Part 2...
The next morning I woke up at 5.20 and couldn’t get back to sleep so waited for the alarm to go off at 6.30, luckily my friend in the bed next to mine woke up at about 6 so we could whisper before the others woke up, then I realised, due to the time difference I had woken up at 4.20 in UK time. The curtains did the same thing that morning. After getting dressed and ready for the day we went down the hall for breakfast at 7.30. Hmmm, it was the veggie thing again, and more carbohydrate, I remember texting my mum begging for her to stock up the fruit for when I got home fresh fruit, fruit juice and ice cold water, that’s all I wanted. For breakfast on offer was… cold meat, sliced cucumber, chocolate spread, jam, bread rolls, toast, (a two slice toaster for a hotel with 47 rooms sleeping from 1-5 people, bad idea ) and cereal. I settled for a muesli type cereal but was slightly confused when it had chocolate in, nonetheless, I stomached it. We set off down the stairs again, bags laden with raincoats, snacks, the ever important iPods, jackets and other junk. We got on the coach and the coach driver had to phone the tour guide as our day had to be rearranged as an opening time had been mis-communicated. So we went headed for our first destination visiting a famous bridge, I’m afraid the name escapes me and I cannot remember the exact story but it was where (I think) two spies were swapped back to their native countries during / before (I think) WW2, I think one was American.
The spy bridge...
We then went to Wannsee Villa, apologies to those who already know but I will give a brief background. Wannsee Villa could almost be described as a façade; it is a beautiful big house surround by grass, flowers and general greenery, the sort you might find in a fairytale perhaps, cliché I know. However, it was where one of the most despicable and disgusting decisions was made in the early 1940’s. It is where what was called the ‘Final Solution’ was made. A group of Nazi senior officials met to decide what to do with the ‘problem’ with the Jews; the so called ‘Final Solution’ was where it was decided to annihilate the entire Jewish race. Adding insult to this, after the war, although some of the men who were at the conference died of natural causes, committed suicide or were executed for war crimes, others lived on escaping with only prison sentences and then being pardoned or not charged due to lack of evidence then died recently in the years of 1982 and 1987 despite the immoral crimes they had committed towards so many innocent people. Anyway we had a talk with the guide who told us many interesting things as we wandered around the rooms of the villa including something I didn’t know about Adolf Hitler. We know he was a hypocrite because ideally, he wanted rid of almost everyone who wasn’t Aryan, blonde eyes, blue hair and so on yet he himself was far from that image, but what I found out was that although he couldn’t stand slackers, as far as I’m aware he even wanted to control peoples social time in several ways such as ‘strength through joy’ and other things, his favourite past time was to watch Mickey Mouse films, I don’t know how accurate this is but it certainly was interesting.
So, after a rather depressing morning we wandered a little around the grounds of Wannsee towards so beautiful waters, after this we headed back to the coach and it was starting to get hot, by the end of the day it must have reached almost 30 degrees Celsius. Next we visited the famous Olympic stadium built in the 1930’s. Whilst we were there we saw two of the colourful bears that we had been seeing all over Berlin. We also saw the blue tracks being repainted or whatever you do to recover the flooring of an Olympic stadium. We wandered round the stadium but didn’t have much time as there was quite a tight schedule to fit everything in. Luckily for you, not much more to say there as I could probably babble on about nothing, pretty much forever !
Next we had lunch in a café type place that seemed a little like we had asked somebody to cook for us in their house, a large room just set for us with the food pre-ordered. Hmmm, more chips and burgers, I wonder if the teachers thought that was all we normally ate….? More cola too, wasn’t complaining though, 1.30 and only my second drink all day! …and little did I realise the next wasn’t until about seven that evening. We then got on the coach again and went to Sachenhausen concentration camp. When we reached its gates the words you could read upon them were “Arbeit Macht Frei,” the words that appear at every concentration camp.
This basically translates as work makes freedom meaning if you work well you shall be set free. Sachenhausen was one of the more unusual of the concentration camps as it was in Berlin, the majority of the camps were set up further afield away from the German people who would question them. The majority of the prisoners here were political; rivals of Hitler or those who chose to challenge him. I didn’t manage to see the whole of the camp as we had little more than an hour and my friend and I chose to see as much as possible without reading everything, otherwise we wouldn’t have got much further than the gates, but at a pace that didn’t involve us running around and not taking anything in. One thing I did note was the lack of life; sure there were several trees, but the grass, it was almost dead, brown with the heat of the sun, or perhaps, if you believe in that sort of thing, it was reacting in a way to what had occurred on that ground less than 70 years ago, I saw a couple of birds in the sky and a hooded crow on the ground but little more. We saw a lot including one of the rooms full of creaky wooden bunk beds, a large memorial and what, to be brutally honest, were experimentation tables, tiled, with drains in the middle. All the way I had to explain everything to my friend, as she wasn’t entirely sure what everything was, nor the context of it all as the only humanitarian subject she takes is religious studies. We returned to the reception at 4 as instructed and had to wait half an hour for the teachers and some of the pupils, luckily it wasn’t us late or there may have been trouble .
We then proceeded to a shopping mall, a think it was called Alexa, where to me and my friend’s relief, we found a smoothie bar, fresh fruit at last!!
Also went to a souvenir shop where I bought a bear pin for my dad to go on the Hohner Jack, or the pincushion as it has been christened, a few postcards, a rubber ducky and maybe something else but I can’t remember what. Meanwhile my friend bought three tops, ironically in H&M, what I think is one of her favourites in the UK and where she is doing her work experience too, two of the tops were red and white, one with stripes to feed her ‘slight’ obsession with the white stripes.
We then went on a 40 minute walk back to the hotel and I ended up with blisters
…we still had the walking tour to go, gulp.
We had tea at the hotel, MORE carbohydrates, texted mum again begging for something different, we had pasta. Luckily something different to the meat bolognaise had been made for the veggies, for once I wasn’t the only one, there were two veggies and two piscatarians on the trip. When I was on a residential trip six or seven years ago I had an unpleasant experience where I got stuck in a loo for 40 minutes with no one coming to find me and eating little more than bread and butter for two days, then they ran out of butter….. Hey, was only 8 or 9!
We did a quiz in groups which was interesting, then some people went down to the pool room and the rest of us wandered back to our rooms. We also discovered why the hotel, including the bedding stank! Smoking seemed to be permitted anywhere in the hotel, fair enough a designated area, but its not very nice when you are trying to sleep and your pillow smells of smoke, that reminds me, the duvets kept falling out of there cases so I ended up with just the case by morning ! Not much more to say there, one of my friends was freaked out as she kept seeing shadows next to the window and getting scared because there was a lot of graffiti in the city, even on tall buildings so she was worried if people could get up there they could climb up to our room. This wasn’t helped when we turned out the lights and one of my crazier friends decided to creep up to the end of her bed and peer over her with her arms ready to grab her, later she did it again with a torch under her and sure enough scared my friend more to death than to sleep. Anyway, that night there seemed to be a party outside the hotel, it was horrible and loud with bad music and went on long into the night.
Well, today we set the alarm for 6, I woke up at 5 AGAIN, and to add to that it was May 1st, as our tour guide called it, ‘Riot Day’, the day that had been chosen for us to do our walking tour of Berlin…well I can’t say more than that…
Funny chocolate cereal for breakfast again, with peppermint tea, odd mix eh? I may have to try to condense things a bit now as it’s gone midnight and mum’s trying to send me to bed, but I’m on a roll and I can’t be stopped, or something like that , but the thought of five pieces of homework tomorrow isn’t good, I got thirteen pieces this week, including draft coursework set for two days later, then the teacher wasn’t in, anyway I’m rambling, but seeing as my dad has only been on here for three months and he is up to 100 hours or so of typing or being signed in or whatever, you may have noticed where I get it from. [another rambling rant
] Don’t all agree staying on this website ‘til 4 am when he has to get up for work at just gone 6 the next day sometimes is really so smart? Well, yes, my dad has been known to do that from time to time, it’s ridiculous yet he has been known to smirk when I mention it, he is proud about it all!….Anyhow… Last time I wrote this much was one of my history coursework essays and that took me a whole weekend so I’m doing well. Anyhoo, getting sidetracked, AGAIN………….
So where was I, right, walking tour, got it… soo, we probably used more modes of transport that day than I do in a year, we got the tram towards the telecom tower where we saw it and an interesting fountain while our guide talked to us for 45 minutes. I saw the teachers glancing at one another as if to say will she ever stop, probably what you are wondering as I type now
… When she finished she said any questions and then turned to look at the tower and the teachers all made cut signs at us and shook their heads. So we carried on and got the train to the Reichstag building, as we crossed a mini bridge there we saw a café with deck chairs by the river, it was funny as you never see anything like that around here.
The Reichstag was amazing, it was huge, sadly we couldn’t go inside as the queue was two hours long, the guide was dragging us away, but my teacher wasn’t so impressed as she has her heart set on showing it to us. Brief backstory: The Reichstag is a large building in Berlin with a huge glass dome on the roof, it has the words “Dem Deutschen Volke,” I thinks that’s right, which I think means to the German people. It was the first parliament of the German Empire and opened in the late 1800 and began construction on June the 9th 1884. Ooo that’s dad’s birthday! The dome itself is full of mirrors which reflect light into the building.
We then went on to see a Soviet War Memorial where half the class climbed onto a tank for a photograph where a few got stuck and had to lifted to safety by the others. We then walked down the street where there were many stalls and seats as part of the May Day celebrations and one of the boys randomly high-fived a man on a bike.
We walked down the street to the Brandenburg gate which was really tall and it looked fantastic, one of my friends also had her photo taken with some dressed up actors reinacting a moment in history but it cost her two Euros as it was supposed to cost one but they took it as a donation as it was a charitable type event, she wasn’t so impressed as she didn’t have much money left.
We then had five minutes to wander round the stalls and most people ended up trying the German sausage hot dogs. The tourguide’s joke was getting tiring she kept on and on about how us British love to queue it was starting to get annoying, out of context I know…She was confused when someone told her that some of our class were from Norway, Malta and Holland
We had a few minutes to stop at a park but were told not to eat our lunch as we would have it later, it was a baking hot day again and we were all thirsty but waited, guess what, we never stopped later…..not impressed
We went on to the Jewish War Memorial or ‘the memorial to murdered Jews of Europe’, but, there was a catch, we had to walk through the demonstrators parade and according to the guide the anarchists were coming, one of the boys commented that they had spotted a mini camera crew but no one took much notice.
The memorial was remarkable, 19,000 square metres of sloping ground wiggling up and down with 2711 rectangular stabs ranging from flat on the floor to almost 5m tall. (hope I got my figures right) There was a strange sense of unity but loneliness and warmth but chilling cold, it was easy to get lost in too, it’s a shame we only had ten minutes. It seems to be open to interpretation without telling you what to think of it if that makes sense. We were second in the queue to go into the underground exhibit on it when suddenly the tourguide took us away somewhere else instead, beats me...
We went to another tourist type shop where I couldn’t resist a mini panda beany bear, dad probably hasn’t told you but two of my obsessions are teddies and pandas...
Right, next we walked across the street to the site of Hitler’s bunker but again the guide talked forever, including a fair bit that we already knew then didn’t even let us read the sign about it but just told us we needed to hurry up and get on, so we did. It was her who was wasting time though because she kept repeating herself, she wasn’t a bad guide, just a little forgetful I suppose.
So we continued and saw a little of the remains of the Berlin wall from the cold war in Germany where West and East Germany were divided, around 100 people were killed attempting to cross it. I haven’t studied the cold war yet, but the rough story of this was that after the war, 4 countries divided up Berlin, but one sector, Russian I think took it literally that they could strip it bare of all its produce and so on, so the other 3 sectors put money into Germany to balance this out, however, needless to say the 4th sector disliked this. As Berlin was the capital they wanted to divide it up too so Berlin, in the 4th sector was also divided and as everyone wanted to leave the fourth sector in the east for the west, the Berlin wall was built to stop them, or something along those lines.
As the guide had talked more than expected we didn’t; get to see everything we had wanted to such as Checkpoint Charlie, but yes we continued and caught the underground followed by the tram then walked back to the hotel, rushed to the coach as we were late and to the airport, managing to eat a little of lunch, carbohydrate again on the way. We waited at the airport for the next two hours after having a little trouble getting two of the boys on the plane as somehow their names had been typed up back to front and it caused a little upset (eg: Johnson Fred as opposed to Fred Johnson etc.) Back to the story of the camera crew, there was a TV screen with the news on in the waiting room place, no shops this time, just a long wait, well, one shop and a vending machine, and the apparently the boy who saw the cameras was certain he saw himself and us lot on the tv in the middle of the parades!!
That’s about all really, other than we got on the plane and went home and one of my friend left her passport in the magazine holder at the seat on the plane and had to run back to get it, shh her mum doesn’t know!!!!
and I suddenly remembered on the last day everyone had to leave their suitcases in our room which was a bit of fun and the teacher locked all our passports in the safe and suddenly realised she hadn’t taught us how to work them for all our gadgets and stuff as our rooms had the bins emptied whilst we were out. We has been putting our stuff in it anyway in hope a burglar wouldn’t try it.
After waiting 45 minutes for the coach we went back to the school and to our parents and to FRUIT JUICE!!!!!!!!
Oh and another good note for terminal 5 and BA, we got our luggage back in record time all intact.
Knowing me I will think I have missed something and ask dad to add it for me but if he remembers… well that’s another thing…
I will have to tell on him now, he can finally remember what year I am in at school, however when planning our summer, he asked me when I thought the colleges would start, I don’t start college for at least another year, its sad he can remember all the stuff he can tell you guys from however long ago, yet he can’t remember what year I’m in , as long as he can remember my name and my age, oh well I will have to settle for that for now…
Anyway, thank you very much if you have managed to suffer through all of my rambling, random, nearly 4500 word essay on my school trip to the fantastic city of Berlin…
Until the next time, if he lets me out of the cage twice in one year, this was Roshina, the slightly strange, mad thing that is the offspring of your bass friend Kenny-Murdo, ‘til he changes his name again that is...
