The Rest of Berlin

This day consisted of going to the DDR museum, then a guided tour to various historical places in East Germany, and finally the Jewish Museum.

The Berliner Dome

The DDR Museum was a very interactive museum about the everyday life of someone living in East Germany.

This was the an exhibit about the cars they drove in the DDR. I had to sit in the seat and turn the keys. When the car wouldn't start, I would pull one of the solutions. Then I went back to try to start the car again. When the car eventually starts, you have a simulation of driving through the streets of East Berlin. I did not have enough patience to get the car started.

Freie Deutsche Jugend
The Free German Youth

On the guided tour I took, we went to a ghost station that had an exhibit on ghost stations. When Berlin was split, one transportation headquarters was in the West and another was in the East. It was easy to split most of the lines to provide transportation for each side. There were a few train lines that could not be so easily divided. The East were in control of these lines and had the West pay them to use them. Then then blocked off the stations that were in East Germany so there would be no escaping through the tunnels. These 'ghost' stations would also be guarded by soldiers. After the fall of the wall, the stations were put back into use.

What the station looked like all bricked up

What it looks like now

All the black dots are dots that were ghost stations.

The station that was never remodeled until the fall of the wall so they kept its 1920's charm.

What a West-Berliner would see as the train passed through a ghost station.

View through a preliminary wall to the death strip with the Berlin Wall in the background.

The watch tower to guard the death strip.

A church that was eventually destroyed to make space for the guarded death strip.

A Stasi interrogation facility

Next was the Jewish Museum by Daniel Libeskind

Architectural Model of the Building