Skip this entry? I learnt about stuff, i.e. I WILL bore the shit out of you.

I am such a moron. Yesterday I went to the memorial for the German Resistance Memorial Centre and I finally went inside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Both of these things were most, most excellent and yet, all I do is rabbit on about some tosser with folder. He was an absolute twat though...

Fuckwits with folders aside, yesterday was a good, good day. I woke up and decided I needed to start ticking things off the ol' tourist list.

So, The German Resistance Memorial. I was pretty excited about it... I love reading stuff about the German resistance. I find it all incredible, and if I am honest, I don't think it is considered enough when the subject of the Nazi dictatorship is broached.

The location of the memorial is in the Benderblock, a building that was originally an Imperial Navy Office and the same building that Hitler gave his Lebensraum speech in... a speech where he declared that Germany needs to become bigger and better by taking land etc from the east, predominately meaning, let's fucking take over Russia, that's ever so nice and big.

It is also site of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, and attempt where Claus Schnek Graf von Stauffenberg put a briefcase, complete with bomb inside under Hitler's desk. After the plot failed, the men involved were all killed, many of them the following day and in the courtyard of the Benderblock, and so now, the courtyard holds a memorial to their bravery.

With that kind of history, it is pretty amazing to walk around a building like that, particularly as so much of it is as it was (the tiles that border the floor of each room still have a swastika in and amongst the pattern) and you are standing literally in the same space and on the same floor that Hitler stood to give his speech.

There was a slight problem with the memorial though... well at least for me as everything in the exhibition was written in German. Well, I say everything, there was actually English translations in the room about the White Rose Movement. This is probably one of the only areas of German resistance I know anything about, so that wasn't ideal. Still, I picked up a pretty awesome book on the way out that I am working my little way through.

After the memorial, I paid a man 3 euros to abuse me, but enough about that, I also then went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, something I have walked past countless times, marvelled at, and never actually gone in.

It's fucking amazing. So bloody, ruddy well beautiful inside. Seriously... I nearly put pay to my agnostic ways and slipped over to the other side, it is that lovely. I didn't... instead I remembered it was built by dear mankind, so then I just marvelled in how awesome those guys are and all was well. It's not the first time I have been inside a church and felt moved either. I totally understand how easy it is to get swept up in religion... just sitting there, in this amazing looking room, candles all around and someone gently played an organ behind... just lovely.

I kind of promised myself I would only upload my Holga pictures to this blog, but fuck it; I'm scannerless and this warrants picture time:

I love how the remains of the original sire juxtapose with the modern buildings that surround it... and all of the tiny, beautiful stainless steel windows lit up... awesome, awesome building.