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25 May 2008
Sonal's Web Diary
3 days and 3 nights later I have returned from Berlin and already I want to go back! The city is beautiful and alive with history. Our hostel called Wombats was located in East Berlin and was very close to both the trains and buses making it easy to get around Berlin.
On our first day in Berlin we took the Free Tour provided by the Sandemans’ New Europe Group. It was mainly a tour of East Berlin taking us to all the main sites. We saw the German parliament building, the Reichstag, visited Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, Hitler’s Bunker, the Holocaust Memorial and many more historical sites. The tour covered a range of buildings dating from the 16th century up to modern Germany. The tour guide we had was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable and as the tour went on he kept telling us lots of interesting little facts.
We also explored the West side of Berlin and taking the bus in I could see a difference in the two sides of Berlin. We went to Kurfurstendamm Street which is famous in Berlin for its shopping. It was a nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon in Berlin.
On our final day in Berlin we took a tour out to Sachsenhausen concentration camp which is about an hour away from Berlin in a town called Oranienburg. Sachsenhausen was originally set up as a labour camp, not an extermination centre. However, as time went on Sachsenhausen was slowly converted into one and approximately 60,000 people were killed in Sachsenhausen. The tour by no means was a fun tour, but it was a very interesting and educational tour and reminds us of what occurred about only 60 years ago.
The short time we spent in Berlin was amazing. I learnt a lot over the 3 days we spent in Berlin and I would definitely recommend anyone to go and see Berlin.
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