Hamburg, Celle, Berlin

Christina Matilda's Exile House
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It was up early today and off on the bus for the second longest day on the bus for our drive through to Berlin. There was not much sceneic views to see as we travelled along the autobahn, as they have freeway noise barriers like we have at home. The traffic however was very light as today was a public holiday, the yearly celebration of the re-unification of Germany.

We stop for a break at a small town called Celle ("Sell-ee"). All the shops are closed, so it is a very quiet walk around town. We walk through to the Castle Christina-Matilda, where one of the previous rulers wives was exiled at one point to live the remainder of her life. This town has what I call typical german houses with a brick and wooden built houses, with the wood painted a dark colour to accent it. At 10am the museum opened which allowed us to grab a quick coffee in their cafe before we had to be back on the bus at 10:20am.

East verses West

Old house in Celle
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It was then back on the road again until we stopped at what was the border between West Germany and East Germany. Here the original inspection station has been retained and turned into a museum to allow visitors to remember what happened in the past. We walked through the museum to see the displays, but could not read them as they were all written in German. There were celebrations also going on here for Re-unification day and there were may visitors to the museum. This was also the place we stopped for lunch at the motorway station where the bus was parked.

Checkpoint Alpha guard house
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Back on the bus and we were headed for Berlin. On the way we pass Checkpoint Dreislinden - known as Checkpoint Bravo by the Allies. On arrival a couple of hours later, we checked into our hotel and after a short break, we met up with our local guide Christa-bell for a short tour of the city. This included a stop at the Berlin Wall, and commentary on how the wall went up overnight. Now around the city, there is a red line that remains along the route of where the wall once stood. Christa-bell told us that when they were dismantleing one of the Gestapo/SS buildings, they found some Gestapo torture chambers, which are now left as a memorial for you to walk through and read stories of the horrors which occurred there. We unfortunately did not have enough time on this short tour to do this, only having time to take a few photos.

Berlin Wall
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We then visited what is left of Checkpoint Charlie - the gateway between East and West Berlin. Here we also entered a museum where we had time to read stories of the escape attempts, successes and failures. There was also information about the original blockage of West Berlin (surrounded by East Germany), when the Russians which had control of East Germany cut off all access to West Berlin via road, rail and sea. During the two years the blockade was in place, the allies had to air-drop all supplies into West Berlin to enable the German people who lived there to survive.

Wall line marker that tracks around the original wall line
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We then stopped at a Holocaust memorial, where an entire block is filled with different height concrete rectangular blocks - somewhat similair to raised graves. The differing heights of the blocks and undulating topography of the ground is supposed to give one a feeling of insecurity.

Back on the bus we were told the story of how Berlin got its name. Originally the locaion of many Bears, the name originates from hear and locally is pronounced "bear-lin". Now as you drive around the city, you catch glimses of life-size bears which have been painted and decorated. These originated from a commemorative occaison when 100 of these bears where decorated by local artits and then auctioned off to raise money. Now you can also see examples of decorated bears on banners surrounding building sites.

Torture Chambers
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As the sun is going down our stretch-limo (bus) heads back to the hotel where we have a buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant. This is an interesting experience as there are no english subtitles to explain what all the dishes are. I had some nice soup - that I thought smelled like creamed chicken - but turned out to be potato. Then I grabbed our bus driver who was nearby in the buffet area and asked him to tell me what all the dishes were. I tried the veal and beef dishes which were very tender and flavoursome. For desert I tried something that looked (and tasted) like bread and butter pudding, and what I expected to be semi-freido - but turned out to be very delicious prailines and cream ice cream. I was in heaven. After a tiring day we headed back to our room.