Below in the Bunker

After downing a lunch of delicious currywurst, our group headed to the Volkswagen Place of Remembrance. This is a little museum dedicated to the forced labor workers of Volkswagen during World War II. The forced laborers of Volkswagen included Jewish, Polish, French, and certainly many more people forced from home to work at Volkswagen to make the secret weapon for the axis power. The museum was in a bunker below the first factory, and consisted of five tiny rooms. Rooms entirely too small to comfortable fit all of the workers who needed to get here during an air raid. The site was absolutely moving, and our tour guide Cathy gave us a vivid picture of what these workers suffered. In the bunker, there was even a huge crack in one of the walls, from when an allied plane fell and its bomb detonated on impact. Cathy explained that after air raids, the workers had no idea whether or not everything outside was destroyed, or if anyone would come to release them from the bunker. At the end of the memorial, there were testimonials from survivors. These in particular really moved me. I could feel the workers’ pains as they described the experience. The Place of Remembrance was an importance experience for us, especially when we were all enthralled by the first section of the Volkswagen tour.

After the tour, we boarded the train and headed back to the hostel. Our next stop was dinner, even though some of us were still full from lunch. We ate at a cozy Italian restaurant with a misleading name, Mediterraneo. The food was absolutely delicious. My meal consisted of pasta with red sauce and zucchini and a mini vianetta (which just turned out to be vanilla ice cream). A few of us left dinner early to do laundry, which was quite the adventure. Since there is no washing machine at the hostel, we had to navigate the bus system of Berlin to find the closest Laundromat. Three hours and 13 € later, the four of us finally had clean clothes! After such a long we’re all exhausted, but equally filled with the excitement of exploring Berlin tomorrow.