Anybody from Vilnius/Berlin/Gottingen?

[Pensive]

Dear all!
I am passing by Vilnius (staying a night 23rd of this month) and Berlin (24th during the day) to visit a friend in Gottingen for a couple of days. Was wondering if we have any litnetters somewhere there around that time and having free time. Meeting up could be a nice possibility! :)
And if anybody has been to any of these places, your travel experiences are also most welcome. :)

[Emil Miller]

Dear all!
I am passing by Vilnius (staying a night 23rd of this month) and Berlin (24th during the day) to visit a friend in Gottingen for a couple of days. Was wondering if we have any litnetters somewhere there around that time and having free time. Meeting up could be a nice possibility! :)
And if anybody has been to any of these places, your travel experiences are also most welcome. :)

I haven't been to Berlin since the days of the Berlin Wall so this probably won't be of interest to you as the city has long since been united. However, the first time I went there I was staying in West Berlin with a German girlfriend who, as a West German citizen, needed a visa to cross over into the Eastern zone. I wanted to take a photo of the site of the former Reich Chancellery where Hitler died in the underground bunker, so I had to go there alone. I knew from reading the history of the Third Reich in which part of the city it had been located but there was nothing in the East German official visitor information leaflet to indicate where it had been, so I stopped a passer-by and asked him for directions before noticing that he was wearing a communist party badge in his lapel. He gave me a quizzical look and asked why I wanted to see it and I replied that it was a site of historical significance for those who were interested in recent German history. Whereupon he said there was nothing there to see and I should forget it.
After he had walked off, I looked at my map and went to what was euphemistically called the Tourist Office, located in a large pre-war apartment building that appeared deserted. I followed the signs up a wide staircase to the first floor and heard the tapping of a typewriter coming from a room in a corridor. I pushed open the door to the room and discovered two young women who seemed surprised to have a visitor. I told them I wanted to see the sight of the Führerbunker and one of them got up and closed the door before saying that it was never spoken of in East Berlin but, keeping their voices low, they produced a map and marked the spot which was within walking distance.
So, despite the lunacy of communism, I got my photo of a grass covered, wired-off mound erected by the communists in the wishful thinking that it would help ensure their long-since dead control of East Berlin.

[qimissung]

Actually quite an interesting story, Emil. Thank you for sharing.

[Emil Miller]

Actually quite an interesting story, Emil. Thank you for sharing.

The postscript to the incident is that some years later the wall was demolished and on the day that Germany was officially reunited I was in Mannheim in what had been West Germany. The idiotic communist regime had been swept into the dustbin of history and people could begin living normal lives again. However, I feel that visiting Berlin today would be a somewhat anodyne experience compared to the bad old days.