Saturday, October 7, 2017

Berlin 2017

Reichstag restored (wikipedia photo)
Since it was founded in 500 AD by Lithuanian shepherds, the town they called Berlin (Slavic for "swampy place") has been many things: divided city of the Cold War ...
Topography of Terror: Part of Berlin wall, old Gestapo cells below, Luftwaffe HQ behind
center of Nazi terror ...
Total War...!
capital of Prussia ... 
Friedrich the Great of Prussia
They say it was one of the busiest commercial and cultural cities in 18th and 19th century Europe. It was also a fascinating place to celebrate 34 years of marriage this past October 1. 
Anniversary dinner at Lokal ...
We found ourselves in Berlin because Brad had a certificate (through credit card points), which had to be redeemed in October for three nights at a Ritz-Carlton hotel. Berlin happens to have a really nice Ritz. We got friendly with one of the doormen, Phil Knapp (originally from South Carolina and raised in Flint, Michigan) who was stationed in Berlin and stayed. He gave us luggage tags when we were leaving, (too bougie to keep using, right?) … 


Phil on left ... 
Almost as soon as we arrived, we started to wish we could stay longer but we discovered that Air Berlin had just declared bankruptcy and would not reschedule our flight, not to mention that an actual paid night at the Ritz was too rich for us. But here are my (lengthy!) impressions of Berlin. 

Food
We had traditional food at a modern iteration of Berlin's famous Josty Cafe (the original was destroyed in allied bombing in 1945). I had liver and blood wurst with boiled potato and sauerkraut. Brad had Berlin's iconic (but odd) street food: Currywurst (the result of a chance meeting after WW II between a Berlin food vendor and a British soldier who happened to have some curry with him). 

Wurst (liver and blood)

Currywurst stand ...

... more currywurst (its all over)...also kebabs (Berlin has very large Turkish population)
We also ate at a Syrian restaurant with two new friends we met on a city tour. (They were a young couple living in NYC; she emigrated from South Korea with her family as a child but they met in high school in Iowa.) The food was fantastic but I was gripped with a sense of the current, deadly war of destruction in that other center of civilization. (One has this kind of despairing sensation over and over again in this town but then returns to everyday life.)


Alex and Seonha from our tour

It was really good ... 
We also had Indian for lunch one day and fantastic burgers one rainy night at the Burgermeister stand under the train trestle in Kreuzberg (rated one of the best restaurants in the city).


At Lokal, where we had our anniversary dinner, the food (charred beef and wild boar) was so good that we ate too fast to take photos of it. 

Cityscape 
Our hotel was on the former East Berlin side of town, in between the inner and outer walls of communist times. This area was in the center of old Berlin, and the Soviets razed what was left after the Allied bombing to create the ‘death strip” between the walls. (Many East Berliners died there in escape attempts.) Except for small preserved portions, all that's left of the outer wall is this line of cobble stones that follows its path ...
Berlin Wall 1961-1989

German reunification occurred only in 1990, so all the nearby building are modern, especially the Sony Center across the street from the hotel. 
Sony Center courtyard "roof"


One of the towers there preserves at its base (behind thick sheets of modern glass) some portions of the Esplanade Hotel’s ground floor that survived the 1945 bombing. 

Throughout the rest of central Berlin most buildings are modern as well, with the occasional odd 18th or 19th century survivor wedged in between. An unexpected harmony exists on the boulevards, though, because all the facades, new and old, are in the same plane and the heights of the new buildings are uniform with the old. 

Condo building going up near Checkpoint Charlie ... 
Although there are a few exceptions (e.g., some of the highrises around Sony Center), building heights have always had a natural limit in Berlin because its swampy land can’t support tall structures. There is a dramatic-looking system of colorful drainage pipes throughout the city.
High rises near hotel ... 

Drainage pipes like these run everywhere ... 
Soviet-era TV Tower, Brandenburg Gate, etc.

Mercedes showroom

On the river (TV Tower in back)
Berlin had a fun, wacky kind of vibe, a case of "I laugh ere I weep" perhaps?




Sunday Tour
We took a tour with Context Travel (we can't recommend them enough for insightful tours in cities around the world), and I learned much of what I now know from a charming Irishman, named Finn Ballard, who has a PhD in German folklore and has lived in Berlin for many years. 

With Finn, we learned about the Brandenburg Gate, built in 1788 by Friedrich Wilheim II of Prussia (successor to Friedrick the Great, pictured earlier) to commemorate a treaty with the English and Dutch. While we were in Berlin, the Gate was not directly accessible, blocked off for the commemoration on Tuesday of Unity Day and surrounded by food stands and amusement rides for the holiday. The Tiergarten was also largely blocked (for the parade to be held on Tuesday), so we weren't able to visit it (but I just read a good novel, In the Garden of Beasts, that featured it).  

Nazi-era torch light parade through the Gate 
We also talked about the much-later wall, which ran directly behind the Gate and was called the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart by the East Germans. The wall was over 140 km long and circled West Berlin. 
Checkpoint Charlie

Another shot of Checkpoint Charlie (notice KFC and McDonalds)

Historical photo of Checkpoint Charlie
"To break the wall" 2006
Portion of wall behind glass in building lobby. Graffiti at top:
"Things will be better but not good"
After unification in 1990, there is still some lingering "Ostalgia" (nostalgia for the Soviet-era safety net).  


Soviet souvenirs
Soviet-era Trabi cars: now available for city tours ... 
But Berlin is once again Germany's capital (growing up, I knew Bonn as the West German capital). The renovated Reichstag, where Parliament meets, has an amazing glass dome, open to the public and overlooking the legislative floor below: a brick and mortar symbol of transparency in government. 
(photo from Wikipedia)
We also walked through the Holocaust Memorial (more properly, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe). It consists of almost 3,000 coffin-shaped pillars, some short and some towering, on an undulating field. The pillars are already starting to crack and tilt (given the swampy ground underneath) and, as Finn pointed out, the effect is reminiscent of the old Jewish cemetery in Prague (a city we also visited recently). 




Jewish cemetery in Prague
In talking about the Nazis and their philosophy, Finn mentioned a recent book, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, which argues that German policies in South-West Africa (now Namibia), horrible in their own right, presaged the Nazis—complete with concentration camps and soldiers wearing brown shirts. Hermann Goring’s father was even the colony’s first governor-general… 


An interesting homage to the history of resistance by Berliners is the modernist statue of Giordano Bruno in the Potsdamer Platz metro station. Bruno was a monk who died in 1600, burned at the stake for heresy in Rome’s Campo dei Fiori. (It was apparently common for people to be burned at the stake naked and upside down. What a world.) A more traditional statute to him stands in the Campo, erected in 1889 by supporters of Italian unity (and opponents of the papacy).  



We also went down into a now-operational-again "ghost" station. It is one of several in the Nazi era metro line that ended up in East Berlin. The West paid the East to allow the line to continue running but, to prevent stops in the East during the Cold War, the stations were bricked up and the platforms patrolled by guards. 

Nazi-era Unter den Linden ghost station (the Nazis even had their own typeface) 

Linden trees of Under den Linden replaced by Nazi stanchions for the 1936 Olympics
Want more about this part of Berlin? Here’s a video tour of the government quarter (which oddly has a little tour of Dublin stuck in the middle); our own tour guide, Finn, also makes an appearance, midway through, talking a little about the Nazis in Berlin.

German History Museum                                                                      
The history of central and eastern Europe, with its ever-changing rulers, identities, and borders, is daunting. We resolved to learn a bit more by visiting Berlin’s wonderful German History Museum. The permanent exhibition covers German history to 1918 on one floor, with 1918 to present on another. I think I left with more questions than I had before but it is a great exhibition, highly recommended.

Monumental War Woman (with Cross)

Clockmaker 
Soldiers raiding home in Thirty Years' War (1618-1648 with eight million casualties)

Victorious burgher turned soldier
Turkish Siege of Vienna 1529

Tent captured from Turks after Siege of Vienna


Curiosity cabinet item: Cast of pregnant woman for anatomy study

Maria Therese in man's dress 
Victorious skull...?

After Allies started winning, Germany declared Total War ...

Resistance: Someone got in trouble for this ... 

Surviving statue of two that stood in Nazi Chancellory complex

Survivors ... 
Ramones museum
Yes, those Ramones. It was something Brad had read about before we left, so we took in this little museum before our dinner at Burgermeister. Funny and very charming (if punk rock can be charming).
Ramones Museum Berlin 

Punk stays punk 

Hey Ho Let's Go 

Songs ...
Johnny's jacket 

Film museum
We spent our last day at the Deutsche Kinemathek (Museum of Film and Television) right next door in the Sony Center. Another unexpectedly impressive and interesting place, with fascinating Marlene Dietrich exhibit, not to mention information on crazy films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (full movie on YouTube!) and Metropolis from the 1920s, and groundbreaking artists like Rosa von Praunheim, an early gay rights and AIDS activist who was born in a Latvian prison under the Nazis … (!)
Berlin movie theaters of the 1920s
Eyes in Film exhibit in entry hall



Films and Stars
Marlene Dietrich in Blue Angel
A mystery German film star
Still from Metropolis
Photo of actual metropolis (NYC with Bronx on the boat, I just liked it)
Marlene with the Duke (she had affairs with everyone, including him)
Marlene and Groucho
To my dearest Kraut, with all my love, Papa 1934 - 1959 - always 
Her civilian noncombantant ID card used in her many USO tours
That's all folks ... 

1 comment:

  1. Wow, Brigid!

    I always learn so much from your posts. This was fascinating. The pictures bring it all to life, but the history you absorb and then pass on is spellbinding...you always make me want to learn more. I think you could easily become a tour guide - anywhere you want to!

    I bet year two of living in Rome is totally different from year one - you are really a local now. And what a treat to travel to other nearby countries and soak it all in.

    Looking forward to seeing you "back home" in December!
    Kay

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