Berlin

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After all the family life, partying and skiing it was time to do something for our cultural education and so we headed to Berlin. The drive there was an experience in itself. We took the German high speed train called ICE which drove us with a max speed of 250km/h through snowy white Germany.

In Berlin we checked into our traditional Berlin Pension in an old house with 3 meter high walls, comfy beds and huge windows. Just like it must have been in the 20s.

Berlin is a great city and has a lot of tourist attractions. Pretty amazing that anything was still left after the Second World War and the 60s building boom. To get an overview we signed up for a 4 hour walking tour of the city. 4 hours sound like a lot but aren't in a city like this. Saying that 4 hours can be a extremely long time if you’re walking around in -3 degrees with boots which clearly were not made for winter.
Being the soldiers that we are we prevailed and got a tour of the highlights of Berlin starting on the Museums Isle. No Berlin is not on the coast but it has a river called the spree running through it. This river diverts at one point and creates a largish island. This is the location where Berlin started off as a small fishing village and which is now (you could have guessed) full of museums. I don't know how many but there must be at least 5 pretty big museums in the vicinity. Unfortunately we only had time to visit one a few days later. It was the well worth seeing Pergamon museum.
Pergamon is not really a typical German name but the name makes sudden sense when you step into the first gigantic room of the museum. In front of you is most of what's left of the Pergamon Altar from Turkey. The Germans archaeologists which uncovered the temple many years back in Turkey liked it so much that they cut it into pieces and transported it back to Berlin. Now you can see it in its full glory here and it is quite a sight if you step in from cold snowy Berlin to find a Zeus and Athena fighting it out on one of the huge frescoes which grace the temple.
That's not all the next room contains the Market gate of Miletus, another the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way from Babylon and the next the Mshatta facade. We are not talking about some small items here we are talking about whole buildings! So let that be a warning to you. If you happen to find an ancient temple in your backyard don't tell the Germans (or English, Americans, Russians,... for that matter) and just put a few more meters of dirt over it.

Anyway further along in our tour. The next stop was the Berlin Dome which is a massive cathedral and right next to it is the place where the former Berlin palace stood. It survived the war rather intact (which was a miracle in itself in bomb riddled Berlin) just to be torn down by the East German government as they thought it to be a symbol of imperialism. It was then replaced by a monstrosity called the “Palast der Republik” (Palace of the Republic) which in turn just got torn down by the Berlin senate to be replaced (and here comes the twist) by a reconstruction of the original palace. Where Berlin, which is nearly bankrupt gets the money from to do this seems to be a problem no one understands nor cares about.

The tour went along “Under den Linden” a famous street which still contains a lot of Prussian style buildings. Next to this street is also the Opernplatz which was the site of the Nazi book burning in 1933 where thousands of books which were of Jewish authors or thought to be "degenerate" were burnt in one big bonfire.

After this depressing sight was a more wonderful sight a heated Cafe in which we had lunch and defrosted our toes. Further along we went to Checkpoint Charlie the most famous but not only passage from West Berlin into the GDR. The checkpoints were the only way through the Berlin wall up until 1989. It is quite amazing to think that a wall ran through and around Berlin just 20 years ago which divided the city in two. It wasn't just a small wall (the Germans do everything right) but a 3 meter high monster with a 20 meter long death strip behind it. It wasn't meant to keep the West Germans out of East Berlin it was made to keep the East Germans in the GDR. East Germany already lost millions of people through migration to the West and wanted to stop that trend as otherwise the whole country would have collapsed. Today only a few parts of the wall are remaining and now some parts need to be protected by a fence so that people don't steal bits of it.

Further along was the former Ex Reichs Air Ministry of Nazi Germany and impressive gigantic building which now houses these days the German finance ministry. I guess the house is destined to house evil...

The ministry was on a street which also housed Hitler's chancellery but that was for obvious reasons levelled during the Second World War. Even the bunker in which he committed suicide is now beneath a non descript looking car park. Literally just around the corner is also the holocaust memorial which remembers the millions of killed Jews.

The tour goes on and the next stop is the Brandenburg Gate in front of which JFK uttered his now famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner” and then on to the Teutonic looking Reichstag which now again houses the German parliament. The Reichstag is topped by a glass dome which is open to public and allows and unique view of Berlin and of the top of the heads of politicians.
That's all for the tour but wait there is more. We liked the tour soo much that we decided to do another one the same day. Don't fear this time it was a pub crawl which led us to some strange and quirky bars. One is decorated with old GDR memorabilia and the other was in an occupied house. Well worth doing and we are fond of the memories we got and lost that night.

Now this was day one.... The other days were spent meandering around Berlin, revisiting some places and warming up in Museums. One of them is the immensely informative museum of the German history. We spend two hours in there and just skimmed the surface of all the information that is available.
A museum which dealt with one particular part and area was the highly interesting and amusing DDR (GDR) museum which has exhibits from the good old days when East Germany still existed. You can sit in a Trabbi and wonder why people had to wait up to 15 years for such a car (the outer shell was made of cotton and plastic…). It also had other interactive exhibits which informed us about everyday life from shopping, to a replica of a typical lounge room to information about the nudist movement.

Yet another museum was dedicated to what Berlin would have looked like if Hitler would have won. There were already detailed plans on how to remodel Berlin as the capital city of the world (no joke). The main feature would have been the massive Dome which would have been over 300 meters high. Some people thought it would be impossible to build but someone with a lot of time recently did the calculations and it would have worked. Well it would have stood. It is now thought that the transpiration of the 180,000 people which would have fitted into the dome would have caused clouds to form and rain to fall... inside the dome!

The last night was spent meeting up with friends of mine from the good old Melbourne days which are now over 7 years ago. We reminiscent about the month we stayed in the hostel and drank cheap beer. Ah good old times. Thanks again to Nadine and Stefan for taking us out.

There is so much more to see and do in Berlin but I won’t bore you any longer and just leave you with a GO THERE!.

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Photos

Trabbi
One of the few car models available in the GDR. You had to wait up to 15 years to get one of them

Museum entry
One of the many museums on the museum isle

Opernplatz
This is where the Nazi book burning happened. Today Mercedes Benz sponsors the renovation of the building in the back hence the big advert

Kellie manhandles a Bear
The Bear is the symbol of Berlin

Holocaust memorial
Looks strange but it is unsettling to walk through those columns

Reichstag
Now again the place where the German government resides

Berlin Pub Crawl
No comment

On top of the Reichstag
A strange mirror contraption which directs light into the main room

Schloss Charlottenburg
Pretty badly damaged in the war but restored with my tax money

GDR Mural
depicting happy workers in a perfect society...

Piece of the Berlin wall
Not much left of it these days.

Checkpoint Charlie
Not the original one though

Inside the pergamon museum
This whole gate was once in the middle east

traffic signals the GDR way
People loved them so much that there was a revolt when they wanted to replace them with the more boring west German signals. Now they take over Berlin

Last night out
with friends of mine from my Melbourne days

Indide the ICE train
Germans. obsessed with speed as Kellie would say. Tht wasn't the fastest we went. he max was 303km/h