World War TwoRism - Third Reich Walking Tour, Berlin

2013.  My trip to Berlin was the first time I specifically travelled somewhere for the sole purpose of seeking out key sites from World War 2. If there's not an official name for that kind of travelling, then there should be.

World War TwoRism.

Prior to going, I knew that there was a Third Reich Tour running from outside of Potsdamer Platz and I thought that it would be a great way to get shown around in a few hours and then return to the key sites in the days after properly and spend more time there looking around.

This tour was one of the best things I have ever done. Such an energetic and informative four hours and we covered a lot of ground. The tour guide was a New Zealander called Mike who had a degree in German history and had lived in Germany for over a decade. He really knew his stuff. It was only 12 Euro too.

I put together a bit of a video 'VLOG' of the tour and my return to one of the sites that evening. I tried the VLOG thing out for a few days just to get used to new editing software I was using. I kept this one on my YouTube channel as a bit of a reminder.

Click here for video on YouTube page

Jewish Stumbling Stones - Munich is not a fan

Scattered along the floor of German cities in no real structure, like some elaborate dot-to-dot puzzle, are little brass plaques on the pavements outside the former homes of those murdered or deported by the Nazis. Each one bears the name of a single victim.

These are referred to as 'Stumbling Stones' (Solpersteine) and there are apparently over 50, 000 of these in cities all over Europe claiming to be the largest memorial of any kind in the world.

Munich has a tight ban on these as the elected leader of the cities Jewish community, a Holocaust survivor herself, protests that the victims deserve more than a plaque "in the dust and street dirt". I don't agree with that. There's no disrespect here, just another way to remember those lost.

I think they are great and I cannot go by one without reading it.

Berlin

Cologne

I'd told my brother Andrew to look out for these things as we went along. Here he is  taking a closer look at the first ones we spotted in Cologne.