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