BURR-lin

Seriously, the title says it all. It was so SO COLD when we were there our main goal was to spend as much time as possible inside so we darted from museum to museum, not even really caring what the museums where as long as it meant we didn't have to be outside.  I don't know what was up with the weather- it was just bitter and miserable. And windy. Being outside for more then like ten minutes was totally out of the question.
Luckily, we ended up at some pretty interesting museums and lots of them were free! :) The first day we ended up stumbling into the Stasi museum, which was all about the Secret Police under the GDR. We hadn't planned on going there, but it was definitely worth while.  There were lots of personal stories about people going to jail for like 5 years for listening to the Beetles and stuff like that... so crazy. Also crazy is that Josh has friends who were born in the GDR! Apparently they have really strange birth certificates.

Checkpoint Charlie. In the museum I read part of the memoirs of a East Berlin guard who had worked guarding the wall, it was really interesting: he said no one wanted to guard the wall, but they essentially had no choice. He also said that no one gives them enough credit for "looking the other way" as much as they did / not offering suggestions for ways to improve the wall (as they were supposed too).

The next day we went to the "Topography of Terror" which basically outlines all the horrible crimes committed by the Nazis. The last exhibition was about the children with special needs who were systematically murdered by doctors who justified it by saying they were cleaning the gene pool. I definitely teared up a little it was absolutely heart breaking. Outside that museum is part of the Berlin Wall-

The Berlin Wall

I also wanted to go to the Anne Frank museum, (although the "real" on is in Amsterdam and we went to that one later, I thought it would be interesting to see how each museum portrayed the story. Yes, I am a total history nerd like that.)  But there were many problems with this: 

1) it was SO COLD Joseph and I were both getting so frustrated that we couldn't find it 

2) when we asked people for help they looked at us like we were stupid, but seriously "Anne Frank" is the same in all languages ... gahh! As a whole German people are so friendly it was really frustrating when they were not  

3) When I finally got on a wifi hotspot, we were NINE SECONDS away from the museum! 

4) After all that, the museum was closed.

outside the Anne Frank Museum in Berlin...which was closed

As a side note, I had been to Berlin before- when I was 16 with my Dad and Micah. But the interesting thing is how much more depressing (for lack of a better word) this visit to Berlin was: when I went before we didn't go to any World War 2 museums, just quickly went to Check Point Charlie and went to a parade and Potsdam. I don't know if my Dad thought we were too young to go to some of the more graphic museums  but this visit was much more eye opening about World War 2.