Berlin - Red Berlin Tour

Having seen a lot of Nazi stuff the past few days, we wanted to see a little more of the history behind the Berlin Wall and Soviet control. So, another walking tour!

The tour visited the Russian embassy (#1), still with the hammer and sickle emblem on it, and one of the few buildings that doesn't care about municipal building regulations, so it's very different from the rest of the street.

We visited a "ghost station", where the entire subway station was bricked up (three walls per entrance!) and guarded to stop east Berliners escaping to the west. These routes were still used by the west because they started and ended in the west but passed under east-German territory in the middle.

We also went to an interesting little museum that chronicled the beginning and end of the wall, including propaganda news from both sides.

We of course saw the wall itself, or rather, some sections of it that are still around, mostly covered in graffiti. They also told us some interesting stories about the stasi: how at it's height, 1/6 of the population was giving them information; how they stole people's socks for a scent collection for tracking; how they meticulously kept records of minute details; how they shredded the records when being overthrown, only to put the shredded paper in huge plastic bags, allowing it to be slowly pieced back together (still going to this day); how released records later allowed people to find out their best friend, husband, or wife had been spying on them. Scary.Read more