Continuing with my short travels in Berlin, on the second day we had booked a coach, and so we went to a couple of places a little further out than Berlin.
Our first trip of the day was to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Many people know about the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, one of the most famous being Auschwitz in Poland. I myself have actually been to Auschwitz as well, and so coming to a second concentration camp gave me another sense of how big the holocaust was. Auschwitz was a death camp, meaning that almost everyone there was sent there specifically to die, whereas Sachenhausen was a work camp, where prisoners were forced to work to death.
I didn't take many pictures here, as I feel that sometimes it is better to see things with your eyes rather than through a lense, but I would strongly advice anyone with an interest to go to a concentration camp. It is very difficult to explain the experience, I would say it is eye-opening or that it brings the history to reality, and really makes you think. In my opinion, its important not to be ignorant of these things. The triangles you see on the tower below are representative of the red triangles that political prisoners of the Nazi regime had to wear stitched onto their uniforms. All prisoners were identified by numbers and coloured triangles, further removing their identities, such as homosexual prisoners having to wear pink triangles and Jews having to wear two yellow triangles to look like the star of David. The tower commemorating political prisoners was build by Russia in memory of many communists or Russians that would have been imprisoned in Sachenhausen.
After this rather dark morning, we took a rather more light hearted trip to the town of Potsdam. This is a town where the former monarchs of Germany till the end of World War One the Kaisers used to live; meaning huge castle/house type buildings, massive parks and statues!
Unfortunately the weather obviously didn't like us, and most of our park walk was filled with umbrellas breaking and my friends and I desperately trying to take pictures without rain damaging our cameras... but hey nothing is ever perfect! We had a nice time nonetheless. I particularly liked this picture of one of my lovely friends Lauren as well as some pictures of the statues.
We then found a cute little German café (if cafes can be German?) and had a lunch of toasted sandwiches and coffee, followed by the most amazing ice-cream ever; yeah it was raining, and cold, and windy, but the ice cream looked so good we could not pass it up! After returning to the hostel later on that evening we went out to a really nice Mexican restaurant and had such a good meal I forgot to take any pictures... opps.. you'll just have to trust me when I say it was a good end to the day!
See you soon for days 3 and 4! Also, hope you've had a Happy Easter!
P H O E B E. G R A C E //
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