Thomas Warn '11 During our second day in Berlin, we visited several of the city’s historical and memorial sites. Our first stop of the day was Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), which marks the old western boarder of the city. As part of our immersion trip, we heard a presentation from Harrison Stone, who explained some of the historical significance of the gate. On the way to our next destination, we walked on the location where the Berlin Wall (Berliner Mauer) used to stand. The next site on today’s excursion was the Reichstag, the main German governmental building. We stood in line for at least half an hour; it felt like waiting in like for an amusement park ride. Just like a ride, it was nevertheless worth the wait. At the top of the Reichstag, we walked around the enormous glass cupola. There was a ramp the spiraled around the dome for people to get to the top. The view of Berlin from the top can’t be described by anything else but breathtaking. We were fortunate enough to have a nice enough day that we could see a great deal of the city from our vantage point. Once we were back on the roof of the Reichstag, we heard our second presentation of the day from David Bierr. After lunch we were off to Bebelplatz. Here, on May 10, 1933, hundreds of books were burned by Nazi students. Our final presentation of the day was given by Cole Hatcher. Our next stop was across the street to the Neue Wache, which is a memorial to the victims of war and tyranny. This was the end of our scheduled tour for the day. I then headed back to the hostel to make sure that I had left my wallet there, because I had realized sometime after lunch that I didn’t have it. Luckily for me, when I back to my room, I found it under a chair. Later today we are going to see a play, Gegen die Wand. We watched it in class before the trip, so this should be an interesting production.

-Thomas Warn