Oh, it was a cold day. We hoped early autumn would be nicer than we’ve experienced! One of the Berliners from yesterday’s post bemoaned the cold and said how the rest of Germany was having an Indian Summer. Hmmm … Not the rest of Germany we’ve been in. Perhaps over on the Rhine?
Anyhow, as it wasn’t raining we decided to explore the city, rather than visit a museum. After all, given its history, Berlin is pretty much a museum itself. But, dearie me, it was chilly for those of us whose holiday started in 44°C Dubai just 6 weeks ago.
Wilhelmstrasse
We started the day by walking up Wilhelmstrasse towards the Brandenburg Tor. It’s a rather historic street and there are interpretive signs along the way, pointing out, for example, the building in which the future chancellor Konrad Adenauer worked. According to Wikipedia, “Wilhelmstrasse” has been used in Germany to represent government the way “Whitehall” is used in England.
We were particularly intrigued by a steel “filigree” sculpture of the silhouette of a man’s face. We later discovered it was Georg Elser, the man who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1939. The sculpture is 17 metres high, and was created by Ulrich Klager in 2011. (There is, apparently, signage for it, but we were on the wrong side of the road to see it at the time.)
The new, post-Reunification architecturally interesting British Embassy is also here, as is the Topography of Terror, which we’ll mention later.
Brandenburger Tor and Reichstag
Our next sights were the Brandenburger Tor, surrounded by tourists/sightseers, and the Reichstag. Between these two structures, identified in the pavement by double rows of cobblestones, was the Berlin Wall. During the time of the Wall, the Tor was inaccessible to the west. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like for a city to lose access to one of its defining features. How would Sydneysiders feel if they suddenly couldn’t access the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House, or Parisians their L’Arc de Triomphe, for example? Anyhow, it’s an impressive structure and great to see “for real”.
At this point of our self-guided city-as-museum tour, it was so cold we broke our golden rule and stopped at a cafe in tourist central. (We generally avoid cafes on the main tourist paths, not only because prices tend to be higher but because they tend to cater more for what they think tourists will like than for what locals eat.) However, sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, and our cafe gave us the needed respite.
Berliner Mauer
At this point, we got a train to the station nearest the longest still-standing length of the original Berlin Wall. While the wall stood, it was painted by protesters, artists, on the west side. After it “came down” this remaining East Side section was also painted, though that art has been graffiti-ed over somewhat by now. Regardless, and despite the cold, it was moving to see the wall and think about all those lives affected by it and its impact on the city.
We then decided to walk along the Berliner Mauer trail, eventually making it to Potsdamer Platz. It was a rather long walk, comprising six or seven kilometres through city streets and lanes, but well worth it. Along the way we saw quite a lot of Wall history, including:
- interpretive panels describing checkpoints and places where people had died
- ground markers identifying the location of the wall
- a sculpture commemorating publisher Axel Springer
- a memorial to the 18-year-old Peter Fechter who was one of the first to have been killed trying to escape to the west
- Checkpoint Charlie, which is a strange mix of commercialism with “American GIs” charging to have your photo taken with them (we didn’t), serious interpretation (some open-air and some in a museum which we didn’t visit as our feet had almost reached their limit by then and we still had a way to walk), and modern art on apparently authentic pieces of Wall
- the Typography of Terror site, opened in 2005, with its section of Wall, remnants of a Third Reich building, and external exhibition focusing, currently, on 1933. (We didn’t visit the internal exhibition for the reasons given above.)
- the rebuilt and very modern Potsdamer Platz
Partway through the walk, at around 2pm, we stopped at a little cafe – brennBAR Cafe – for lunch. We ordered the lunch special, veal meatballs, Kalbsklopse, served with boiled potato and a little salad. Before this was served, however, our gorgeous, friendly young server brought us a little dessert called Germknödel featuring plums in a yeast cake. We’re not sure whether that was part of the €6.90 lunch special or a treat for the foreigners. Regardless, she enjoyed helping Len understand what exactly it was and we enjoyed it (though Sue ate the plum part and passed most of the rest over to Len. Avoiding wheat has been difficult so she didn’t need to overdo it unnecessarily!)
At the end, we walked around to the Berlin TV Tower complex to check out doing a Segway City Tour (they were booked out) and ascending the tower (but we decided we were too tired to wait even the short time involved, and Sue’s not a huge fan of tall towers anyhow).
End of the day
We’d set off around 10.30am and got back around 5pm, having been on our feet most of the day and having walked many kilometres. We were tired, so it was frozen microwaveable TV meals for us, involving more than passable salmon fillets, and a quiet night in.
Three-words
LEN: Drab, neglected, rebuilding
SUE: Grey, pensive, inhumanity
and the stills…
and the videos…
The Topography of Terror, unpainted Berlin Wall
The West Side Gallery painted Berlin Wall
Oh, it does look chilly there…. and your three words each remind me of the train trip I did from Berlin to Bogensee nearly 20 years ago. Bogensee itself was very comfortable and pleasant – if isolated, as it seemed – as a conference venue, but some of the buildings along the railroad were quite dilapidated. Nice to hear that you have a ‘home’ rather than a hotel return to in the evenings while you are there. Like the look of the plum cake -what a little treat! Our weather has been mixed in Canberra – some windy rainy days and other sunny days. Take care and cheers,
Mary
I guess that’s Spring in Canberra isn’t it Mary? Have you been to Floriade yet? One thing that has surprised us here is how colourful the gardens are even though summer is past. Flowers would not last this long in a Canberra it seems, though I suppose what we are seeing mostly is those long lasting flowers, and they clearly plant a lot of them!
We know what you mean about dilapidation, though I think a lot of reconstruction work is going on. You’d probably notice a difference!
Great photos as usual and fascinating bits of history you are giving us. I was surprised to see how much of the Wall was left standing – I had thought most of it was demolished and just a little left for ‘history’s’ sake. Was the graffiti sanctioned by the powers that be? Is any of it meant to be symbolic or relevant to its story – hard for us to tell from a small picture.
Keep warm – as Mary says the weather here is up and down, too. Lots of wind as usual – some damage done around ACT.
That main section with the art work is only a few kilometres and is the longest section. The section at the Topography is only tens of metres. Then there are bits of wall – just metre wide panels – here and there, so there’s really not much. The art gallery on the east side was sanctioned but there’s been some graffiti added later it looked to us (but you probably couldn’t see that in the photo). On the west side, it’s a greater mix of protest art and graffiti I think. I’m sure people have written analyses of what’s what, but we couldn’t be definitive about it from the bits we’ve read.
I remember telling Dad (and perhaps you?) about how amazing the East Side Gallery was/is, and how you had to visit it. Also, I wonder if you’ve walked past my hostel – it’s the big new-ish building next to the main train station, and you can walk to the Brandenburg gate and memorial place from it…
Oh we might have without knowing it. I’m afraid I don’t recollect much about your time in Berlin except, I think, that you were pretty unwell. That’s a Mum’s memory I suppose!