Walking through Berlin's past

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe / Phot By Alexander Blum

It’s not the most uplifting way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but you can’t come to Berlin and not take a World War II and Cold War tour. To ignore that is to not grasp how history has deeply influenced everything here.

Germany takes its history very seriously and a lot of countries could take lessons from it.

The afternoon didn’t start seriously, though. We gathered near the Brandenburg Gate, which was the meeting point for dozen of tours. A group of young men pedaled past us on a beer bike and a can of Warsteiner fell off. A member of our tour group picked it up and tried to hand it back. A guy on the bike, clearly already a few drinks into his day, waived him off:

Ja, you can drink it!

Brandenburg Gate. This is taken from the East Berlin side — West Berlin is on the other side of the gate and where Reagan gave his famous speech.

Our tour guide, a Frenchman named Xavier, did a good job of explaining the conditions that led to the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. We walked past the Reichstag building, saw the Soviet memorial that was built in the British sector, and saw the memorials for the Roma and Jewish victims of the holocaust.

Xavier reminded us that the Germans did this to their own citizens. And Germans watched as their neighbors were rounded up and marched off to the concentration camps. I think a lot of that collective guilt and shame plays a big role in why Germany takes its history so seriously.

When we walked to a parking lot, there was a bit of confusion until we learned that we were standing on top of Hitler’s bunker. Over there, under the spot where the white Tesla is parked? That’s where the remains of Hitler and Eva Braun were buried in a shallow grave. And no, there’s never going to be a marker or memorial of any kind here because Germany doesn’t want to create a shrine for neo-Nazis to leave tributes.

Hitler’s bunker is under this parking lot.

One of the remaining parts of the Berlin Wall, which is adjacent to the site that was a Gestapo torture center. In the background is the building that use to house the headquarters of Germany’s air force during World War II.

Our tour ended at Checkpoint Charlie, and the strange story of Jeff Harper — the American solider you see above. (There’s a photo of a Soviet soldier on the other side.) Anyway, German officials were looking for a photo of a U.S. solider to symbolize the American commitment to defending Germany and randomly picked Harper, a member of a military band who was in Berlin when the wall fell in 1989.

Harper had no idea he was the face of Checkpoint Charlie until friends started sending back photos of him in uniform.

Interviewed a few years ago, Harper said: “I think humanity has a lot of good things when we work together. And of course this doesn't happen all the time, but I do feel for the German people and a significant historical event did happen and it gives me hope for the future — that no matter how difficult things may seem, the world can change in one night for the better."