As Day Three had been pretty busy, we started off Day Four with a little sleeping in, followed by a big breakfast at the hotel (I'll have to talk a little at some point about the breakfast buffet at the hotel - salmon with herbed cream cheese every morning, any breads you could think of, cheese and sausages that were to die for - MMM!) and then a stroll and some SHOPPING! I don't do a ton of shopping when I'm on vacation, but I do like to take home the occasional momento. And I knew exactly what I wanted to take home from Germany. Several friends had picked up really beautiful Christmas pyramids in prior trips to Germany and had them on display over the holiday season. While the Christmas markets in Berlin had ended the DAY BEFORE we arrived (dang it!) there were a couple of stores carrying Christmas decorations all year long. I bought the cutest pyramid, and a couple of decorations for myself and some friends and felt...complete.
Of course after shopping I was hungry again and we had a little time to kill before our next outing so we headed out for coffee and kuchen. This time, the cake was crumbly, with a layer of figs. It. Was. AWESOME! So after getting revitalized we were off to our major tourist trip of the day: the Stasi Prison.
This is a pretty grim destination. You head deep into what was once East Germany, and in the middle of these huge, plain apartment buildings is the prison used by the Stasi to hold and question prisoners who were thought to be distributing anti communist information, trying to leave the country, or doing anything that could be construed as an action against the state. It's a pretty heartrending tour, but important too I think to understand how devastating it is when people are held and tortured and questioned without any justification, without trial, without charges. This was happening in Germany into the late 80s - it's not so far in the past and of course there are many parallels that can be drawn to things going on today.
The tour guide we had was really great. You do have to call in advance to set up a tour in English but that was a very easy process. I also want to say I was impressed by how many young people in general but especially American teenagers I saw on the various tours we took while in Berlin. This prison tour in particular is in a location that's pretty out of the way, it's a very serious subject matter and it doesn't involve beer. And yet, there were quite a few college age kids on the tour who were extremely polite, asked intelligent questions and in general restored my faith in todays youth. (That will probably last until the next time I catch an episode of the Real World).
So the amazing thing about the prison is that the people who were held there never saw anyone other than the guards. They were incredibly isolated as a technique to get them to open up to the only person they ever had a chance to speak to - their interrogator.
The prisoners were blindfolded and driven around in windowless vans anytime they had to be moved from one part of the prison to another so that they would have no idea how the prison was set up or where the prison was located - increasing their feeling of isolation. There is a rose garden in the middle of the prison (not blooming in January of course) that the prisoners never saw as they were never moved from one part of the prison through the courtyard to another part of the prison for fear that they might figure out the layout and a way to escape.
There were terrible stories of water torture, sleep deprivation and of course the general torture of not knowing how long you would be held. People were arrested for simply knowing that a friend would be making an attempt to escape into West Berlin and not informing the authorities. One woman was held for 2 years simply because she didn't rat out her friend. Our guide told us that he often has people who were held in the prison come on the tour and he doesn't know their history until they begin crying or shaking as the feelings of helplessness and desperation come flooding back.
Like I said, it's a pretty heavy tour but so important and worth the time.
Needless to say after the tour, we were hungry again. We'd hadn't really hit up the bratwurst stands around town so we headed down near KaDaWe and basically went stand to stand trying different bratwurst, burgers and other quicky food. It was all great, but the best really is this stand called Witter that has organic products right across from the department store. I never knew that eating a sausage in the freezing cold could be such a wonderful experience.
Comments