I have wanted to get to Berlin since coming to Germany. There is so much history contained in this country, especially in Berlin. We drove to Berlin, all six hours of the drive, which actually is pretty good time considering the threat of staus along the way. Some people had said we should take the train because we inevitably would get caught in one. We were lucky, we had one on the way home for 30 minutes, not too bad. Unfortunately this was one of our worst vacations for weather since being here. It was cloudy the whole time and rained off and on, sometimes pretty hard. The weather was cool and the wind blew pretty hard most of the time. We got to our hotel at 1pm and ran into the guy the ran the hotel as he was leaving. He checked us in very hurriedly and left. Here is the interesting thing, we never saw him again, if I hadn't have run into him at that moment in time, we would have wasted a lot of time waiting for him. We dropped everything off and then walked to the Metro, which was only 10 minutes away. Berlin has a very extensive metro system which is good and bad. It makes it nice when you want to get somewhere but there are so many tracks that it can be a bit confusing. We found ourselves standing at metro stations for several minutes trying to make head or tails of where we were going, sometimes we just made our best guess as a train would pull up and we would hop on hoping it was going in our direction. Luckily, we were right every time.
Our first stop was Brandenburg gate. I won't relate much of the history, as you can look it up for yourself, but the history is very interesting. Just as we left the metro station at the Brandenburg gate the first of many downpours started, so we headed back underground to wait it out. A few moments later it had passed and we were walking toward the gate. The gate is this massive structure that really is the persona of Berlin, it is the image one equates with Berlin. There were several country embassies that sit around that area, many of which used to be old nazi buildings. After taking pictures, we walked over to the Reichstag (German parliament building). It was again looking threatening, so we kept a lookout for potential hideouts. We walked around the Reichstag and then along the river, looking for a portion of the Berlin wall. After stopping and discussing we realized that we would see a big portion of it the next day, so we decided to walk down to Checkpoint Charlie. As we got closer the sky looked very ominous, so we ducked into a souvenir shop, just as the skies opened up. We walked in and browsed the store for quite some time, even Eddie was browsing. We ended up buying a lot of small stuff, just as the rain let up. The Checkpoint area was interesting, if only for it's significance. The actual checkpoint was a replica, there were two 'actors' portraying an American and Russian border crossing guard. I wanted them to stamp our passports, but they said they weren't doing it today because of the rain. There was a museum dedicated to Checkpoint charlie, we didn't pay to go in, but it did have pieces of the wall attached to the outside of the building. Being in the former East Berlin area, there are reminders of what it was like in the form of shops, museums and other subtle clues. We ate at McDonalds near checkpoint charlie, in fact it overlooked it. Near the checkpoint there was a wall that had a running description of the wall, the history of the Berlin and East Germany etc. Next we walked over to the Jewish Memorial, a very neat experience. It was a series of over 2,000 slabs of concrete, shaped in rectangles, placed in rows and columns. As you approached it, you could see some were taller than others so there was dimension to this memorial. The interesting thing, however, is that what you didn't see was that the ground undulated beneath the concrete slabs. In essence, as you walked amongst the concrete pillars some were more than 12 feet high, but from the outside they didn't look more than just a few feet in difference.
We took several pictures, it was all so picturesque. We walked back up to the Brandenburg gate again and this time we did some more souvenir shopping.
We then caught the Metro back home as it was around 10pm and we were getting tired, even though there was still ambient light outside.
The next day we started off by going to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church. We got off the metro followed the signs, 350 meters to the church, off we went. We went 400 meters and no church. Did we pass the street it was on? Is it further ahead? It's a large church we couldn't have passed it. Then I noticed the church that was built right next door to the iconic church, I had seen this new church in pictures, it was next to the old church...but no church. Then I realized that the whole church was covered with a makeshift structure hiding it from the world. They were repairing it and you couldn't see any of it from the street, just the sterile covering. It will be hidden from the public until 2012. Guess we'll have to come back. We hopped back on the Metro and took it to the Eastside Gallery. This is the name of the longest existing piece of the Berlin wall, each section has become a canvas that artist have been commissioned to paint on. Some of them were crazy, some just let your imagination run wild, while others were amazingly beautiful and thought provoking.
We walked along the 1.3 Km length and took it all in. We got our passports stamped at the wall, some corny thing you are supposed to do as a tourist, so we did it. We grabbed lunch and left the wall and headed for the large television tower (4th tallest structure in Europe). As we got there it started to rain pretty good, so we stayed in the metro until the passing shower...passed. We walked over to the Berliner Dom, a large protestant cathedral. It was meant to rival St. Peters Basilica, not as big but very ornate and the unique coloring on the outside, make it a wonderful place to stop and take it the contrasting palate. The church is located next to 'museum island', an island in the middle of the Spree river that contains 5 museums. The one that stood out to us, and the one most people said to go to, was the Pergamon museum. We stood in line for quite some time waiting to get tickets. We were going to attempt to hide Eddie in Hailey's big bag, in fact I stood in line most of the way with him in there. Then I had Hailey ask a worker if he could come inside in my bag, 'no' was the answer. I decided to part ways with my family and let them go inside and see everything and Ed and I would go for a walk and explore. We found a local market selling goods. We strolled through looking at everything and then found our way back to the Berliner Dom area. There was a large grassy area with a large round fountain in the center. There were trees lining the bank of the river and they had built wooden lounge chairs that you could lay back on. So that is what Eddie and I did while we waited. We finally joined up with the rest of the family. As we didn't really have this trip planned out very well, we just flew by the seat of our pants. With that being said, we had no idea what to do next. I had seen this area called "topographie of Terror" labeled on the map...boy that sounded interesting. We decided we would see what that was all about. As we reached our destination, the sky turned black and the rain started to fall.
This turned out to be a great stop. This block was the most feared address in all of Berlin. It housed the foundation of the third Reich; the SS, the gestapo,SD and RSHA. As a Berliner, you did not want to be anywhere near this place. They had a covered area outside that had the history of Nazism, the third reich and Hitler. We stood outside reading all of the hanging placards, in the cold and rain. Then we noticed a large building behind us and decided we might be able to find a bathroom in there. Come to find out this was the actual museum, complete with a more detailed account of what we just read outside. I will be the first to tell you, I didn't know very much about Germany and WWII, but after this vacation I definitely learned quite a bit and it has peaked my interest in learning more about this historic time. It was raining most of the way back to the Metro, so we were pretty wet...and tired and ready for a warm night's sleep. That evening back at our apartment the storms let loose, it rained hard and blew even harder. I felt quite comfortable lying in my bed, nice and warm listening to the elements howl around outside.
The next day we packed all of our belongings up and loaded them into the car. Since we didn't have to be out of the apartment until 11am, we just left the car parked into the parking lot and walked over to the Schloss Charlottenburg. It was a large palace built by a Prussian king. It was patterned after Versailles, the huge palace outside of Paris. It was actually pretty impressive from the outside. We walked back to our car and drove to the Olympic stadium, where in 1932 Jesse Owens proved his dominance over Hitler's dream team. Unfortunately, the stadium was closed because they are getting it ready for the Women's world cup soccer tournament that they are holding in Germany. There have been few cities that I would have a desire to go back to, but Berlin makes my short list on this. Info Transportation to city: Drove van Transportation in city: Metro Lodging: Apartmenthaus Sybille Hecke Sites:
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