This morning our guide, Tommy, decided to take us on a learning and discovery tour that would take us to a Berlin neighborhood called Kreuzberg that tourists would never go to and were probably not wanted. Believe me, it was nice for me not to have to worry about what train, how many stops and marking sure that every one was there.

We ended up going to a tiny town that has basically been taken over by Turkish immigrants because it is inexpensive to live there. It is also filled with artists and creative types. The people that live there are extremely left oriented. Many signs about pro Palestine rallies and anti semitism.

The town was filled with many green areas. Tommy said that after buildings were bombed during the war there was a concerted effort not to build in those lots but to leave them empty for parks. Beautiful murals were painted on many of the walls of buildings. Of course, my mind went to how they erected the scaffoldings!

People were very friendly and an immigrant from Mongolian stopped to chat with us. He had been in Germany for 36 years. He was not happy living here because of the discrimination against immigrants but he had no place else to go.

We had lots of discussion about the Berlin Wall that is not an easy topic to understand. There was not just 1 wall. Yes, the wall was built to divide East and West Germany but on the east side (the communist side) they built a second wall and the area between the two walls was called the dead zone. The dead zone was filled with alarms and perfectly raked sand in case anyone tried to escape. The people that were caught were not returned but immediately shot and killed. In the afternoon we went to a memorial honoring all the people who tried to escape, when they were killed and how they tried to escape. Yes, we all know that the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. East Berlin went to the Russians (Communism) and West Berlin was divided between the US, the British and the French. Prior to that in 1949 the county of Germany was divided into East Germany (Communist) and West Germany and was basically run by the US, France and Great Britain, Our guide told us that on a Saturday night when everyone was sleeping the East German government build a wall or a fence dividing themselves from West Germany, People who had been visiting in East Germany overnight work up on Sunday morning and were not allowed to return to their home in West Germany without the fear of being killed. So basically the City of Berlin (specifically West Berlin) in 1961 was completely surrounding by communism and was referred to as the Golden Cage

Of course, Communists being who they are, decided to block the City of West Berlin from receiving any supplies from the outside world resulting in starvation and many other hardships. In steps the United States and starts the Berlin Airlift. Mostly the US, flew over 2700 missions to bring food, coal, machine parts, etc to the West Berliners to make them self sufficient. To put this in perspective, planes at the Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin landed and took off every 90 seconds for over a year during the time of the airlift. The Berlin Airlift lasted from June 1948 to May 1949.

As part of our afternoon tour called Allies in Berlin we visited the Tempelhof Airport that was originally built by Hilter to be the largest airport in the world. The US sorties were run out of this airport for the Berlin Airlift. On the grounds was a beautiful memorial built by the West Berliners to thank the United States for what we did. Also part of the tour was to go to the palace where President John F Kennedy made the famous speech “Ich bin ein Berliner” meaning I am a Berliner or in our terms “I’ve got your back.” 400,000 West Berliners were at Kennedy’s speech.

Our last stop of the day was at the Allied Museum where we finally saw the “real” Checkpoint Charlie. Those of you who read yesterday’s blog know what I am talking about.

On a happier note, here is a picture of Andy posing with two of the Berlin Bears. Today was also his 44th wedding anniversary and Therese’s 54th anniversary. Our wonderful guide, Tommy, bought fresh strawberries to celebrate. Plant City strawberries don’t hold a candle to these strawberries.

Tomorrow we leave Berlin for the beautiful city of Dresden.