Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin

Last Saturday we (Mama, Logan and I) went to Berlin for the weekend.  We caught a 1:00 train, because that Friday night I had been at a sleepover with some of my friends from school.  Though getting to sleep in helped, the trip was still tiring.  We had planned to go to the Neues Museum right when we got there, and Check Point Charlie after dinner, but since no one was that interested, we decided to skip it and go straight to Check Point Charlie, my personal favorite museum in Berlin.  The museum is inside of a building that used to be an apartment that overlooked the check point.  My favorite part of the museum is the section that described some of the way people escaped to West Berlin.  Of course, not all of the attempts were successful, but some were.  A common way, it seemed, was to hide in the front of a car, where the engine should be.  A simple little spring thingy was attached to the bottom of the car so it wouldn’t sag down, since the border guards mostly only checked the heavier looking cars.  Also, they sometimes arranged for heavily loaded cars to go before and after them, so that they could pass through unchecked.  One car got through by coming up slowly like the other cars, and then speeding through at the last minute.  Many bullets were fired, and though several of the window were shattered, no one had gotten hurt, since the escapees had taken the precaution of filling the car doors with cement, making them bullet proof.  One man helped his wife escape by cutting out the ends of two suitcases, attaching them, and having her lay down in it.  One woman had a pass to West Berlin, and decided to smuggle her child with her.  She didn’t however inform her husband, since he was with the DDR.  She simply put him(the child, not the husband) into a small shopping cart/suitcase and covered him in a towel.  Since the border guards assumed she wouldn’t try to stay in West Berlin, since her child was still in East Berlin, she and her child passed without a problem.  One time the border guards found a log that had washed ashore, presumably across the river from East Berlin to West Berlin, and in the side of the log were hinges that revealed a hollow section, big enough for a person to hide.  These were my favorite ways of people getting to West Berlin, but there were many more, including flying, and digging passages.

After Check Point Charlie we had dinner at a little Italian restaurant.  The next morning we went to the Pergamon, which has a bunch of cool, big stuff (that Logan wrote about).  After the Pergamon we had lunch, and then went to the Deutsches Historic Museum,  It was cool, but we had to see in only a little under two hours.  Unfortunately, the only pictures of our trip we have, are ones that were taken inside of the Pergamon.  Though tiring, it was a good, fun trip.