|Memorial to Johann Elser, an anti nazi carpenter who attempted to kill Hitler in 1939 and who was subsequently caught and excuted |
Built on a swamp with a constant need to pump water from beneath the city, Berlin has been destroyed and rebuilt many times over. I knew it had a Nazi German third Reich history and a East West Berlin Wall Cold War history but nothing prepares you for the evidence of that.Even the evidence of that which is invisible is compelling.
The building we are staying in, for instance, turns out to be one of the last East German apartment blocks built before the wall came down in 1989. That's gives it some redeeming qualities. some historical significance but wait - it's built on the land that once housed the Albert Speer designed house built for Adolf Hitler - a house the size of the shopping complex I referred to earlier being built outside our window. The bunker in which Hitler suicided sits 100 metres away.
And it's only day one!