6. Berlin: The 5 Enigmatic Mysteries. Tour with VW-Bus
After pick-up from your hotel your guide informes you about the upcoming 5-hour-tour. You will be acquainted with the 5 most fascinating mysteries of Berlin. At the same time you learn more about the different periods of Berlin´s history. Otto Weidt´s Workshop for the Blind is located in a courtyard near the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin Mitte. Most of the rooms are preserved in their original state. Otto Weidt was a small manufacturer. During the Second World War, he employed mostly blind and deaf Jewish workers in his workshop. They manufactured brooms and brushes, some of which were made for the Wehrmacht. Weidt attempted to protect his Jewish workers from persecution and deportation. A gigantic structure from the 1940ies awaits you near the old Tempelhof Airport: the Heavy Load Bearing Body. Under the direction of architect Albert Speer, Hitler wanted to redesign Berlin as "Germania", the capital of the new German world capital with huge edifices like the Triumphal Arch or the Dome Hall. During the planning, the stability and load-bearing capacity of the construction site was tested. So the heavy load-bearing body was erected weighing more than 12,000 tons. Plans to tear the structure down with dynamite after the Second War War were not realized because of the neighbourhood with many apartment houses. The Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus near Potsdam Square, built in 1936 as the Ministry of Aviation of Hermann Göring, was at that time the largest office building in Europe. Göring belonged to the leading Nazis and was responsible, for example, for the planning of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". At the end of the Second War War nearly all buildings in the surrounding were bombed and destroyed. Not so Göring´s Ministry of Aviation. Not one bomb fell onto the structure. A miracle? When the Berlin Wall was built starting on August 13, 1961, it divided the transportation system, as well. But two subway lines and one commuter rail line with departure and destination stations in West Berlin continued to run through the eastern sector. The trains slowed down, but they didn´t stop at these deserted stations in East Berlin. Blocked off and patrolled by GDR armed guards, they became known as “ghost stations.” One of those former stations is the Nordbahnhof. Last, but not least, you discover one of the most idyllic cemeteries of Berlin, located in Grunewald Forest near the Havel River, better known as the "Cemetery of the Nameless" or the "Cemetery of Suicides". Established in 1879, corpses of unknown people and those having committed suicide were buried here. Near this location, so the rumor goes since the 1920ies, the Sass brothers, famous bank robbers in the Weimar Republik, were supposed to hide money and valuables from hundreds of safe deposit boxes in a big hole the dug in the soil of Grunewald Forest. If you like to, you can use a Garrett metal detector Euro ACE to search for traces of the Sass Bros. and their famous treasure.