Date: Thursday 19th June
Staying:Camping Sanssouci-Berlin – Potsdam, Germany
Distance Travelled: 0 Miles
Song of the day: Reckless - Australian Crawl
We had different goals for today, mine relating to the cold war, and Laurie’s more ‘retail’ related.
His Part: The walking tour we did yesterday was so good (and the Tour Guide Mike was a kiwi from Wellington), I decided to join him for his Cold War tour today. I wasn’t the only one either, as I was joined by a couple of other people from yesterday.
Today’s walk was all about the Cold War. There were two highlights (for sake of a more appropriate word) on this tour for me. The first was a guided look at the Stasi Museum. The Stasi were the East German’s ‘Secret Police’. They had a very visible presence in having 91000 officers on the streets, but they also employed 175000 ‘informers’ from the public. When the KGB was at its most officious, they had 1 operative to every 2600 (approx) people in the Soviet Union, an incredible amount of coverage; the Stasi had 1 operative to every 61 people in East Germany. This kind of coverage meant the Stasi had a file on 1 in every 4 people in East Germany.
The exhibits stretched from the files they had (180 miles if laid beside each other), to the incredible devices used for spying, and was excellently explained by Mike. As this was small group, there was heaps of questions too, which was excellent.
The second stand-out was visiting the only piece of the wall in its original state. It has been rebuilt by the Government, but it is exactly as it was 20 years ago (less the landmines, dogs, guard tower and sensor controlled machine guns). At about 15 – 20 metres, it is not surprising so many people were killed trying to escape to the West. There was so much else that was worth talking about, but this is not the forum for it.
Not having had my full of 20th Century German history, I headed to the German History Museum to see their displays on the Nazi Germany and the Cold War. The collection is obviously extensive and extremely informative, but the less said about this the better. If it’s the kind of thing you want to learn about, this is the place to go.
Her Part: I left Cam to his tour for the day, and headed off into Berlin by myself. I had a much more relaxing (if not so edifying) day, visiting bookshops, taking local buses around the city, poking my nose into churches, buildings and shops that took my fancy, rounding it off by having a quiet sit by the river watching the tourist boats go by. It was nice to take the city at a more leisurely pace and explore a few of the suburbs (some accidentally) that we hadn’t seen up until now.
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