Day 49 – Kutná hora
We took the train to Kutna hora to go see the “bone church" aka the Sedlec ossuary. It was really bizzare but also very cool. Our favorite part was the bone chandelier! After our visit, we walked to St. Barbara's church, which was a beautiful Gothic church (and a UNESCO world heritage site, of course). In the evening, we had some local cuisine: sweet and sour cabbage, potato pancakes, some sort of baked cheese, and breaded eggplant sprinkled with almonds- washed down with the original Czech pilsner Urquell (first produced in nearby Plzen in 1842).
Day 48 – Czech it out!
We boarded a train from Berlin to Prague. The train traveled through Dresden and we thought about stopping there for a few hours to explore (I can thank Slaughterhouse Five for my desire to see Dresden). We decided we would rather get to Prague sooner, so we didn't stop. After getting settled, we had our laundry done at our hostel while we ate dinner across the street. We both had cheesy potato dishes (one with broccoli and the other with tomatoes and eggplant). The entrées were very tasty and ridiculously cheap ($4 each)! We had a beer at the hostel bar which was also super cheap ( two beers for $1.50 during happy hour) but everyone in the bar was smoking constantly so we didn't stay long. We realized that we have taken for granted the smoking ban in WI!
Day 48 – Final day in Berlin
We started off the day by visiting Tier gardens (the former Royal Family's hunting grounds); the gardens were really bland in comparison to every other garden/park we have visited thus far. We spent the next few hours at the Topography of Terror exhibit which documented the history of Nazi Germany with many photographs and documents. The museum is located at the former site of the Gestapo and rubble from the destroyed building surrounds the museum. Afterwards, we returned to the hostel to rest/warm up/eat. We had an appointment to enter the Reichstag (parliament building) that evening (an appointment is necessary after a bomb threat was made a few years back), so we headed there to get a good view of the city. We ascended the dome, where we got a nice view, enhanced by the Festival of Lights. Afterwords, we checked out a few of the buildings and monuments involved in the festival; it was pretty neat! Here are a few pictures of the festival:
Day 46 – Sachsenhausen
35 km outside of Berlin lies the first concentration camp - the camp the others were modeled after - Sachsenhausen. (And later in the war the location where the head office in charge of concentration camps was located.) We headed there today and spent most of the day exploring the camp and the exhibits. At the end of WW2 when the Soviets took control of Eastern Germany they turned around and used the same camp to house their prisoners of war and criminals. When done, they knocked down many of the original buildings, so almost all the buildings we saw were reconstructions, but they were still harrowing. The camp started by housing mainly political prisoners but it also held all of the other groups persecuted by the Nazi regime (Jews, Sinti, homosexuals, Gypsies, and the mentally or physically disabled). Over 100.000 people lost their lives in the camp - most of them during the years the camp was operated by the Nazis. 12.000 Soviet soldiers were executed there in one month alone. The foundations of the building where the executions were carried out remain, as well as parts of the crematorium ovens (see photo). It was hard to view. We headed back in the evening and planned on walking around to look at the Berlin buildings at night. There was a Festival of Lights going on while we were there and a lot of the famous buildings were lit up. We wound up staying inside and watching a documentary instead since it was raining pretty hard.
Day 45 – Berlin
After the hostel breakfast we did a free 3.5 hour walking tour. It was a great introduction to the city; we saw things like the Brandenburg Tor, the Reichstag, the Luftwaffe SS building, the parking lot above where Hitler's bunker was, Checkpoint Charlie, museum island, and a small standing piece of the Berlin Wall. The wall was much smaller and thinner than we had expected (as the picture illustrates). Afterwards we fulfilled a craving that had been growing in us ever since we started our trip - a craving for a burrito. We hung out in the hostel for a while as we planned our next few days. The dinner we bought in the hostel bar was actually quite good, and super cheap (€10 for 2 entrees and an appetizer.)
Day 44 – Heading back to Germany
We had a nice breakfast with our hosts before saying our goodbyes. Our trains to Berlin went by quickly; it was nice to have reservations. Our hostel was out of double bed rooms so we got upgraded to an "apartment" room that came with a semiprivate bathroom (it only had one camera in it) and full kitchen. We got comfy, had an excellent meal at a nearby Thai restaurant and then bought a return ticket to sleepytown.