Central Foundation’s Year 11 and 13 History students visited Berlin for 3 days from Sunday 20th September and returned on Tuesday 22nd September.
After checking into the hostel and having dinner, they embarked on an evening stroll along the artistic East Side Gallery, the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall.
The next morning, the students headed over to a different section of the Berlin Wall, before making their way down to central Berlin. An excellent tour guide showed the students the major historical sites including the Berlin Cathedral, Checkpoint Charlie, The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Brandenburg Gate. After the tour, they went to the top of the Reichstag where they enjoyed a beautiful panoramic view of the city during sunset.
For their final morning, the students visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, a former political prison in East Berlin. One of the tour guides was Matthias Leupold, a former inmate who was incarcerated in the early 1980s for attempting an escape out of East Germany.
The final stop before the airport was the Stasi Museum, a building used by the secret police in East Berlin for surveillance.