This week was hot. The average temperature was 32 Celsius [90 Fahrenheit], which isn’t really that hot and certainly not as hot as we are used to from Paso. However, Germany doesn’t believe in air conditioning so the heat can be a little frustrating. Almost no apartments and only a few offices have air conditioning. One co-worker mentioned having worked in a building for another job that had air conditioning but the Managing Director refused to ever use it for some unknown reason. Coincidentally, the staunch anti air conditioning people also seem to be the group that needs deodorant the most. So, on Saturday we set out to buy a fan. Apparently the rest of Berlin was also in the market for a fan because they are sold out everywhere. It was fun to get out and about because Saturday was Christopher Street Day [aka Pride Day] and there were plenty of booths and carnival type rides. Since we missed the fair this year, we decided to indulge in the coolest looking ride, the Floating Swing. Logan had a blast and we had fun watching him.

On Sunday we decided to head in a different direction and travel South East down the Spree for a casual Lunch ride. Our destination was a little island in the middle of the river where it gets wider and has various land masses. Back in the winter we actually looked at some awesome flats in this area but decided it was too far for Chad to commute on bike daily.

On the way there we stumbled onto a beautiful monument from WWII, The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. In April and May of 1945 the Battle of Berlin took place. This was one of the hardest battles of the war. As Americans we often don’t learn about this battle because America didn’t fight in it. The Soviets lost over 80k troops with another +280k wounded. The Germans lost somewhere between 90-100K soldiers and 125k civilians were killed. Berlin had already been hit pretty hard; from 1939-1945 Berlin’s population was cut in half between the holocaust, civilian and military losses.  The city was so devastated from the battle that words can’t do it justice - this site does a nice job of showing the devastation (http://onthisspot.ca/berlin.html). Almost immediately after the battle, Treptower Park was used as a grave site for the fallen soviets. In an effort to have a proper memorial constructed a competition was held to see who would design it. In the end there would be a hybrid of designers announced, architect Jakow S. Belopolski, sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, painter Alexander A. Gorpenko and engineer Sarra S. Walerius. The memorial was completed in 1949.

Right from the start this memorial screams Soviet. There are three other Soviet memorials in the city that we plan to cover at a later date but they all have the same feel. American and German memorials have a sense of sadness and solemn reflection. Soviet memorials feel cold and dead with a sense of extreme loss. They built these structures so close to the end of the war that the sense of heightened emotion the Soviets had can still be felt. There are over 7k of the 80k Soviets buried here. There are two makrked graves on either end of the memorial - 1 in the tower and 1 at the foot of the knelling soldiers. The Soviets had a hard war and you can feel their anger with the sheer size of the memorial along with the depictions on the carved marble. We would learn later that Michael [Doreen's Father] was sworn into service for the DDR on these hollowed grounds back in 1977. 

After we explored the site we headed to our destination and lunch - Island of Youth. This little island has a park and an Abbey along with a restaurant and area for water activities. We had a fun time and will be back before the end of Summer to do some activities on the water.

We had a great week and hope you did too!

Until Next Time,

The McNeills