DAY 1 | Jun. 10, 2018 | Toronto—Kraków via Amsterdam
Depart Toronto for your overnight flight to Kraków, Poland.

DAY 2 | Jun. 11, 2018 | Kraków (d)
Arrive John Paul II International Airport in Kraków. Landing in this 7th century city known for its economic, cultural, academic and artistic activity, we will check into our hotel and then explore the old town (Kazimierz) nearby. Today Poland’s second largest city, the old portion of Kraków was once the capital of the country and a centre of art, industry and all the major religions of central Europe.

Our short sightseeing walking tour will start at 2:00 p.m. and encompass such old-town locations as the Cloth Hall, St. Mary’s Church, and the Royal Wawel Castle.

Once introduced to our home base for the next couple of days, we will retire to our lodgings for a Ted Barris tour tradition – the welcome dinner – at which hosts and tour travellers get acquainted and learn more about the days of travel to come. The welcome dinner will commence approximately at 7:00 p.m. in the hotel.

Accommodations (2 nights): Qubus Hotel.

DAY 3 | Jun. 12, 2018 | Kraków—Auschwitz/Birkenau (b)
Breakfast is at 8:15 a.m. and we depart at 9:15 a.m. for our transfer to Schindler’s factory.

Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazi German forces turned Kraków into the capital of a colonial authority seated in Wawel Castle. In its so-called “Sonderaktion Krakau,” the invaders arrested university professors and other academics and then began confining the city’s Jewish population in a ghetto prior to shipping most to area concentration camps where they were killed. It was in the midst of the emerging Holocaust that businessman Oskar Schindler (portrayed in the Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List”) began selecting employees from the Jewish ghetto to work in his enamelware plant, known as “Emalia.” On this, our first full day in Kraków, we shall embark on a specially guided tour of that very same factory (a sanctuary for those Jews chosen to work there) on Lipowa Street, and tour both the factory itself and its adjacent permanent exhibit, the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków. The guided tour will start approximately 10:10 a.m.

Just outside Kraków, lies the small Polish town of Oswiecim, within which are located Auschwitz and Birkenau, the two former death camps the world has come to know as symbols of state terrorism, genocide and the Holocaust. The Nazis opened the concentration camps in 1940 when it began rounding up Polish political prisoners, Soviet PoWs, Roma (gypsies) and Jewish citizens from across occupied Europe. Following meetings held at Wannsee, Germany, in January 1942, Hitler’s inner circle began the systematic arrest, transportation, housing and eventual extermination of all its enemies – the so-called “final solution.” Beyond its notorious “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work will make you free”) gates, the red-bricked blockhouses of Auschwitz and the former wooden stables of Birkenau became the scene of the largest mass murder in human history. An estimated 1,100,000 Jews were killed inside these two camps. Our specially guided tour – approximately three hours, starting at 2:00 p.m. – will lead our travellers through what often proves to be a life-changing experience.

DAY 4 | Jun. 13, 2018 | Kraków—Prague (b)
Breakfast is at 7:45 a.m. At 8:30 a.m. check-out of the hotel and board the coach for transfer west to city of Prague. Today our expert guide will take us for a visit to the site of attack on Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich and to the Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Cyril and Methodius, where the assassins were betrayed and committed suicide after a six hour siege.

The rest of day is free at leisure for shopping or exploring.

Accommodations (3 nights): Jalta Hotel.

DAY 5 | Jun. 14, 2018 | Prague (b)
Breakfast is at 8:00 a.m. At 8:45 a.m. meet your guide at the reception of the hotel for a guided panoramic city tour and old town walk.

On our first of two full days in the capital city of the newly formed Czech Republic, we will enjoy a specially guided overview sightseeing tour of the city of Prague. While other born-again central and eastern European cities claim to be the hot new destination for tourism, the Czech capital, in fact, never went out of fashion. It still has its fairy-tale gothic/baroque/art nouveau architecture. Prague’s Medieval Castle, Old Town Square and Astronomical Clock are still within walking distance of the city centre. All the while, visitors have the option of enjoying refreshments at the city’s traditional pubs, ornate coffee houses and bohemian cafés.

Following our introductory sightseeing tour of the city, our travellers will enjoy a leisurely afternoon exploring on their own and taking in the busy, enterprising side streets near our downtown hotel.

Happy shopping!

DAY 6 | Jun. 15, 2018 | Prague (b, d)
Breakfast is at 7:45 a.m. At 8:45 a.m. meet your guide at the reception of the hotel to enjoy a full-day, guided city tour.

During our second full day in the Czech Republic’s most populous city (the 2009 census put the city’s population at 1.2 million), we shall rendezvous with our special inner-city guide for some specific, longer visits to a number of important Prazak landmarks.

Among our stops is one at the famed Prague Castle. Founded by the Czech princes in the 9th century, the castle complex is still the largest in the world, encompassing more than seven football fields of space; it includes the St. Vitus Cathedral, with its ornate chapels, and the official presidential residence. The adjoining royal palace showcases (among other artifacts) the crown jewels of 15th century King Wenceslas (yes, the very same king as described in the Christmas Carol); and the famous Window of Defenestration (an altercation in 1618, that precipitated the Thirty Years’ War). For those keeping track, this part of what used to be Czechoslovakia is where Gen. Patton’s Third U.S. Army completed its wartime advance, liberating Prague and area in the first week of May 1945.

Our tour stops also include a visit to the Wallenstein Garden, which features the Czech Republic senate building, lush garden foliage and the eye-catching baroque-era, limestone grotto Dripstone Wall. As well, we’ll take in one of the most off-the-wall exhibits of eastern Europe – the avant-garde Franz Kafka Museum – where the expatriate German novelist’s work (author of “The Metamorphosis,” “The Trial” and “The Penal Colony”) is explored with sound, light, and motion picture exhibits.

No visit to Prague is complete without a leisurely stroll along the Charles Bridge over the Vltava (Moldau) river; accenting every step of the walk along the 650 year-old stone bridge are 30 statues adorning the bridge’s superstructure and, of course, the sales booths of hundreds of painters, photographers, sculptors, musicians and other artisans—it’s souvenir central!

But the day’s activities are not over! We will reconvene for a specially arranged river cruise on the mighty Vltava (Moldau) river. While we take in the sights and sounds of Prague from the surface of the river, we’ll enjoy one of our tour-included suppers with a jazz combo accompanying our evening river cruise.

DAY 7 | Jun. 16, 2018 | Prague—Terezin—Dresden (b, l)
Breakfast is at 8:00 a.m. At 9:00 a.m. check-out of the hotel and board the coach for transfer to Terezin.

We begin a daylong trip from the heart of the former Czechoslovakia to the heart of the former East Germany; our destination at day’s end is the city of Dresden. However, we have one last stop in northwestern Czech Republic—the town of Terezin. The fortress built here between 1780 and 1790 was designed to protect access routes into Bohemia’s hinterland during the Prussian-Austrian wars of the late 18th century. During the Second World War, however, Nazi occupiers renamed the garrison town Theresienstadt. In June 1940, the small fortress in the town earned worldwide notoriety when the Nazis transformed it into the Prague Gestapo Police Prison, with the main fortress (beyond the small fortress wall) serving as the Nazi ghetto—or concentration camp for Jewish prisoners. Some 140,000 men, women and children living in eastern Europe passed through the Theresienstadt transit camp; fewer than 4,000 survived the Holocaust.

A guided visit of Terezin will commence with our expert guide at 10:30 a.m.
On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted a visit by representatives of the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross in order to dispel rumours of the extermination camps. The visit was filmed showcasing freshly painted rooms, newly built washrooms and even the performance of a children’s opera. The hoax perpetrated against the Red Cross was so successful that the Nazis went on to complete a now infamous propaganda film showing “how well the Jews lived under the ‘benevolent’ protection of the Third Reich.”

At 1:00 p.m., we will enjoy a lunch at the restaurant Hotel Memorial. We will board the coach at 2:00 p.m. and proceed to Dresden and check in to our lodgings at the Hotel Pullman Newa.
The remainder of your day is at leisure.

Accommodations (2 nights): Hotel Pullman Newa.

DAY 8 | Jun. 17, 2018 | Dresden (b)
Breakfast is at 8:00 a.m. At 9:15 a.m. meet in the lobby for a leisurely walk to the City Museum.

Founded on the site of a Slavonic fishing village as a merchants’ settlement and the seat of the local rulers, Dresden from the 15th century onwards was the residence of the Saxon dukes, electoral princes and later kings – hence its nickname “the Florence of Saxony.” During the 18th century it became a focal point for European politics, culture and economic development. However, its legacy changed in the last winter of the Second World War, when the city’s name and identity became synonymous with the phrase “apocalyptic destruction.” In the first week of February 1945, Allied leaders – Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt – decided: “We want Dresden… The Dresden railway junction [must be] bombed”. Intelligence suggested 28 military trains (carrying more than 20,000 German troops) passed through Dresden each day. In addition, the Allied commanders wanted the hundreds of known war munitions factories (including Zeiss-Ikon, Goehle-Works and Ernemann) destroyed.

And so, at 10 p.m., on Tuesday, February 13, 1945, a first wave of RAF 244 bombers streamed over the city. Altogether 881 tons of bombs (57 per cent high explosive, 43 per cent incendiaries) were dropped between 10:13 and 10:28 p.m. By 11 p.m. the centre of the city (built of centuries old dry wood) was engulfed in flames and too much for the city’s firefighters to handle. By midnight it had become a firestorm. That’s when the second wave of 550 more bombers unleashed a further attack. The resulting fires could be seen from 50 miles away. The next night, 413 USAAF B-17s attacked the Dresden marshalling yards; they too were obliterated. Between February 13 and 15, 200 factories were destroyed or severely damaged. Estimates vary between 22,000 and 25,000 people killed during the three days of bombing.

The magnitude of the destruction is the big picture. One of the smaller stories—and our focus during our daylong tour of Dresden—is the fate of the Frauenkirche, Our Lady Church, in central Dresden. At the height of the firestorm, the rotunda of the Lutheran church could withstand the heat no longer. It melted and crashed into the centre of the building causing the church to collapse on itself and be consumed in the blaze. And there the building lay in ruin through the end of the war and (because Dresden fell under the jurisdiction of communist East Germany) until the end of the Cold War in 1989. Suddenly, then, it became the cause célèbre for those wishing to see the heart of Dresden restored. Millions of euros poured in and ultimately in 1994 the church began to rise again; a new cupola and gilded cross were in place by 2006, the 800th anniversary of the founding of Dresden.

We shall take in an exhibit at the city museum, starting at 10 a.m., (including a short documentary film about the restoration) and then visit the Frauenkirche itself at 1:00 p.m., to witness the resurrection of a once-dead church and the beginnings of a revitalized city centre in Dresden.

DAY 9 | Jun. 18, 2018 | Dresden—Berlin (b, d)
Breakfast is at 7:30 a.m. At 8:30 a.m. we will check-out of the hotel and board the coach to Berlin.

Our morning trip from Dresden to Berlin will take approx. two hours, but that will leave us with some time for touring on our first day in Berlin. With our specially arranged guided tour of the city, which will start at 11:00 a.m., we will visit sites that were key locations during the nearly half-century of Cold War that existed in Europe with Berlin at its epicentre.

On May 8, 1945, the victorious Allied commanders received the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht commanders. The war was over in Europe... but not entirely. The spoils of war included the division of Germany and of Berlin into sectors governed by the British, French, Americans and Soviets. With the stroke of a pen the two spheres of influence – the Western democracies and East Bloc communist states – squared off at The Wall and the Cold War began. Tensions rose through 1948 when the Soviet Union cut off Berlin (in East Germany) from supply routes in West Germany. The Berlin blockade and responding Berlin airlift pitted east against west in a cold war of attrition. The impact of that era is still visible in the Berlin that was reunited after the fall of communism in 1989. At 2:00 p.m., we will visit the Allied Museum. The highlights of the Cold War portion of the tour include visits to some of the remaining portions of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Airlift Memorial and the Allied Museum (opened in 1998), whose collection includes documents, photos, films, signs, escape tunnel replicas and weapons from that tension-filled era of post-war Germany.

Enjoy dinner this evening with your group.

Accommodations (5 nights): Hotel Indigo Ku’damm.

DAY 10 | Jun. 19, 2018 | Berlin (b)
Breakfast is at 8:15 a.m. breakfast. At 9:15 a.m. please meet in the lobby to board the coach for our transfer to the German History Museum.

Prinz Albrecht Strasse was once the most feared address in Berlin. Adolf Hitler’s elite killers, the SS, the Gestapo secret police and Reich’s main security office ran their central operations from the site. Today – on the rubble of a nearly destroyed SS Headquarters building – sits one of the most encompassing and dramatic attractions in Berlin, the Topography of Terror museum. Part memorial to its victims, part exposure to its practices and part testimony to similar dictatorships before and since, this indoor/outdoor museum takes visitors through the rise and fall of Nazi-initiated terror.
Threaded through the perhaps predictable illustrations of man’s inhumanity to man are also illustrations of innocence and resistance that challenged the brutal authority of Hitler’s executioners. Ironically, one remnant of the original SS building is revealed at the grounds outer extremities – the basement detainment, interrogation and torture chambers – above which rests one of the remaining pieces of the post-war Berlin Wall intact.

Our tour also takes in the Berlin Airlift monument at 2:15 p.m. When the Soviets cut off all rail and road traffic to Berlin in the spring of 1948, former Allied aircrews responded by flying in food, fuel and life supplies 24/7 for the next 11 months, mostly landing at Tempelhof airport. By the time the Soviets backed down, the Allied aircrews had flown 278,000 flights (the equivalent of 250 round trips to the moon) and delivered 2.5 million tons of cargo; the monument at Tempelhof is dedicated to the 39 British and 31 American pilots lost during the operation.
At 3:30 p.m. we will visit one of the surprise discoveries in the downtown of modern Berlin – along Heerstrasse – of a piece of architecture and gardens maintained by the only British Commonwealth War Graves Commission site in the city – a cemetery containing 3,580 burial plots (527 Canadians) of Allied air forces war dead from the Second World War.

DAY 11 | Jun. 20, 2018 | Berlin—Zagan (B, L)
Breakfast is at 7:15 a.m. Please meet in the lobby for 8:15 a.m. as we will board the coach for our transfer to Zagan (200 km from Berlin).

It’s mostly an overgrown pine forest today but in most recorded history and public consciousness, it’s a long way from anywhere and a long time ago. On the night of March 24, 1944, this spot on the outskirts of Zagan in northwestern Poland, became the site of one of the most daring unofficial operations of the Second World War.

That night proved the culmination of 10 months of work by more than 600 prisoners-of-war from 14 different Allied nations. Their clandestine planning, their complicated preparations, their united enterprize was a one-night escape via the tunnel “Harry” from Stalag Luft III, one of the most supervised German POW camps in occupied Europe. Within several hours, under cover of darkness, 76 imprisoned airmen managed to scurry down a 300-metre tunnel and then dashed for freedom in unknown Polish countryside. Theirs was the famous Great Escape. Though it’s been documented by historians, romanticized by Hollywood and made mythic by misinformation, the Great Escape was in many ways planned and orchestrated by Canadian airmen imprisoned in the camp.

At 11:00 a.m. our day trip to the site of the Great Escape will include a tour of the Stalag Luft III compound, a retracing of the escape strategy across the ground where it took place (only foundation works of the scores of buildings remain), a stop at the mausoleum and cemetery, and a visit to the Museum of Allied Forces Prisoners of War Martyrdom (housing a replica guard tower, tunnel and POW hut, as well as hundreds of photographs, artifacts and documents from the prison camp).

At 1:00 p.m. enjoy a picnic lunch. 4:00 p.m. transfer back to Berlin.

DAY 12 | Jun. 21, 2018 | Berlin—Wannsee—Potsdam (b)
Breakfast is at 8:15 a.m. Please meet in the lobby for 9:15 a.m. as we will board the coach at 9:30 a.m. and head to Wannsee. Visit to the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz will start at 10:00 a.m.

This day-trip takes our travellers to the locations of two events that dramatically bookend the Second World War. At the early-20th century villa of German industrialist Ernst Marlier, on January 20, 1942, SS Obergruppen Fuhrer Reinhard Heydrick chaired a meeting of the Reich Security Main Office; his assistant, Adolf Eichmann drew up the protocol of the meeting, dubbed the Wannsee Conference. At that meeting, Hitler’s inner circle coolly laid the plans for what they called “the final solution” – the arrest, transport and extermination of all European Jews. Discovered in 1947, the villa’s contents and wartime history are displayed very much the way they were efficiently documented and stored – right down to the very last incriminating detail.

At the opposite end of Hitler’s war and the Wannsee Conference was the Potsdam Conference, at which the postwar division of Germany and accompanying reparations to be paid, were decided by the three principal Allied leaders. Between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman – “the Great Alliance” – gathered at the Cecilienhof Palace (built by the Hohenzollern family of Berlin in 1913).
The half-hour, audio-guided, walk-through tour, commencing at 11:30 a.m. reveals the way the diplomatic staff prepared the palace (taking into consideration the idiosyncratic preferences of the Allied leaders) and then the blow-by-blow description of the way the three most powerful men in the world dispensed victors’ justice on Germany.

DAY 13 | Jun. 22, 2018 | Berlin (b, d)
8:00 a.m. breakfast. 9:00 a.m. visit to Reichstag.

There is perhaps no better witness to the 20th century history of Berlin and Germany than the German parliament, the Reichstag, which opened in the 1894. After the Great War, the German Republic was declared there. Its 1933 fire helped catapult Hitler to power; and a dozen years later, Red Army troops raised the Soviet flag over the bombed-out building. In the 1980s, pop stars David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Michael Jackson performed concerts on its palatial lawns; and in 1990, the Reichstag provided the venue for the reunification of Germany. But perhaps the greatest moment of its history occurred in 1999 when the newly refurbished building showed off its new glass dome (by Sir Norman Foster) and spiral ramp offering one of the most breathtaking panoramic views of modern and historic Berlin. But the view into the daily workings of the Bundestag (the debating chamber of the German parliament) is perhaps the truest illustration of “transparent” government since the building’s creation and a testament to the motto inscribed above its main entrance – “dem Deutchen volke” or “to the German people.” Following this last panoramic view of Berlin, our travellers will have the afternoon to explore the city on their own and perhaps buy up those last few souvenirs before the end of the tour.

With our “Beyond the Wall” itinerary complete, and our cameras and luggage full of memories and souvenirs, we retire to our lodgings and prepare for another Ted Barris tour tradition – the Farewell Dinner at 6:30 p.m. – at which hosts and tour travellers get a chance to reminisce and exchange emails and addresses to ensure the excitement of our tour stays with us all summer-long.

DAY 14 | Jun. 23, 2018 | Berlin—Toronto via Paris (b)
Departure transfer to the airport for your flight home.