{"id":2339,"date":"2013-12-17T07:15:31","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T12:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=2339"},"modified":"2013-12-26T17:43:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T22:43:19","slug":"berlin-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/17\/berlin-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin, Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 3rd<\/sup> portion of our Germany Christmas market tour after Munich, Nuremberg, Leipzig and Wittenberg took us to Berlin.\u00a0 I have to be honest, I knew very little about Berlin other than the infamous wall and I really didn\u2019t know what to expect.\u00a0 A lot of the places we visited while in Europe I had an idea about, I knew something about the history or the culture or the people but for some reason I felt very in the dark about Berlin.\u00a0 Honeybun was 2 \u00bd and Sugarplum was 5 months and we continued our trend of visiting places that would not typically be chosen by families of young children.<\/p>\n

Because we had the van and the things we wanted to see were spread all over the city, we stayed at an affordable hotel a little farther out.\u00a0 The Hotel (the Alecsa Hotel am Olympistadion) was near the Olympic stadium and was a post-World War II building with a tiny little, questionable elevator but our room was surprisingly huge.\u00a0 We had booked a triple for the 4 of us and ended up with a large room with bunk beds and another room off to the side with a double bed.\u00a0 Our room had nice laminate floors but my parents\u2019 room wasn\u2019t quite as nice with older carpet but it worked for the minimal time we were there.\u00a0 Breakfast was not included but our room was large enough for us all to share a Dunkin Donuts breakfast (which we were excited to find near the Brandenburg Gate).<\/p>\n

\"DSC04478\"<\/a>\u00a0The first full day we drove outside the city to the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz which is where in 1942 the Nazis met to \u201corganize and implement the final solution to the Jewish Problem,\u201d (this is where the decision to set up the concentration camps took place).\u00a0 While the history and story was amazing, this might be one of the least friendly places we\u2019ve ever taken the girls.\u00a0 I expected to find a museum with artifacts and furniture which I can always use to entertain the girls but unfortunately the exhibit was a series of pictures and explanations printed on large boards placed all around the house and it was nearly impossible to keep the girls entertained while we read the story.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>That afternoon we visited the Berlin-Hohensch\u00f6nhausen Memorial which is a Soviet prison with a long and fascinating history.\u00a0 The prison started as a detainment and transfer camp that then became a secret underground prison which the Soviet Secret Police used as a detainment and interrogation camp and was used until 1989 as a camp for political prisoners.\u00a0 The prison is located within a \u201csecret\u201d area that was not listed on maps at the time and was sealed from the general population of Berlin.\u00a0 The prison can only be visited by taking a guided tour but the tour was interesting and the guide was great with the kids and the tour kept them generally entertained.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"DSC04487<\/a> \"DSC04490<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DSC04505After the museum we stopped at the Potsdamer Platz for dinner and also wandered around the Christmas market there.\u00a0 It was terribly cold and it had snowed every day since we arrived \u00a0in Germany \u00a0and the market was nice since it was next to a shopping center where we could go warm up with our Gluhwein (mulled wine) and sweet treats.\u00a0 The market was did not have as much charm as the one in Nuremberg but it was still fun to meander through and see the handicrafts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next day we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum which focuses on the history of the famous checkpoint separating East from West Berlin in addition to the Berlin Wall .\u00a0 It was interesting to see the history behind Checkpoint Charlie as well as all the interesting ways people were smuggled through to escape the Soviet West side.\u00a0 Honeybun thought the people huddling in the small compartments of cars and using various flying devices to try to escape was silly and stayed engaged throughout the visit.<\/p>\n

\"DSC04505\"<\/a>\"DSC04504\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After lunch we went to the Berlin Wall Documentation Center.\u00a0 Much like the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, the center contained only pictures and text hung on large posterboards handing from the ceiling.\u00a0 Honeybun was not at all interested and spent the entire visit pushing Sugarplum and the buggy into thing (I really should say crashing her into things) and while I was interested in the museum I didn\u2019t get to enjoy it much.<\/p>\n

That night we went to Pergamon Museum since it was open late that night.\u00a0 While everyone was a little wishwashy about going since we had already had a busy day, I pushed and insisted we go and everyone is glad we did.\u00a0 You enter the museum and come upon the Pergamon Altar, a huge ancient altar built in the 2nd<\/sup> century BC in the Middle East and was excavated and brought to Berlin in the late 1800s.\u00a0 The museum also houses a large Islamic Art exhibit, Antiquity Collection and Middle East Museum which showcases the Ishtar Gate and Procession Way of Babylon.\u00a0 It was super cool to see these huge, ancient structures that were carefully uncovered, moved and artfully put back together.<\/p>\n

\"DSC04520\"<\/a> \"DSC04525\"<\/a> \"DSC04526\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DSC04549\"<\/a>We finished out our trip to Berlin with a stop at the Olympic Stadium.\u00a0 We were excited to do a tour of the stadium where the historic games were held during Hitler\u2019s time.\u00a0 Unfortunately it was still snowing and when we arrived they were unsure if they would be holding tours which was the only way to see the grounds.\u00a0 We waited around over an hour only to find out there would be no tours so we headed on our way to\u00a0Hamburg<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 3rd portion of our Germany Christmas market tour after Munich, Nuremberg, Leipzig and Wittenberg took us to Berlin.\u00a0 I have to be honest, I knew very little about Berlin other than the infamous wall and I really didn\u2019t know what to expect.\u00a0 A lot of the places we visited while in Europe I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tiny-travellers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2360,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}