Berlin, Germany

We are back from a quick jaunt to Berlin, Germany!  We crammed a lot in the few days we were there.  While I thought we would really focus on Berlin during World War II, we instead found ourselves gaining a deeper understanding of life behind the wall in East Berlin.  This year marks the 30 year anniversary of the Berlin Wall falling.  Do you remember where you were when it fell?

We arrived on Thursday night in the pouring rain.  We stayed in the former East Berlin, near Checkpoint Charlie.  We decided to venture out to get our bearings, despite the rain.  That first night we saw a few historical sights:  site of Hitler's Bunker, Holocaust Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, and the Reichstag.  We finished the night at the same Italian restaurant chain, Vapianos, that Edy enjoyed in Luxembourg.  We then swung around Checkpoint Charlie before heading back to our hotel.

We arrived!  I still can't get the hang of taking a group selfie.  This one is particularly blurry.

Boarding the U Bahn.

We all agreed the seats of the U Bahn are more comfortable than the Paris Metro.  

Our station.

The Holocaust Memorial at night.  Read below for a description of it.

Brandenburg Gate!

Oh, Napoleon!  He stole the statue right off of the gate!  It was later returned.

Reichstag Building - government building in Berlin.

Cheers from Vapianos!

Checkpoint Charlie - here Will is under a sign saying that he is leaving
East Berlin and entering the American sector of West Berlin.  

The guard house at Checkpoint Charlie.   

The next morning we woke up and had the most amazing breakfast at our hotel.  (After staying in as many hotels as we have, you become an expert at assessing breakfasts.) We then did a walking tour that I found in our Lonely Planet guidebook.

We started at Checkpoint Charlie.  While it is now surrounded by a McDonalds and tourist shops, a station house still exists, as well as the sign saying you are leaving you are leaving the American section and entering the Soviet section (see above).  We got our best look at the wall fragments here.  I believe over the 21 years the wall was up, they changed the barrier at least three times.  The pieces that remain were hard to knock down or climb due to the rounded top and the concrete piece laying parallel to the road.  Below you can see Edy on the West side of a section of the wall and Will on the East of the same section of wall.

Planning our route.

Will on the East side  

Edy on the West side of the same piece of wall.

A map showing how Berlin was divided during the Cold War.  

To also put it in perspective, if you lived in West Berlin, you could go right up and touch the wall.  This is why much of the West side was spraypainted.  On the East, you could not get close to the wall.  Guards patrolled it and there were about 302 watch towers looking out for individuals trying to escape.  In some cases there was a second wall, some distance back.  The area between the two walls was called the death strip.

As you walk around Berlin now, it is hard to tell which part was East and West Berlin, for it looks very much the same.  One thing that Berlin did do to preserve the wall was to leave a path of bricks on the ground so that you always know where the wall had been.  We followed this on our walking tour.

All along the sight of the old wall, is this stone memorial showing where the wall used to be.  

All throughout Berlin you will find these on the sidewalks.
They mark places where Jews were removed from their homes during World War II.

After a quick detour to see where U2 recorded Actung Baby, we got back on track.  We saw where the Nazi Air Force Ministry used to be and went up an abandoned guard tower.

I got Jeff to pose outside the studio where U2 recorded Actung Baby.

Will had no problem posing.

One of the East Berlin watch towers.   

Edy and Will got to climb it.  

Wearing a guard's jacket.  

Saluting in a guard's jacket.  

All throughout Berlin, there are remnants of the wall.  

We then revisited the Holocaust Memorial from the night before.  This is a most sobering exhibit.  The artist made 2,711 equal size slabs of concrete, all in varying heights.  He then made walking paths throughout that crisscross each other.  You can take any path you want, between the stones.  It is easy to become disoriented and even claustrophobic.  But unlike the Jews who were deported, we could always see our way out.  I am not sure I have ever experienced a more powerful and visceral memorial.

Holocaust Memorial

We also saw the Brandenburg Gate again in the daylight.  Near the gate was a plaque commemorating Ronald Reagan's famous speech to tear down the wall.  A powerful monument right off the walk was the Soviet Memorial.  It is often hard for us to remember but more than 26 million Soviets died in World War II, with 80,000 dying in the Battle of Berlin.  From there, we crossed the Spree River, peeked in the window of Marie-Elisabeth-Luders-Haus to see an art installation of the wall, before the Parliament of Trees.

Soviet Memorial

A quick stop for a pretzel!

Family photo!

Peeking in at Marie-Elisabeth-Lunder-Haus

My girl!

We then headed to a museum I read about called the Tranenpalast.  This place was known during the Cold War as the "Palace of Tears" because here is where East Berliners had to say goodbye to West Berliners.  The museum still has the passage way people had to go through to have their papers looked at and stamped to leave East Berlin.  The museum highlighted individuals who were either stuck on the East Berlin side as well as some who were able to escape.

Always the comedian!

Tranenpalast Museum!

We then took the kids to Hofbrauhaus Berlin, a giant beer hall with more than two kilometers of wooden tables.  We introduced the kids to some good authentic German food - Weiner Schnitzel and seven kinds of sausages, along with bread pudding and some yummy pancake for dessert.

Hofbraunhaus for some German food!

They had Coke and lemonade!

Lots and lots of wooden tables!

We took advantage of the sudden calorie boost and decided to squeeze in one more sight before taking a break back at the hotel.  We stopped and saw Saint Marienkirche, which is Berlin's oldest surviving church.  We then took the U Bahn and S Bahn back to our hotel to rest for a bit.

Saint Marienkirche

Our hotel was advertising the Christmas Garden at the Berlin Botanical Gardens, so we decided to check it out.  I cannot begin to capture how amazing these 30 different experiences of illumination were.  The walk around lasted about 90 minutes.  And there was mulled wine and brats served throughout.  This was inspired by Christmas at Kew in London.  We had a magnificent time just wandering, enjoying the lights, and squeezing each others' hands in wonderment.

A Wishing Tree

Edy's wish - "I wish for snow.  And for Friends to stay on Netflix."

Will's wish:  "I will wish for a happy day with family on Christmas Day."

The next day we headed over to Museum Island.  On our way, we stumbled upon Bebelplatz, the square where the Nazis burned 20,000 books on May 10, 1933.  It has the most surreal memorial, with a simple plexiglass square in the middle of the larger square.  When you peer down, all you see are rows of empty bookshelves.

Bebelplatz - Edy, Will, and Jeff peering down into The Empty Library.

We then headed to the Berliner Dom, which is a Renaissance church from 1905.  We dashed through it quickly, to climb up the 267 steps to the walkway around the dome, for a spectacular view of Berlin.

A quick view inside Berliner Dom.

Here we are walking around the dome.  You can see Fernsehturm in the background.  

We were then able to go to the Pergamonmuseum.  The museum holds artifacts from Greece, Rome, Babylon, and the Middle East that date back long before Christ.  Most famous are the Ishtar Gate and the Market Gate of Miletus.  After a few hours here, we decided to do the most German thing possible - eat Mexican food!  I had read about a great Mexican restaurant in Berlin and I was intrigued!  I really miss "good" Mexican food in Paris.  We ate it so quickly that we forgot to get a picture...

Part of the Ishtar Gate

Very old writing.

The magnificent Ishtar Gate

Here is how they crated it back to Berlin.  

Market Gate of Miletus 

What was left of my burrito from Doloras's!

Jeff went back to Museum Island for more ancient history, while the kids and I decided to go up the Fernsehturm.  Unfortunately, there was a two and a half hour wait, so we bought our tickets and headed over to the DDR Museum.   This museum was described in the guild book as "touchy-feely."  And boy was this a perfect description!  This museum presented what life was like in East Berlin during the Cold War.  You were able to sit in a Trabi, play games kids played, touch the clothes they wore, listen to the music available to them, and even tour an apartment of one of the many high-rise buildings that sprung up in East Berlin to combat the housing shortage.

See you in 2.5 hours!

Trampolines on the way to the DDR Museum.
(It is only 2:30 in this picture.  It is dark by 4:00 p.m. in Berlin.)

Trabi car

Inside an East Berlin apartment.

What was most fascinating was for the kids to see how surpressed life was for those in East Berlin.  Products like Pepsi and Sony Walkmans were coveted, yet impossible to come by.  Music, publications, and television were all censored.  In addition to that, there were food shortages.  Finally, Edy and Will learned how under the socialist regime, people were not allowed to speak their minds, or even vote the way they wanted.  The pressure to conform were too great.  What a state to live in!

We then went back to the Fernsehturm to see if we could go up.  Even though our number had been called, we still had to wait about 30 minutes.  Unfortunately, once we got to the top of the needle, we realized that the line to come down was long, we rushed around in order to secure ourselves a place in the line to go down.  This ended up being not one of our favorite activities.  Luckily for us, Jeff was already back at the hotel and agreed to go back to Vapianos and order dinner for us.  When we arrived at Vapianos, it was ready and waiting table side.  We headed home and all crawled into our king size bed to watch The Bourne Identity.  (We thought that was the one that took place in Berlin, it wasn't.  Instead it took place in Paris, which was just as fun to watch.)

We were so tired by the time we got up the Fernsehturm, that I only took one picture.  

We rode the U2!

The next day we got up at 7:30 a.m. and headed to the airport to fly home.  We were home and unpacked by 1:30 p.m.

Goodbye Checkpoint Charlie!

Goodbye U Bahn!

Goodbye Berlin!

Now that I have been home from Berlin for a week, I can't stop thinking of what life was like for people in East Berlin during the Cold War.  They were trapped.  They lived with less.  They didn't have free speech.  They suffered while their family and friends were on the other side of a wall.

I close with a statue we saw that was in West Berlin.  It is called "The Crier" by Gerhard Marcks.  The second picture below is blurry but you can see two images.  The first was taken in 1967.  It shows the statue in West Berlin, looking out at the Brandenburg Gate, which is behind the wall, in East Berlin.  It includes a quote Gerhard Marcks made at the inauguration of the statue:  "Once I was standing on the banks of a river - the ferry was on the other side - when a man standing beside me cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted "Come over!"  The mouth is the first and last means of communication, a cry for help, giving orders, songs of love and death.  For this, the cupped hands form the shape of a bell.  We should bear in mind that in the human body all types of technology are imagined."

Why WAS a wall the solution then?  Why IS a wall the solution today?  Shouldn't we use our mouths, our hearts and our minds to find better solutions?  Humanity is depending upon us.  Can't we do better than a wall?  I hope we can.

Bon soir,
Betsy