Well there was a lot of walking, and a lot more walking, and a lot more after that. The street car service is pretty expensive. It started with a lengthy walk south to the “Gasometer Schöneberg” I can’t really explain what it is because I don’t know, but it’s a giant tower of different levels of… well just look at the images at the bottom. I don’t know what it’s purpose is, but it seems to be some part of some university event. I went and asked what was inside the dome in the middle, and it was some kind of “Age Museum” which seemed a little weird. So I left wand walked east a ways. I found out then also if you want to go up to the top, you have to book a tour ahead of time anyways. Oh well.

So I headed East, to the “Schwerbelastungskörper.” (Heavy load bearing body). It’s basically just a massive concrete and steel reinforced block whose sole purpose is to be really, really, really heavy, and it is, weighing in at 13,944 tons, or 27,888,000 (27 million pounds). Berlin was created on a swamp, and one of Hitler’s grand plans was to make a massive archway, several times the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The problem with swamps are that things tend to sink, so one way to plan for this was to build a colossal weighty structure, and measure how much it sinks and how quickly. Tests showed the stone had sunk much faster than expected, which showed they would need to reinforce the foundations significantly. Hitler wasn’t fond of waiting, so he ordered construction anyways, though a little thing like the war got in the way, so the arch never became anything more than plans on paper. Unfortunately when I got there I found it is only open on certain days, and today was not one of those days, so I couldn’t get any good shots of it, but on the free tours you can go in rooms underneath. And I plan to return!

After that, I decided (which I didn’t previously plan on doing) I would go check out the Tempelhof Airport. It was a grand Airport Hitler had massively expanded to do what he liked to do – showcase the Nazis grandeur. It was very modern, and very intense,  carefully designed to be able to handle all forms of traffic, from civilian travel, shipping, and military purposes. As Berlin grew, other airports were added to Berlin, and Tempelhof slowly began to lose use. The airport was closed in just 2008, and the large fields and runway now sometimes house events and fairs. A few years ago it was announced that the fields would house some of the refugees. When I got there I found out if you wanna visit you have to go on tours, and the English tour was already sold out. Not having a real good streak of luck making tours today.

So then I left and headed to the Berlin Technical Museum, which was as incredible as the Technical museum in Munich. It has massive display rooms for everything and more. Textile making, computers, televisions, and phones. There were even demonstrations of jewel crafting, paper making and apparently even suitcase making. It has huge sections on ship navigation from the 1600’s to the 1900’s. The top floors had loads of old airplanes, and spaceship and rocket parts from all over the world. There was a big display room on the history, chemical makeup, and uses of sugar. Two other large sections (former train car houses) had huge numbers of old full size train cars. It even has a large outdoor park, with a windmill (not sure what it was for) and an old historical brewery from the early 1900’s. I spent well over 3 hours in the museum. I also got lucky, as when I was in the giftshop ready to leave, I heard a loud circus type song start playing, and I went to go see what it was, and there was a big music box (a “mechanical street organ”) playing a song, which I got a lengthy recording of. See below! The sign says it’s from 1923, and they only play it on weekdays and holidays shortly before closing. Then I headed back and stopped at a Domino’s Pizza, which I didn’t even know they had in Germany.

Watch the video above of the old Street Organ!