Advertisement
Published: June 12th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Quadriga
The Goddess of Victory statue on top of the Brandenburger Tor has undergone a few politically-motivated facelifts over the years. The iron cross and eagle, omitted from the re-created version after WWII, were added back after reunification in 1991. We discovered that we both have a museum limit of one per day. Standing in one place reading all the exhibits really wipes out our feet and makes the rest of the day a lot less fun. Fortunately, we discovered this
after we managed to see most everything we wanted.
We started the day with a leisurely breakfast in our neighborhood near the Haeckescher Markt (no, for some reason, they don't use the "ä" on any of the signs for it). We then revisited the Brandenburger Tor and Pariser Platz for some better photos (I had camera-battery issues yesterday), plus a look at the Reichstag. The line to get into the glass dome was horrendous, so we skipped it, but did enjoy a street-performance-art piece involving a life-size fluorescent orange marionette operated by ~6 young presumably-Germans.
Then off to Checkpoint Charlie and its interesting
Mauer Museum. When the museum was founded, it actually overlooked the Berlin Wall and stood as a defiant tribute to all who had escaped East Berlin or otherwise defended human rights by opposing the Wall. The original second-floor flat was used as a lookout point for Westerners assisting in escapes. Even though its history is cool,
German performance art
Your guess is really as good as mine. Later, we saw them on Pariser Platz performing emergency medical procedures on the puppet.... we agreed that the material felt overly propagandish at times. It seems the museum tells us more about the passion of its founder than giving a broad sense of the reality of the Wall. Much of the text accompanying the exhibits has obviously not been rewritten since the fall in 1989. Nota bene: it was monstrously, unpleasantly crowded when we toured around 16:00, but practically empty when we strolled back past around 19:00 (and is open until 22:00).
Nowadays, Checkpoint Charlie is really just another intersection where commuters dodge tourists. As we saw yesterday, perhaps the most striking thing is how normal and commercial these areas have become. Looking east where Soviet soldiers once stood (yes, it's also interesting how blatant this was... actual Soviet and actual American soldiers guarded this crossing, without even the pretense that it was secured by either West Germans or East Germans), the view is now of a business district and... wait for it... a Schlotsky's Deli. (The deli isn't even for tourists' benefit, we realized, because it was closed on Saturday. Thus we conclude it is meant for the Germans who work there on weekdays.)
After the museum, we rested our feet
Voll Verheiratet!
This happy couple and their "driver" made the rounds on Pariser Platz. and sampled Euro-Mex cuisine at a nearby restaurant. It definitely would not have occurred to me to season fajitas with paprika. 😉 Tasty, but I'm not sure I would seek them out again. Better was the interesting alkoholfrei drink made with fresh lime juice, ginger ale, and about a quarter-inch of raw sugar in the bottom of the glass.
Next, we hurried off to the
Topographie des Terrors open-air museum, just one (longish) block away (and coincidentally adjacent to the only surviving piece of the original Wall). By this time our feet were seriously hurting from the Mauer marathon, but the exhibits were just as amazing as I'd read about. In this case, all the text of the exhibits was in German only, with a free but extremely abbreviated audio guide in English. I was seriously annoyed when it skipped over major sections and content, but I also realize we'd've been there all night and the rest of today if they'd tried to provide audio of everything on every reader-board. In retrospect, I think I might've preferred to spend a few € on the complete printed English translation instead.
We crashed around 20:30, way too beat for the Judisches Museum,
Checkpoint Charlie is watching you
These photos at Checkpoint Charlie today show a Russian soldier facing west, and an American soldier facing east, symbolizing the days when this was a hostile place. unfortunately, or the internet café or even eine Kaffee. An exhausting but thorough and extremely enjoyable day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.179s; Tpl: 0.026s; cc: 8; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0891s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb