A day of learning..

Today i visited the Jewish Museum and Checkpoint Charlie.

The jewish museum was incredible.. spent nearly 3 hours in there reading all the information and looking at all the photos. What was a shock to me (but not a surprise) was the fact that to enter the museum, i had to go through a metal detector and my bag through the xray machine. They freaked when they scanned my bag.. but were ok when i pulled out my asthma pump.. haha
They have 2 buildings.. one old and one new. The new museum houses the permanent exhibition and the old building houses the special exhibitions.
As you walk through the new building, all along the walls it has explanations from the architect as to why he designed the building that way.. it was interesting to hear the reasonings behind it.
Sadly the garden of exile was closed due to the weather, but from the glass door it looked fascinating. It may have only been concrete slabs in a row, but the symbolism was outstanding..
The permanent exhibition started with the history of the jewish faith, then moved into jews in berlin before/during/after hitler and into modern times. The special exhibition was learning about kosher food/what is kosher.. very interesting.

After the jewish museum, i quickly walked to Checkpoint Charlie and the museum there. This museum has been around since the wall was originally built. It contains many stories of murder at the wall, attempted escapes both successful and unsuccessful, stories of how smuggling people/items beyond the wall came into effect, how it was done. To see the lengths that some people went through just to go from one side to the other was insane. What is fascinating though is the love that the germans (of that time) had for JFK and Regan. Many exhibitions on both of these men who visited the city many times and fought publicly in the media for Berlin's freedom. I spent over 2 hours here reading everything. It was a small museum compared to others, but the walls were covered in photos and information from floor to ceiling in all the rooms.
As i walked out of the museum i realised that i was standing right where the wall used to be and it was quite a shock to imagine a big concrete structure in the middle of a road or even a city.. separating everything into 2 worlds. To see photos of the wall then actually visit the area where it is no longer is surreal.

Then it was onto the Sony Centre to catch up with Antje to see a movie.