Strange but true facts: Berlin is actually built on a swamp and so occasionally smells like a sewer. All land is reclaimed land, and they have to be careful about constructing and removing buildings as adding or removing such a lot of weight has an effect on the landscape. The origin of the name Berlin actually means swamp town. Honestly people, why?
Day one was a Saturday this time. Got up bloody early, met Brads at Heathrow and flew to Berlin. Not sure if I'll do that again - catching a flight on Saturday I mean. We didn't get to our hotel until after lunch and it really shortened the day. I am convinced our Taxi driver took advantage of us being tourists and drove us via the scenic route, but that was also ok as we saw more of the city. We got there in the end and that's all that really matters.
It was very cold. Below zero temperatures overnight and quite windy at times during the day. There was a tour company running a free tour in the afternoon that we would have liked to have done, but we were too late and missed it. This was probably a good thing, as we walked to the Brandenburg Gate and only got as far as the Reichstag before I somehow got my second migraine in two weeks, so the afternoon got curtailed (sorry Andrew!). I refused to be completely governed by my head though, so we wandered through the Christmas markets slowly instead, me doing some Christmas shopping while A tasted many different brews trying to find the exact one he had enjoyed previously. He failed entirely but had fun doing it. We crashed quite early as we'd both had long weeks. Grumble...grr... bloody stupid head!
We did however manage to visit a real German restaurant for dinner. It was called Zur Letzen Instanz and has been feeding people since 1621, including Napoleon and Beethoven. The meal was quite incredible actually. We both had lamb shanks with potato dumplings and red cabbage stewed in mulled wine. It was delicious, very spicy, very large, very filling and almost impossible to carve – I mean, the chunk of meat they gave each of us was bigger than two large mugs put together and we didn’t get steak knives, so eating it was an exercise in juice avoidance. But it was heavenly. Highly recommend going there for real German food if you’re ever in Berlin (although booking in advance is a good idea).
Day two, being Sunday, we got ourselves into gear and had a strange but interesting breakfast at the hotel (Stollen..yum!) and managed to make the tour this time. New Berlin Tours run two tours daily at 11 and 1 and even thought it was freezing and we got wet and a little miserable, I'm really glad we did it.
It was fascinating. I can't honestly say I like Berlin, it's too square, too military and too hard for my liking, but it is a really interesting city. The tour started at Pariser Platz, which is where the Brandenberg Gate (Tor in German) is located, and then looked at The Reichstag, whilst our guide gave us volumes of information about everything.
Then we walked to the new Holocaust memorial. That was quite disturbing. It was built on a park in the middle of town (a place with no relation to the holocaust at all) so that it would remain an all-pervasive and unavoidable reminder of what had happened. The stone blocks reminded me of coffins but the artist left it very open to interpretation. He wanted people to think about it, and it does make you think. We walked through it, as is intended, and it is very strange. You can be with many people in there and not see them at all. And the blocks tower above you in the middle.
Next we went past the place where Hitler's Bunker was. There is only a small sign showing what was there, as the government doesn't want it to become a focus of attention. Then we visited the Luftwaffe HQ and the 17 June Memorial where 200 people shot for protesting against the East German government. There is an interesting juxtaposition on the wall of the HQ behind the memorial and the memorial itself which is on the ground. We couldn't really see it, as there is construction work happing, so I didn't get a photo, but there is a mural on the wall of people singing and dancing, being happy little Germans, which was put up a year before the protest and the deaths. So they put a memorial to the protest in front of the mural. Very neat.
Then it was onto The Berlin Wall, the Former SS Headquarters and Checkpoint Charlie. It's almost impossible to conceive that a government would do such a thing to its citizens. No one wanted to remain in East Germany, so they built the wall and stopped them, separating families and stopping workers from going to their jobs.... Very eerie. If you were a soldier on the wall, you got paid more if you shot people. How...? I mean honestly... what? I just don't have the words to describe what I felt, what I am feeling now...
Anyway, after such a course in the most recent history of Berlin, we went back several hundred years. Gendarmenmarkt is a plaza that has two churches (a German and a French one - the German one being slightly larger than the French) and the Konzerthaus in it. Built by the Kaiser (king) of Prussia Frederick William I. After the plague went through Berlin twice, the population was decimated and reached a low of 20,000 people. The French King was ejecting all Protestants (the Huguenots) from his realm, so the Kaiser said they could come and live in his city and boost the economy. He built the French Cathedral so the new emigrants could worship, and then the native Germans complained, so they built a slightly larger German church (aka Dom). The plaza was sporting a posh Christmas market as well - pay 1 Euro to get in!
Then it was onto Bebelplatz and this place disturbed me the most. On May 10, 1933 a massive book burning took place there. 20,000 books were burnt. Only, it wasn't the Nazi's who did it - or rather, not only the Nazi's. It was the professors and students of Humboldt University, which overlooks the square, who voluntarily raided their own library, and extracted all the books that didn't 'conform' to Nazi thinking. They lit the bonfire. They burned the books.
There is a memorial to the book burning in the middle of the square. It's quite simple and hardly noticeable - you probably wouldn't see it if someone didn't point it out to you. There is a glass panel (which you can walk across) which looks down into a deep cavity filled with empty white book-shelves, symbolizing the destruction of knowledge. There's enough space on the shelves to house all 20,000 books that were burnt. There is also a plaque on all four edges of the memorial with a quote from one of the writers whose books were burnt. Written in 1820 by Heinrich Heine, it is an eerily prescient quotation. It reads: 'Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo Man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt Man am Ende auch Menschen' ('That was merely a prelude. Wherever they burn books, eventually they will burn people too'). The memorial was just so eloquent and such a stark commentary on the war it almost made me cry.
Now a-days, there is a second hand book market in front of Humboldt University every day of the week that the weather isn't too horrible. A lovely reparation I think.
We moved on to Neue Wache - Which is a memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny. It has a sculpture by a famous local artist, Käthe Kollwitz, who lost her son in the first world war, and then her husband and grandson during WWII. It's a very simple, but also very eloquent statue, of a mother holding her dying child. Buried underneath are the remains of an unknown German soldier and a victim of a concentration camp along with soil from the different battlefields and camps of WWII. The ceiling is open, so that whatever rain or snow affects the city reaches the statue. It suffers along-side the people.
We finished off the tour at Museum Island. Museum Island is literally that; an island where they've put all their museums. Then we went Christmas Market hopping again, and this time, I got to taste some of the brews... very interesting I must admit. I had Apple Punch and Strudel in the Posh Christmas Market, and then JagerTea and some eggy concoction elsewhere... it was all a little strange to my pallet. We also visited the most Amazing Chocolate shop I’ve ever seen. Check it out!
Day three was Monday morning and the last place we visited was the Pergamon. It's one of the most infamous museums in Berlin. They have the entire front half of The Pergamon Alter, one of Turkey's most famous temples, reconstructed inside the museum, and the giant Market Gate of Miletus, a 2nd Centuary AD gate also taken from Turnkey. The Turks want them back, obviously, but they remain in Berlin. It was very interesting, but I think A was a little bored... I tend to go a little ga-ga over ancient things.
Then it was time to go home.
Visiting Berlin really made me think. Unlike every other city I've been to, Berlin is heavy with history. It is so close to the surface, and so all-pervasive that it was almost unsettling to be there. I found it fascinating, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it all that much.
I had just become a teenager when the wall came down. I remember it falling. I remember the cold war and Mikhail Gorbachov and Perestroika and Glasnost. It didn't have much of an impact on me as I had no concept of the implications of such events, but I do remember it happening.
I can remember when East Germany was not a place you could visit, and then when there were two Lonely Planet Guides; one for each half. And then when reunification occurred. But once it was whole again the fact that Germany had ever been two countries sort of slipped from my consciousness. I had no understanding of the ramifications, so it didn't have an impact on me, and I sort of forgot.
Now, it means something to me. And I find that very disturbing. It's good to remember, and to know, and to feel. But it's not comfortable.
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