Independence Day

Well... independence day for you in the USA but not for me in Berlin! It was a really busy day, though. Every day is really busy! I woke up at 7:30 and went to school where our teacher gave us a little bit of homework. It was pretty exciting. Then the AYUSA kids all got together and got hot dogs for lunch (some said it was for America's sake... American hot dogs...) but it was unlike anything I ever had in the states. It was so much better. Mine had onion on it and crunchy things and some other stuff. I'm not exactly sure!

After that we all went down to the Brandenburg Gate to start our walking tour. It was four hours long! We looked at almost everything you could ever imagine in Berlin but it was really cool. I took some pictures of our tour group but I was really exhausted and didn't take very many fun ones. 

This picture is of Humboldt Universitaet. It is a really amazing school! About 20 feet from where I was standing was a memorial to the books burned by the Nazis there. It was a really well done and subtle memorials. The subtlety of the memorials and the meaningful nature of them is extraordinarily powerful here in Germany. The books were burned from the very square from which this picture was taken. 

A picture of me in the square where the book burning occurred. It was another gray day in Berlin. It was really fun, though, although my face doesn't say that at all.

The tour took as all the way down to the place where the Gestapo headquarters were and were eventually destroyed. Once again the power of the place struck me. They tore down the headquarters and left the rubble there with a museum in the middle. They won't build anything there. The interrogation rooms are downstairs. I hope to go back there and visit. It's called the Topography of Terror. Another part of the tour which struck me was that after we went through the holocaust memorial (which is so exquisitely beautiful and meaningful) we went and stood in this parking lot. There was an East Berlin apartment complex there and we looked at it but then our tour told us that 15 meters below where we stood - exactly where we stood - was Hitler's bunker.

It gave me chills. It was horrifyingly real to imagine that he had been there. It is now closed to the public and was completely flooded and bombed. No one can go there but we stood over it. It is still there because it was built to be bomb proof but it is a ruin. You cannot see it, cannot visit it, and never will. I didn't see any markings about or for it. I really respect that.

After that we walked and saw the museum island and after that we all went home. It was a really long but really fun tour. Today in school I met a 17 year old girl from Poland and we are now friends. It's really happy.  I LOVE having my luggage!

I hope today is a great day in the US! It was a really good day in Germany. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be sunny. I'm tired of rain.