Stephanie Goes to Europe 2015: A tour guide named Jess

Yesterday was our first day going around Berlin, so we started the day off with a walking tour to get us oriented. We actually ended up arrive half an hour early, so we spent some time wandering around the market going on in the same square. There was some awesome stuff going on there.

Cool fountain? seen on the walk there.

Cheap pastries! Still don't know why they're green.

We got to our tour group and signed in. Our guide's name was Jess. He was actually from LA, and studied medieval history in Berkley. He'd been living in Berlin and studying for 3 years. He was really well informed and it was a great tour - we learned a lot and the 4 hour walk flew by with his dry humor. One of the best things about his tour specifically was some of his interpretations on the monuments. Berlin has some of the best monuments I've ever seen, and most of them are left up to the viewers interpretations. Jess left us to form our own opinions, but added quite a bit to the experience by providing his perspective.

Starting the tour!

Beautiful view of Meuseumplaz

The orange trash cans around Berlin are all hilarious. Thank you for the hot dogs.

The first place we went was the main square where Hitler made many of his demonstrations and speeches, and started many of his marches. The impressive Prussian building where he often stood is a museum now.

This beautiful building is at the south end of the square. According to our tour guide it's actually a lot newer of a building than it looks like.

Where many of Hitlers speeches were made

We then headed farther into old town Berlin - almost the entirety of this tour was spent in what used to be East Berlin - the communist side.

Interesting housing set up? Looks like shipping container projects I've seen sometimes. No idea what they are.

Right across from Humbolt University was a library square where book burnings were held during Nazi take over - started by students looking to get rid of any ideas that did not agree with Nazi ideals

Memorial to the book burning - the number of shelves are supposed to represent the number of books burned - supposedly they would have filled these shelves.

Learned a lot about stop lights here. Berlin seems very proud of theirs - we see figurines and stuff of them everywhere.

One of my favorite parts of the tour, if purely the way it makes me appreciate history and how fantastic it is, was the Russian embassy. Apparently they used to have a Lenin statue out front, and when a US president came to the city no one wanted him accidentally photographed with a Stalin statue in the background, so they asked the embassy to do something about it. They put a cardboard box over Lenin's head. Which I think is fantastic. I haven't confirmed this story, but it's a fun little tidbit.

Outside the russian embassy

Our tour then continued around old town. I'm not going to explain every little thing, but it was a really interesting tour.

Paris platz

If you can see the small stone line down the road, that's where the berlin wall used to stand

Lamppost where Ronald Reagan apparently gave his speech about the wall

Talks about the Jewish holocaust memorial

The blocks get intimidatingly tall the deeper into the memorial you go

Getting closer to Checkpoint Charlie

Yes the US is very proud.

Communist propaganda wall

reflective monument same size and shape of the communist propaganda mural, but showing people during the work strikes under communist rule

After the tour we headed back towards Checkpoint Charlie to had lunch

apparently this is Charlie's beach?

We then went to the museum at the Topography of Terror and spent some time browsing through a very detailed and documented history of acts of terror committed during and leading up to WWII. When we couldn't handle the topic much longer we headed back through meuseumplatz, and saw some great views of the lit up buildings.