First of all, last Wednesday, we went on a tour to the Bundestag, which is the German house of Parliament and a truly amazing building. While the facade of the building looked very old and regal, the entire inside of the building was modern, sleek, and extremely eco-friendly. The history of the building also showed through in decisions to retain graffiti and damage sustained to the building while it was occupied by the Soviet Union after World War 2. The building was shockingly full of art, a large deal of it symbolizing this restoration from foreign control to domestic grandeur.
Most notable though was the giant glass cupola on top of the building. It is truly an architectural marvel that serves many purposes. For one, mirrors inside the cupola funnel light into the parliament floor of the Bundestag, which in turn radiates a huge deal of light throughout the building. Secondly, it funnels hot air out of the building, which is necessary since almost all of the Bundestag is "naturally cooled" as they liked to say. I'm not entirely sure what "naturally cooled" entails, but it was definitely cool and comfortable inside the building, so I'll take their word for it. Most importantly to me though, the cupola could be walked up, giving an excellent view of Berlin in the Tiergarten area, which provided for many excellent photo opportunities. Ultimately, the building was beautiful, and the sites that could be seen from the cupola were fantastic.
Honestly, I can't remember what happened for the remainder of that week (it's easy to do when you're constantly busy, haha), but Saturday we went to Potsdam, which is a city just outside of Berlin. It's so close to Berlin, in fact, that it often mistakenly gets called Berlin. Potsdam is famous for two main reasons. For one, Potsdam was the location chosen by the Prussian and later German kings for their royal estates, so the city is full of beautiful palaces and gardens. Secondly, seeing as how Potsdam did exist right on the border of West Berlin, it was once the home to a substantial chunk of the Berlin Wall. The bridge that we had to cross to enter Potsdam from Berlin is called the "Unity Bridge," which is ironic because within a year of its creation it was shut down to prevent West Berliners from entering Eastern Germany. The bridge was so new when it was shut down, in fact, that after West and East Berlin had become reunified, no one was allowed to drive on the bridge for over a year because they never had a chance to see if it was stable enough to support the weight of cars before the separation. We also got to see the Potsdam Brandenburg Gate. Most people think that the Brandenburg gate exists only in Berlin, but the truth is that any city old enough to have city walls that had a gate facing towards the city of Brandenburg had a Brandenburg gate, so there are many of different shapes, sizes, and artistic flairs.
The next famous location was saw was the Cecilienhof, the summer home of the German crown prince that was vacated when Hitler rose to power. Because of its large size and vacant state, it was chosen as the perfect place to have the post WW2 Potsdam Conference (Berlin was in such shambles that the Allies decided that there was no good place to have the conference in Germany's capital). It was in this conference that Germany and Berlin were split, leaving Joseph Stalin in charge of Cecilienhof as a part of East Germany (as can be seen with the large red star).
Eventually, we made it to the famous palace gardens of Potsdam. The first place we stopped was the Church of Peace, which was constructed by the German King Frederick William IV. While certainly not one of the grandest churches that I've ever seen, it was one of the most beautiful. It was built to look like it was floating on the water, giving it an ethereal feel, and its use of courtyards and statues gives an open, almost transient feeling to the building.
From there, we bee-lined towards Sanssouci, the famous palace of Potsdam. For being the most famous palace of Potsdam, it is actually the most modest in stature. While beautiful, it is paled by its massive garden, which goes on for as far as the eye can see in all directions. We ended up walking the full length of the garden, more than two kilometers, to see the other palaces.
In route the New Palace, which was constructed by Frederick the Great to house the ever increasing and impossible to put up number of visitors to Sanssouci, we ran across another palace that we unfortunately weren't able to explore and I cannot find a name for yet, but it was extremely beautiful nonetheless. Ironically, the New Palace that we eventually reached is drastically larger than Sanssouci, and its grand scale was extremely impressive. One thing that we noted was that no matter where we went, reconstruction work was being done on everything. You'll have to excuse the scaffolding, haha.
We took the earlier part of this week to relax, enjoy the slight bout of good weather on the beach, and catch up on some much needed sleep. Yesterday (Wednesday), however, we went to the Volkswagen factory and museum. We were lucky enough to get to take a tour of the Volkswagen plant where Golfs and Tiguans are made, but unfortunately were not allowed to take pictures. You guys will just have to take my word for it that it was pretty amazing. I was extremely surprised to see that almost no safety equipment was worn by the workers in the factory, and that the entire factory was very clean and quiet (they opened the doors of our cars so we could get some air in our car, and at no time was it nearly loud enough to make us want to cover our ears). After receiving our tour, we were able to look over the factory grounds.
Amazingly, the Volkswagen factory has its own power plant that not only powers the factory, but also the city of Wolfsburg that the factory resides in. We also had the chance to look at the Audi and Lamborghini exhibits. The Lamborghini show was extremely weird, consisting of about 10 minutes of flashing lights and loud noises around a stationary Lamborghini Murcielago. The Audi museum was quite cool though, and we got the chance not just to look at many new Audi models, but sit in and experience them. My favorite was the Audi R8. Oh what I would do to have one.
Finally, today we visited Sachsenhausen, the famous concentration camp in Berlin. It was, above all else, a sobering experience that warranted and received the utmost respect. I knew that it would be moving, but little can prepare you for the harsh realities of what humans were capable of doing to other human beings, and what people were able to endure to stay alive.
As a large portion of the camp was made out of wood and only a fraction out of brick, it is difficult to today see the camp for what it once was, but there are reminders everywhere of the brutality that once existed. From the multiple watchtowers of various size and eminence, the cabins where people had to live in inhuman conditions, the infirmatories where people were experimented on or deemed unfit to live and tossed to the wayside, the plots of land that today look like nothing, but contain the ashes of tens of thousands of people, to the remains of crematoriums where the bodies of so many innocent people were burned.
There really is no right way to react in a situation like that. One second you see a field, and the next you see what once was. It makes it all very real, not just a story in a history book, and it is something that I think everyone should see in their lifetime. If not to learn about the history, one should go to learn about the human condition, and what hate is capable of creating when it goes unchecked.
The site itself is amazing because it served both as a Nazi and Soviet prison camp, and sites and propaganda from both regimes exist. A huge monument exists, made by the Russians, to commemorate their liberating of the camp, though they made it into a prison camp of their own thereafter. Despite its past, a great deal of Sachsenhausen exists to this day, and the museum is a beautiful testament to the human loss, as well as the human strength, that will always be attached to those grounds.
Tomorrow though, I am off to Prague! I'm not yet entirely sure what we're going to do and see there, but it should be a fun and exciting trip. My next goal for tonight is to plan out some destinations, and to make sure my camera battery is good and charged. Exactly half of the kids from the program are going (which makes 8 by the way), so we should all be able to have a fun time together.
I'll be sure to post stuff about about the trip when I get back. Until then, guten Nacht!
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