Skeletons in the closet?

Throughout the 20th century, Germany went through a shitstorm. It was torn inside out by a short man with a little moustache and then it became a playground for the major political powers of the world.

Surprisingly, if you don't go look for all the memorials and landmarks and museums in Berlin, you can't see what the city has been through. It was ravaged to the extent that the entire city was more or less rebuilt from the ground up. Not that its history is hidden. When you explore it, the stuff you find exercises an oppressing force upon you that makes you sad about everything people had to go through and angry at those that inflicted it upon them.

Nevertheless, you can see people, especially the youth, celebrating it as a 'reborn' society, hence the dominant 'hipster' population. However, don't get me wrong, hipster isn't like a hipster in Sydney, or Melbourne where people intentionally attempt to project themselves in a certain way. Berliners are just the way they are. When you step on the U- or S-Bahn, over 80% of the people in your carriage will have stretchers and/or plugs and/or numerous tattoos and/or multiple piercings and/or undercuts and/or hair dyed outrageous colours. It's nothing out of the ordinary. And I love it.

Eastside Gallery

Topographie des Terrors - Remaining part of the Berlin Wall

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The Jewish graveyard in the Große Hamburger Straße

This cemetery was dug up and bombed numerous times during WWII. Only a few tombstones remain (miraculously). It is estimated that there are over 10,000 Jewish people buried beneath the sea of vines.