Berlin - Friday

So over Memorial day weekend we took a trip with another family to Berlin and what an AWESOME trip it was!!!  We started out very early on Friday morning, Berlin is about a 6 hour drive from Kaiserslautern.  We had a great mini van caravan going on!!!  Porchea and I planned this trip down to a tee, but the one thing that we totally forgot to plan was where the Esso stations were.  We ended up having a great detour to find one through the country.  It added on to our trip a little bit, but it was part of the adventure!!!  We now know to map out the esso stations before we go for our next trip.  Esso stations are where we can buy gas off post and still pay US prices.  The kids were so good though, we didn't stop except for potty breaks.  Luckily, we had lots of snacks to get them through to Berlin.  We got to our apartment and it was great!!!  Two floors, three bedrooms, plenty of room for five adults and five children!!  We only did a pit stop to unload the vans before we headed off again.  It was not raining so we wanted to see some of the sights before it started.  The forecast for the weekend was rain, rain and more rain.

 

Our caravan - the boys are so silly, they really crack me up!  I was laughing so much during this vacation my abs hurt.  It was great!!!!

 

This was our first sight of Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate.  We drove there and it was less than a mile from our apartment.  The only problem was that there was lots of construction (just like everywhere in Germany) as well as tons and tons of traffic.  We didn't know why there was so much traffic, but we did find out later what was going on.

 

We finally found a place to park and started walking towards the gate.  Here are AJ and Andre walking together, it was so cute that they were holding hands because we told the kids we had to stay together.

 

AJ and Michael taking a little break before we even got started, but they are just too cute!!!

 

There was a big party going on in front of the gate, there was a live band playing, balloon artist, people dressed up in different uniforms and you could put on hats and pay for pictures with them and the one the boys liked the best - the bubbles.  This guy made his own "wand" and had HUGE bubbles.   All of the kids really liked it!!  He even let the kids try it!!

 

The four of us in front of the gate.  So time for my first history lesson.  The gate was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace built from 1788-1791.  During the post-war Partition of Germany, the gate was isolated and inaccessible immediately next to the Berlin wall.  The wall was on the other side of the gate.

 

 

This was a picture of the wall during WWII.  It is amazing how they were able to restore it back to its original glory

 

 

The kids having such a great time already on our vacation!!!  It is so wonderful that we all get along sooooo well!!!  All five are also really good about posing for pictures, both families like to take lots of photos!!!

 

So I couldn't help but take this one, the van has TNT on the side!!!

 

Michael was getting really hungry, and rightfully so, it is almost 6 pm here and all that they had to eat was snacks.  Michael was stuck on wanting chicken nuggets, we had to walk about three blocks to finally find a place that actually had them.  He is like his mom, when he gets hungry you  know it!

 

So we all thought this was really funny, the driver of the horse and buggy is texting.

 

After the bridge we headed over to the Memorial of the Murdered Jews which is also known as the Holocaust Memorial.  It is a memorial to the Jewish victims, it consists of a 4.7 acres site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.  According to Eisenman's project text, the concrete slabs are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.  An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.  When I went down into the information place it was really heavy and heart wrenching.  They not only had all the names, but personal letters from people in the concentration camps.  I could only read a few because they were so sad. 

 

We decided that the kids didn't need to go down into the place of information, so they walked through the concrete slabs, you can see how tall some of them are here.

 

There are also shorter ones like those David is standing by, you can see the number of them behind him and that was only part of them.

 

Here the boys and I are in front of it.

 

This map shows more than 500 of thousands of sites where Nazi persecution and extermination took place in Europe and North Africa

 

The kids outside the entrance

 

After such a heavy history lesson, we decided we need to get some Dunkin' Doughnuts and the kids were ecstatic about that!!

 

We saw this outside Dunkin' Doughnuts and I couldn't resist taking a picture of it, I am not sure if you can see it but it has MP on the side of it.

 

So I was talking earlier about how bad traffic was, well we were going to head over to the Berlin capital building and were stopped by hundreds and hundreds of roller bladders.

 

 

 

They just kept coming and coming and coming.

 

Then we walked further along and now we are behind the gate and we had to make our way through thousands of runners.  We had no idea that this was happening that night and if we did we might have joined into the  race. 

 

So we finally made it through all of the people and over to the capital building.

 

 

It was a spectacular sight to see!!! 

 

This was the building after the bombing in WWII - the Germans spent years and millions to rebuild it.  They kept as much of the original parts of the building as they could.

 

You can see the dome in the back - you can go in there, but have to have a security check and an appointment before you go and we didn't do that.  I have been told it is an amazing view from up there.  Maybe next time.

 

The girls!!!!  We didn't plan to all wear red, we were just so much on the same wave length and having sooooo much fun!!!!  After this we headed back to the cars, by this time it was really late and we still had to work our way back through the big celebration.

 

I thought this was just too funny, these are their port a potties

 

Each town in Germany has an animal to represent it.  In Kaiserslautern there are fish all over the place, in Berlin it is the bears.  This bear was in the window of the US Embassy building.  We thought it was great!!!  Then we headed back to the apartment for a late dinner and some rest for the next day of touring!