Berlin, Germany
Berlin is our last city that we our touring on this trip. 9 weeks have come and gone and we have had an adventure we will take with us forever. We are so thankful for all of our family and friend who has been reading our blog! It is so great to have your support. Before looking home, we must explore Berlin! Berlin is actually a great city and a place that we add to the list of where we would go back for sure! There is so much modern building in Berlin, but also so much history!
We knew that Berlin would have a lot of architecture that we wanted to explore, so when we got off the train in the afternoon we started walking!
Berlin TV tower
Berlin is celebrating its 775th birthday! whoa! So they have set up this really interesting site of Berlin's map at a scale of 1:775 with pinpoints of different historical events and places in their city.
Berliner Dom - Berlin's largest church.
There were so many architectural pieces by Architects that we have studied as well as architects that we have discovered through this trip. Germany is a successful country in the EU and is still building so many new buildings. The picture above is I.M. Pei's foyer/stair design for this museum.
Next we went to the Memorial of the Murdered Jews. The memorial was very big as it took up a huge block of the city. It was designed by architect, Peter Eisenman, and he really wanted you to get the feeling of being lost and disoriented. The memorial consists of 2711 concrete pillars of various heights. As the pillars vary in height, the ground is also sloping in different directions.
The experience really puts you in a different place and time. Germany has such a sad and difficult history, and the thing that continued to amaze us was their bad history is not far off from our lifetime.
More of the memorial
A piece of the Berlin Wall
The Sony Centre...a really cool design, especially lit up at night!
September 29th
The next day we knew that we still had many parts of Berlin to explore so we decided to rent bikes to get around faster! Our main stop was the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind.
From an aerial perspective this building is designed in a zig zag. We decided to go into this Museum and learn more about the Jewish experience in Germany. The Jewish people really went through a lot of difficulties. In this building there would be 'void' spaces where you would go in a big tall unheated concrete room with a spec of natural light shining through. These times really gave an interesting reflection to the experience that millions of jewish people had not too long ago.
In this room the art piece was people's faces made out of steel crying out.
Some people walked across the room, although to us it felt like a grave and did not feel like the need to walk on the faces. But when someone walked across, the clanging of the steel really echoed like rattling chains of prisoners.
A zig from inside the zag...if that makes any sense!
The stars that Jewish people had to wear.
Next we explored some of the history of the Berlin Wall. It was only torn down 20 years ago!
The division of East and West Berlin. This shows how Russia had ownership over the East and the West was split between the US, GB and France
A portion of the Berlin Wall that still stands.
Inside Mies Van der Rohe's Muse nationalgalerie was this interesting box! Created by artist Paul McCarthy...The piece defies gravity.
Finally, we were in Berlin during the BMW Berlin Marathon! We met a guy in our hotel that was running in the race.
Our last night in Berlin, we went out an explored the Night Life a bit. We have done this in a few different cities throughout our trip, but after a whole day of exploring we were normally exhausted! But we were lucky and found a place close to our hotel that was packed with people and had 5 or 6 different DJs playing. Steven was pretty excited!
Next Stop: Frankfurt...the final destination of our European tour.
Basically we are only in Frankfurt to catch our plane to fly back to Vancouver. Hopefully our jet lag won't be too bad. We have loved this trip so much, but are also ready to go back home, continue to grow our business, be near family who we have missed so much on the trip, and continue whatever adventures are in store for us in BC!
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