I’m currently sitting on the train on the three hour return trip back to Warnemunde, Germany where the ship is docked. This has been a long day (with three hours still remaining, at least) that started at 5:30AM when the alarm went off. Unfortunately, I didn’t crawl in bed nice and early like I should have because I forgot that I needed to do laundry which I finished around 2:30AM. But – I woke up, took a shower, ate breakfast and arrived for the tour right on time!
By 7:30AM, myself and all the guests on my tour were outside and walking towards the train station (located right on the pier) and loading up. Steve took this tour last cruise (I DJ’d for him and he worked for me all day today) and told me that I would have to sit in the “Catering Car'” so I quickly navigated myself through 12 cars or so to find the other tour escorts awaiting my arrival. I’m so glad that we all sat together for the three hours because it FLEW by. Sofie works for Shore Excursions pulled out her computer and we all started watching the new TV show “Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss” and it passed two hours very very quickly. It was quite funny because we were all watching this television show about people losing 100’s of pounds and we were sitting there munching on dried fruit, Jay was eating brownies and hard boiled eggs and then we all received our snack packs of muffins, apples, chocolate and my favorite gummy bears in the whole world – Haribo.
Exactly three hours later, we pulled into the train station in Berlin and dispersed to our respective buses. Sofie and I walked off the train together and she introduced me to the man in charge of all the tours to Berlin. Him name is Ian and he is from South Africa and very pleasant man. Sofie decided to ask if her and I could go on the same bus if room was available – he said YES! If you don’t know what it’s like to be a tour escort, it can be lonely. You have to go by yourself (well – without any of your friends) and do the tour with guests from the ship. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to do these tours, but it’s always fun if someone you know can go with you. We grabbed our seats and the bus started our 8 hour tour through Berlin.
Our first stop was at the only synagogue to survive the war. We literally got off the bus long enough to take a photograph and then hopped back on for the next stop!
Next stop…the Catholic church and the University where the “Burning of the Books’ took place.
Then Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall….I’m sad that Sophie has the pictures of the Berlin Wall and me standing on it…hopefully she’ll tag me in the picture on face book so I can show you!
The Berlin Wall from the bus window as we drove past the last remaining bit of it!
Then onto food – it was lunch time! We headed to a restaurant by the name of Lowenbrau. The restaurant was huge with tables everywhere and dark wood walls and floors with waitresses in traditional German attire. There was a buffet with potato salad, pan fried potatoes, minced meat (a guy told us it was like meatloaf….it was definitely a flattened hot dog), ham with gravy, sauerkraut and sausages. It was a perfect (low cal) meal. On the other side of the buffet was the “desserts” and there were the delicious pretzels with butter in the middle, almond cream, berries and chocolate cream. I went with the berries and a vanilla sauce that you could drizzle in the glass. Again, low fat and low calorie!
Here’s Ian (the tour leader), Sofie and Myself after a delicious lunch!
Once lunch was over, I got really excited. One of the primary reasons I picked this tour in particular was that it goes to the Holocaust Memorial and one of the concentration camps. We stopped by the Holocaust Memorial (just to take pictures, not go underground to see the walls of names). Sophie and I had a blast laying on the ground taking pictures of the 2700 cement blocks scattered throughout the memorial.
A couple more small stops before our final (and the reason I came on board). The Brandenburg Gate and Hotel Adlon made famous by Michael Jackson when he held his baby over the balcony.
And onto the most incredible spot ever – the concentration camp. Now, this camp was not one of the typical well known ones and it was not one of the camps known for the high volume of killings like Auschwitz and Dachau, but still was responsible for the sickening deaths and abuse of thousands of men and women. I’ll put some pictures and descriptions here but I will never do this place justice (especially since most of it was destroyed) and I will never be able to describe the overwhelming feeling and energy that I could feel while standing in places where I knew 1000s of people suffered daily and feared for their lives. The entire time, I kept trying to imagine how much fear these people had all day every day, how hungry they were and how devastating it would be to live a life in constant fear. Could you ever even imagine? I was completely and utterly disgusted with the idea that so these SS men could so openly and easily kill and beat these human beings.
The “Green Monster” where the SS officers would train and eat in the cafeteria.
This is the entrance to the camp. To the left of this entrance used to be the living quarters of the SS Officers. The tour guide, Tatiyana, explained that they had a full living area with post office, ponds with swans and other beautiful things to live a nice life outside of the gates because we all knew what they were doing inside.
The gates to the camp…
The outside of the Jewish quarters and the fences surrounding them.
Inside the Jewish Quarters. From left to right/ top to bottom: The beds for sleeping, the toilets, a sign outside of the “baths” where up to 100 people could be crammed trying to “bathe” at the same time. The Jews would have 30 minutes to wake up, eat, bathe and be at roll call. While in the bath room, some Jews were said to have been drowned by SS officers for washing their feet.
The pit where bodies would be shot and thrown into this pit before being pulled through the wooden doors and incinerated.
Behind the pit and through the wooden doors were more “ovens” and the different sections for separating the bodies. Each body would be marked on the bellies as to whether or not they had tattoos (which would later be used for lampshades), gold teeth, etc. The monument below was inside the house where the carcass collection “bins” were. This was one of this saddest parts to me.
One of the lookout towers that surrounded the camp.
This is the pathology building where the SS Officers would take people to be used as human experiments and inject these poor people with different viruses (Hepatitis was a big one) and see if they could survive. Doctors and hospitals were all in on this as well.
After this incredibly moving experience, we walked about five minutes around the corner to the train station. They also explained that they used the train to get the prisoners to the concentration camp because it was so close. The prisoners would then have to walk around the corner to the camp.
We made it to the train station, unloaded the bus and got everyone onto the train. All the tours that came into Berlin with us finished a bit earlier than we did and were already on the train from a previous stop. I found my seat in the catering car along with all of my colleagues, picked up our snack bags and just started to relax, dry off and unwind from the day. We all talked about our tours and I think mine won…for sure :)
On a minor side note, we had the BEST sausages in the entire world on the train and we ate a ton of them. They were SO good!
Definitely an(other) experience to remember as well as remind me of the blessings that I have in my life. With everything that has happened over the last few months – I’m definitely starting to come back to myself. Praise God!
Quote of the day: “You’ll notice that a turtle only makes progress when it sticks out its neck…”
