today we went to checkpoint charlie, which is not named for a person, but named because it was the 3rd checkpoint along the wall, and the 3rd letter in the military alphabet is charlie (it comes after alpha and bravo). you can buy a version of this sign on magnets, or key chains, or postcards, or t-shirts, or...

but i was there in real life, see? proof. 

i love that the mcdonald's is located in the american sector. we ate here one day- don't judge me until you've had german food for a week. then we'll talk. 

wall of passports...

a lot of the checkpoint charlie museum is dedicated to finding out how people were smuggled over the berlin wall. this car had a phony trunk in which people would crawl, lie in the fetal position (and i'm assuming pray like hell) and hope that the car wasn't stop till you were over the border...

see? the tire goes right on top. 

the checkpoint charlie museum takes the view that the soviet occupation really became inevitable when hitler invaded russia. you might remember claus von staffenburg because tom cruise played him in that valkyrie movie. don't let the fact that tom cruise was allowed to play him stop you from thinking this guy was a hero. he was. tom cruise, on the other hand, is not. 

(and if you can't read the quote from staffenburg, it says, "nobody is obliged to observe his oath of service towards a person who has broken the oath a thousand times over.")

oh yes, this is very sad. parts of the wall had automatic guns with shrapnel bullets in them. these x-rays were taken from the chest of the ONLY person who survived triggering the guns. after 4 operations, he had to live with the last 2 bullets, which doctors could not remove because they were too close to his heart. 

that little box there-- that's what the bullets looked like. 

and that's the gun that would shoot them. 

another escape, but this one's not so nice. the man in the top picture left was separated from his wife (on the right) when the wall went up. so.... what would you do? well, this guy met a girl who looked just like his wife, and started dating her. then he took her on "holiday" to east berlin. then he stole her passport, and smuggled his wife back over to west berlin. the poor, unsuspecting girlfriend spent 3 months in soviet prison before her parents were able to secure her release. 

this is a better story. these ladies are sisters, who look very alike. their husbands also look alike. both families have an older daughter and a younger son. so.... the family that lived in west berlin went to east berlin on holiday. then they reported their passports were stolen... but before they did that, the east berlin family was over the wall and free. the soviets were so apologetic to the first family; they suffered no consequences. 

that's a speaker. the lady inside has the same height and weight as i do. she stayed in that box for five hours. when her dutch boyfriend went over the border, the guards complimented him on his stellar stereo equipment. suckers....

oh, i love this. okay, these people (none younger than 70) wanted to help some neighbors who were tunneling under the wall. the people digging said that there was no way; that the old people would not be any help, and besides; their wives would have to crawl on the ground because the tunnel would be so narrow. so they dug their own tunnel, and made it high enough for their wives to walk right to freedom. and they did, too. after they arrived safely, they said their work on the tunnel had made them 10 years younger. 

this little boy's mother, who lived in east berlin, had taken early retirement, and so she was allowed to travel once a year. she and her husband were divorcing, and she knew that he would never allow her to smuggle their son away, so she did it without his permission. she gave her 4 year old son sleeping pills, put him in a shopping bag, and covered him with a blanket. she figured if the bag wasn't zipped, the guards wouldn't look too closely. the cover was ALMOST blown when the little boy began talking in his sleep, but fortunately, all went well, and they both made it to freedom. 

a portable submarine. the man that invented this made it denmark....

where he was apparently quite popular with the ladies. also, he became rich because everyone wanted a patent on his personal submarine. escaping soviet germany, while getting ladies and big bucks? WINNING. and i don't mean charlie sheen's version, either. 

brandberg gate used to be right in the middle of a dead zone. so when the wall started coming down, it was the first place that berliners' flocked to. the gate became a symbol of the city's reunification. 

first car to drive through the former chekpoints...

david hasselhof. he was apparently instrumental in tearing down the wall. and now he doesn't even have the motor skills to eat a hamburger.... 

back to the east. 

these bricks run through the city, showing where the wall used to be. 

potsdammer platz metro station in soviet days. it was a "ghost station", meaning that while the train stopped there briefly, the doors were not opened, and passengers could only watch the soviet guards as they passed. they stations are still decorated as they were in soviet times; i'll show you a real photo later. 

after checkpoint charlie (and the DDR museum, that was this morning), we decided we hadn't learned quite enough history. so we walked to the topography of terror, which is a museum on the site where the main nazi building used to be. fun fact-- the allies destroyed every site of nazi history that they could find, so that people wouldn't come and build shrines. for example, the place where hitler committed suicide is now a parking lot.

but the place where these major nazi buildings (including the gestapo station) became a part of the wall. when the wall came down, they turned the remnants of these cellars into a museum about the nazi terror. 

this picture is showing how some people resisted hitler's rise to power: the circled man is not giving the nazi salute. this kind of behavior would get you arrested later on...

the photo that haunts me most. 

the photo that haunts ryan. 

and that's about all, because it turns out that 3 museums about history in one day is too many. my brain started to break.