Advertisement
Published: September 24th 2007
Berlin - Day 1
Today is Jeremy's birthday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEREMY!!!!!!!
Hello everyone!! Well, first things first - we made it! It seemed like the longest flight(s) EVER, and we had several short delays, but we actually made it to Berlin on schedule. Somehow. Our hotel is in a cute little area in West Berlin called Savignyplatz. The hotel is okay, although of course the wireless internet in the room does not work (I’m having to use the lobby computer). I pretty much believe that all European hotels LIE about having wireless internet in the rooms, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it work yet. I’ll keep you updated on that.
Day 1: First, Berlin happens to be a really beautiful city - much more so than I expected. And it is truly fascinating - so much history, so many important things happened here, but within the last 100 years!! It is so amazing to see things of historical importance (such as the Wall) where you actually remember the events occurring. Anyway, back to Day 1 - we were planning to go on a guided tour that began at 10:00am that was supposed to meet at
Zoo Station (train station). However, following our hotel front desk’s directions that it was “5 minutes down the street” we still did not find it in time for the tour. Instead, we headed down to Museum Island and planned to catch the tour later. Museum Island is an area in East Berlin where all the museums are conveniently centered. We visited 2 - the Pergamon Museum and the Altes Museum, which temporarily houses the Egyptian Museum until the new building will open in 2009.
The Pergamon Museum is a collection of antiquities gathered by German archaeologists in the 19th century. It is somewhat controversial because the artifacts, including huge temples, were basically picked up and removed from their locations and put in this museum. But, hey, much more convenient for us, right??!! The major item on display is the Pergamon altar, a Greek temple from 164BC excavated from Turkey. They allow you to walk all over the monument. The relief carvings in the sides depict Zeus and Athena defeating the giants.
**Oh, I should mention here that my information comes from travel guides, research I’ve done for this trip, or audio guides at the museums themselves. I am
NO expert, so no guarantees that any information I give is 100% accurate. Thank you. **
The Pergamon Museum also houses the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, which I thought was really unique (it is constructed of glazed bricks) and beautiful. At the original site, a huge processional roadway lined with the same brickwork and decorated with lions and flowers led up to the Ishtar Gate.
The second museum housed Egyptian artifacts like mummy coffins, mummy masks, art, carvings, etc. - but the main item on display here is the Bust of Queen Nefertiti (called the “most beautiful woman in Berlin”). It is 3,000 years old and has never been retouched or restored. It looks practically like a store mannequin; it is in such good shape and the colors are so bright.
So, we finished our museum tours, ate some lunch (Jeremy ate sausage - shocker!!!) and headed back to West Berlin to meet up with our walking tour. The tour was 4 hours long, so I’ll just hit some highlights here.
The first thing our tour guide said is, “practically nothing of historical importance happened here in West Berlin, so we’ll be spending all our time
in East Berlin.” So….we hopped on the S-Bahn (above ground subway) and went right back to East Berlin.
One of the first stops was Berlin Cathedral, or Berliner Dom. It was one of the few buildings in the area that wasn’t obliterated during WWII. The other buildings right around there, on Museum Island, were ruined - burned from the inside out. So much of Berlin has been reconstructed - they chose to renovate most buildings as they were, instead of building things brand new.
We walked down Unter den Linden street, which is basically the main drag of East Berlin. It was a grand boulevard in the 15th century, home to princes/princesses in the 17th century, then later, where Hitler had his torch-led Nazi parades. The name Unter den Linden means “under the linden” trees. Hitler cut all the trees down to erect Nazi flags but when people complained, he actually replanted the Linden trees. Several sites were along Unter den Linden such as Humboldt University. Albert Einstein taught here (before he took a position at Princeton in 1932); Marx and Lenin, and the Brothers Grimm, studied here. Across the street from the University was the site of
the 1933 Nazi book burning. On Nazi orders, university staff and students burned 20,000 books (like Einstein’s) that were considered forbidden. There is a plaque to mark the site which has a quote from Heinrich Heine, “When you start by burning books, you’ll end by burning people.” The Nazis burned his books too.
One of the intersecting streets of Unter den Linden was considered “Cabaret Mile” and was where Marlene Dietrich was discovered. Once she moved to Hollywood she never came back, and apparently Berliners hold a grudge over that.
Also along the streets, we noticed the crosswalk “walk” and “don’t walk” signs look different - like little soldiers. It turns out this is unique to East Berlin (they are just typical crosswalk signs in West Berlin). When Germany was unified, they started to replace all the East Berlin signs - but there was a mini uproar about it, so they left them. You can tell if you’re in East or West Berlin by the crosswalks!
Further along we came to Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. This gate was the symbol of Prussian Berlin, then of divided Berlin - between east and west. Napoleon took the
statue on top of the Gate to the Louvre, but when Prussia defeated Napoleon they got it back (hence the name Pariser Platz where it is located). Right beside the Gate in Pariser Platz is Hotel Adlon, where famous people like Greta Garbo, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin stayed, and also where Michael Jackson dangled his baby.
During the days of the Wall, the area behind the Gate was called the Death Strip - filled with mines, soldiers, etc. The Wall was actually two walls running parallel to each other, and the area between was called the death strip - usually a 16 foot drop, or, if the river was in between, it would be filled with barbed wire so no one could swim across. You can see cobblestone markers along the roads and sidewalks where the Wall ran right through the city. East Berlin is growing at such a fast pace, and capitalism has definitely moved in. It has become the new “city center,” over West Berlin.
We moved on to the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. It is 2,711 various sizes of cement columns. The site is not significant except that they wanted it in the center of
the city where every citizen and every visitor will see it. The number of columns is not significant other than that is how many would fit on the size lot provided. There are no markings or plaques; every individual is supposed to take their own meaning from it. The sad realization that I had was that the number of columns was so small compared to how many people actually lost their lives.
Next was a seemingly non-descript area of apartment buildings. It turns out that these were built for the East German “elite.” The apartments were not luxurious or grand, just boring, cookie-cutter buildings. Katarina Witt (East German Olympic figure skater) lived here - she found out later that the government was spying on her the whole time. Anyway, in front of those buildings, under the parking lot (?!) is Hitler’s bunker. After the war they filled the bunker with gravel and put a parking lot on top. There were not even any markings until a couple of years ago (and all there is now is one explanatory sign) because the city was concerned that the neo-Nazis (especially in the 90’s) would use the site to hold their rallies.
It was in the bunker that Hitler and his wife committed suicide, then their bodies were burned (sort of). Hitler asked his soldiers to make sure their bodies were burned, but they were too busy saving themselves to finish the job. Hitler’s minister of propaganda was also in the bunker along with his family, and he killed his six children rather than have them live in a world not run by Nazis.
Near the end of the tour, we actually get to the Wall. Very little of the Wall is left, since it has been picked apart since it “fell” in 1989. The area of the Wall that we saw is in front of what was the Gestapo headquarters. It is an area of flat nothing - Berlin decided that since the Gestapo was responsible for so many horrific atrocities (planning of the Holocaust), they will never build anything there ever again. Further down the street was Checkpoint Charlie (the 3rd checkpoint in Berlin, aka alpha, bravo, Charlie) where everyone going in and out was checked , where many escape attempts were made, and where the US and Russia had a Cold War standoff with tanks. Now there is
a museum, and a tower with a picture of a U.S. soldier on one side facing the east, and a Russian soldier on the other side, facing the west.
That was the end of the tour. After that we had an authentic German meal in what is called the Nikolai district. Jeremy had wild boar and a beer (shocker!) and my meal came with sauerkraut. Tomorrow we are going to check out a few more Berlin sites, then we are taking a train to the Rhine River/Mosel Valley region, several hours southwest from here. Thanks for reading - more to come later!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0372s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Veronica
non-member comment
Sing with me....
"Wild Boar!....wild boar"