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One thing I learned from visiting the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is that the Soviets knew how to honour their dead. The memorial in Treptower Park is the largest of the three main Soviet war memorials in Berlin – the other two are on Strasse des 17 Juni and in Schönholzer Heide. When I got my first […]
One thing that Berlin does not have a shortage of is world-class museums and back in May I got to see one of the very best, the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) for free. Sunday 20 May 2012 was International Museum Day and as part of the celebrations a number of Berlin’s museums offered […]
The Soviet War Memorial was erected in 1945 in the British Sector of West Berlin to commemorate the Soviet soldiers who fell during the war. In the background on the right hand side of the next photo you can The Reichstag, the German parliament building. A cannon and tank seemingly guard the monument, presumably from […]
The Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors) consists of three main elements: the Indoor Exhibition; the Outdoor Exhibition (referred to in the site’s literature as the Exhibition Trench); and Berlin Wall Monument, a remaining section of the wall. The ground on which the exhibitions stand was the site of the Gestapo, SS and Reich Security […]
Kaserne Krampnitz (Krampnitz Barracks) is one of Berlin’s unofficial tourist attractions. The site was first occupied by the Nazis and after the end of WWII the Soviets moved in. I have wanted to explore it since I came across a description of a visit on Abandoned Berlin, an invaluable resource for anyone thinking of visiting some […]
The view from the roof of the Reichstag must be one of the best free views in Berlin. The Reichstag, built to house the German parliament, was formally opened on 5 December 1894 but shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933 it was ravaged by fire. During the years of division, the […]
A giant slab of concrete may not seem like an obvious attraction but it is how and why the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body) came to be here, in a residential part of Tempelhof in Berlin, that makes this monolith worth exploring. This was to be the site of a triumphal arch so big that it is […]
The former headquarters of the Secret Police in Berlin is now The Stasi Museum. This is the building that was ‘stormed’ in 1990 by protesters looking for the files that were kept here. With all the secrecy that surrounded this building in a divided Germany, it seems apt that since re-unification it has become accessible to […]
Why you may ask am I posting a photo of an Asian Supermarket on a blog about Berlin? If you look a little closer you may see the reason. When I found out there was a plaque honouring the inventor of the Currywurst, Herta Heuwer (from a SugarHigh newsletter), with my love of the humble Berlin snack, […]
Built in 1962, the departure hall for the border checkpoint at Friedrichstrasse train station soon became known as the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears), as it was frequently the sight of tearful farewells. Here, those bound for West Berlin were subjected to passport checks, baggage searches and probing questions. After the fall of the wall the […]
