In Berlin, Day Two

I need to come back to this city. I spent a full day taking things in, but I didn't really do more than scratch the surface. A couple of miscellaneous things first:

There are these silly fiberglass bears all over the place, each representing a different country. The one on the left is for the USA. These are the Buddy Bears and they are on a world tour to promote understanding among peoples. Balderdash.

In addition to the papal visit here in Berlin (which the Berliners don't seem the least bit excited about), the Berlin Marathon will be run Sunday morning, with parties and kick-off events throughout the city and along the route today. It's annoying, because a lot of the touristy stuff is also along the race route, meaning larger crowds and restricted spaces.

Dunkin' Donuts in Berlin, Germany, 2011

Until now only Starbucks laid claim to Germany. Berliners, however, seem to know a thing or two and have proudly welcomed Dunkin Donuts into their city. I saw at least 4 of them. I couldn't resist, but I did try a donut flavor I've never seen in the US - grunes apfel, meaning green apple. It has apple filling and the green glaze on top tastes like a granny smith apple. We need DD to bring this flavor to the US - yum!!

I decided to make the most of my Saturday by joining a walking tour of the city.

This is my guide, Michael, and some of my fellow tourists. I was the only American on this English-language tour. There were 3 Scots, 4 Brits, 2 Russians (yes, Russians), and 2 Aussies. I thought it was a three hour tour, but it was actually five, counting 25 minutes for a lunch break. It was well worth the €9 (discounted from €12 with my Berlin City Card). We went everywhere.

We met at 10 AM at the entrance to the Berlin Zoo. From there we entered the Zoo S-Bahn station (surface trains, like the Red Line when it's above ground) bound for the old East German part of Berlin. This particular station used to be the main rail station for West Berlin, prior to the reunification of Germany in 1990/91 (the Wall came down in 1989, but it took a while to formalize everything).



While traveling east, Michael gave us the poop on the formation of Berlin as a town and city, and some of the history of Prussia, in which Berlin is located. Pictured to the left is a bridge into the heart of East Berlin, with the spire of the infamous East German TV tower in the distance.

This colonnade along the river survived the bombings and destruction of WW II, but it is riddled with pock marks and holes from bullets and shrapnel.

On Museum Island in old East Berlin. This church didn't get to display its cross on its central dome until after Gorbachev's glasnost reforms of the 80s. This church was also the site, in 1943, of Himmler's marriage, which was the social event of the season in the Third Reich. Behind the church is the TV tower again, which is visible almost everywhere in East Berlin.

Above is a communist mural on the wall of the former Luftewaffe Headquarters, one of the few of Hitler's buildings to survive the bombings. One theory is that, by unspoken agreement, neither air force would bomb the headquarters of the other (the generals were good at self-preservation). The mural shows unity and industry within communist east Germany. Not pictured is a newer exhibit near the mural which counterpoints the reality of East German life - at the time the mural was being made, there were uprisings and strife in East Berlin.

This is the second largest portion of the Wall still standing. There were actually two walls, an inner and an outer, with a no man's land in between. If you got over the inner wall to escape to the West, you would likely be stopped or shot in this open area.

As I follow the tour in East Berlin I'm struck by the newness of all the buildings. It makes sense, given that over 90% of the buildings in Berlin were either destroyed or badly damaged by war's end. Moreover, with the Wall's demise in 1989, capital flowed into East Berlin and many of the buildings first erected in the 1940s and 1950s have been renovated or replaced.




The pictures, to the left of and below this paragraph, are of the memorial to the slaughtered Jews of Europe, which opened up just in the last couple of years. It is composed of large blocks of various heights and widths, and you can meander down and into the memorial from street level, following rectilinear rows with undulating and tilting footpaths. It's kind of weird, but it does make you think - kids are running throughout the memorial, having fun and playing tag - they can do that, in safety, not understanding the point of the memorial. In a way, isn't that exactly the point of it?
The memorial has been controversial in Berlin, because of the fact that you can sit on the blocks and run helter-skelter through them; it's not somber enough. Others argue that the memorial is about celebrating the lives of the ones taken and not about mourning their death; the memorial is akin to an Irish wake.





Pictured to the right is a parking lot, below which is Hitler's bunker. It's still there, but has been filled and covered. This is where Adolf married Eva as a reward for loyalty, 24 hours before they both committed suicide as the Russians entered the heart of the capital. For the German folk today, they seem to acknowledge the past, but they do not dwell on it, revere it, or despise it. There is a small sign, in German and English, acknowledging the site of the bunker and providing just-the-facts,-ma'am information.

The last image is of the renown Brandenburg Gate. The Gate had been in the middle of the no-man's land between the inner and outer Wall. No one, except for East German Stasi an patrol, had access to this piece of history for decades. I walked right on through. The area surrounding the gate has been built anew, including embassies and fancy hotels. The newly opened US embassy is right next to the gate (the embassy moved from Bonn recently, following the move of the German government back to Berlin after Reunification).

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany, September, 2011

Weather-wise, the day couldn't be beat. It was about 70 degrees and cloudless. I even got a sunburn, in northern Germany, in late September. The tour wrapped up at a little after 3 PM at the Brandenburg Gate. Most of the museums closed at 6 and it would have taken me about 40 minutes to get back to Museum Island via foot and U-Bahn, so I decided that it wasn't worth it. I wandered around the marathon stuff for a while, and along the street in front of the reichsstag. I returned to the hotel, freshened up, and headed out on the Kurfurstendamm to shop for a jacket and maybe a scarf. It was 10 to 6. Everything closed at 6PM and I didn't have time to get coat. 6 PM on a Saturday!! On the biggest shopping street in a national capital!

Next stop, Frankfurt am Main!

Location:Berlin,Germany