Berlin's 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

We took an overnight trip to Berlin to see the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. It was such an interesting trip and really emotional to be in that place, especially when we walked to the "East German" side of the wall or through the Holocaust Memorial.

We drove up on Friday (6+ hour drive) and stayed in this Hostel. It was pretty nice with two sets of bunk beds for the kids and a double bed for us.

We walked around at night to do a little sightseeing. Here we are in front of the Brandenburg Gate. There is another photo of it from Saturday further down in the post.

These balls of light were placed along the route of the Berlin Wall. It was really crazy to see where this wall was before and how different the city is now.

Eating "street food" in what used to be East Berlin.

The kids loved the train. This is us on the platform waiting on the train.

Those white balloons on the top of small poles were lined up where the Berlin wall used to stand. They had them all along where the wall was and then released them on Sunday night.

These are part of the wall that were left standing as a remembrance.

This was a memorial for the people who were killed at the wall. Either for attempting to escape, or attempting to cross into East Berlin or just being too close to the wall.

Some of the pieces of the wall were removed and then placed in the grass and left there. They still remain there today.

West Berlin side of the wall. They have a section standing that you cannot get beyond and you can go up to a roof across the street and see into East Germany that way. We didn't go up on the roof.

This sign was up in our train stop. This particular train station was walled up during the Berlin Wall era so that East Berliners could not escape. This was one of the train stations that could allow them to exit from East Berlin, but the Russians made sure that was impossible.

This is Checkpoint Charlie.

We saw this map and it had a place with Jacob's name on it, so we had to take a picture. :-)

The Brandenburg Gate. It was huge!

This was the Holocaust Memorial. A field of cement blocks of varying heights. As you walked through the field you got covered up on all sides by these tall blocks. It was really powerful.

These were pieces of the wall they had on display. They were covered with pieces of chewing gum.

After all the sightseeing, we rewarded the kids good behavior with a trip to Legoland. :-)