2009/06/25-29 a school trip with style

after finishing my internship at the hakzwei in salzburg, my colleague karin invited me to join her and her class to berlin; which i most certainly did. as this was a new way of travelling for me and i somewhat felt responsible for the young people, i did not take too many pictures. however, i loved the trip, and to remain all teacher-like, i will mainly share knowledge in this post.

berlin [the name has slavic and dutch roots] has 3.4 million inhabitants and is larger than new york. until 1989 it was divided into east and west berlin - through the famous berlin wall. one of the most famous intersections was [and still is] "checkpoint charlie", where numerous people tried to escape from east to west.

east germans became highly creative when they saw an opportunity to escpae to the west. for instance, loads of them dressed up as american soldiers, even rebuilt their cars to look alike, and tried to pass the border. however, a lot of them failed, as they were not aware of a simple fact: the soldiers never greated each other. so when passing by dressed up and saluting at the border, the border official immediately knew that they were no real american soldiers.
there were many other ways to pass, yet officially 1,600 people died trying. as only people caught in the act are considered in this number, it is likely to be way higher.

east and west were finally reunited in november 1989. yet, the two parts of the city still differ a lot, and even little things show, where you are. if you get lost, for instance, simply look out for tramway tracks - if you don't find any, you are probably in the west. furthermore, the traffic lights still differ:

east

west

the potsdamer platz is an old traffic junction that perfectly merges east and west. back in the days in was the largest junction in europe with 500,000 people passing by daily; also, you could find the first european traffic light there, which was certainly controlled manually.

now you can find gigantic and modern buildings at the potsdamer platz, such as the headquarter of the deutsche bahn or the famous sony center, whose shape should resemble the mountain fujijama.

moreover, otto beisheim acquired the ritz carlton hotel there, as a 80th birthday present to himself. he is the founder of the metro group and one of the richest people in germany or rather europe.

his glory was scratched when critics claimed that he was able to build the metro group with money that was stolen from jewish nazi victims.

anyway, berlin is a wonderfully interesting and lively city. besides visiting all the important sights, we mainly hung out in stylish spots in both east and west. especially friedrichshain, the district that we stayed at, seems to offer a high quality of life and i truly picture myself hanging out there more frequently.