After the touching down from the shortest and most comfortable flight of the whole trip we checked in with the tourist desk for our Berlin Welcome Cards. These cards gave us unlimited rides on public transit and came with a handy booklet of attractions which honored the cards for discounts. We never did seek out any of those discounts, but the transit pass was pivotal for getting around Berlin. This was especially true since riding public transit appeared always to be purely on the honor system! But a quick ride on the U2 from the central hub of Alexanderplatz got us swiftly to the central neighborhood of Eberswalder and our AirBnb.
We found what we were looking for thanks in part to streets with names!
We dropped off our gear and found a nice spot for a late lunch around the corner. Listening to a sort of easy-listening trance techno that we found to be common in restaurants, Yana nailed a one-roll Yahtzee just before delicious soup and pasta were served.
Scarf Tales part i: Yana uses her scarf to quiet the tumbling dice.
That night we went to Prater Garten, the oldest biergarten in Berlin, conveniently located down the street from where we were staying!
You know you’re in a legit German pub when they have two styles of Maisel’s Weisse on draught.
The following morning we went on a bike tour of Berlin. Our bikes were tastefully decorated and thoughtfully named.
Scarf Tales part ii: Yana sports a scarf she found in a shop on the way to the tour! Clearly it was meant to bee.Thumbs up for rock ‘n roll!Duh! You saw that scarf, right?
Immediately we saw buildings which were at once historical, political, and artistic.
Einstein used to lecture at Humbolt University. This square was also the site of a symbolic book burning in 1933. An equally symbolic underground memorial can be seen through glass in the cobblestones: empty shelves with space enough to hold the approximately 20,000 books destroyed.The concert hall in Gendarmenmarkt Square is the newest building there of three, built in 1821. The square itself dates to 1688 and was used as a marketplace. Also Scarf Tales part iii: Mark sports the hand-me-down!The French church is barely in the frame on the left as was built in 1705 for the Huguenots. The much larger bell tower was added in 1785 and is now a musuem of Huguenot history.The German church was built across the square as the Lutheran answer to the Huguenots in 1708. The much larger belltower was added at the same time as its opposite and is now a museum of German history. The statue, built in 1871, is of German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller.
Most of the interesting landmarks in the city were made part of East Berlin in the postwar partitioning since the Soviets got first pick.
Our tour guide drew a helpful map of Germany with a blowup of Berlin to explain the partitioning. The green line is the Berlin Wall, which was built to keep the East Germans out of West Berlin.Yana stands near Checkpoint Charlie in what was formerly West Berlin next to bricks marking the position of the wall.A Trabant, the famously derided East German car, idles in front of one of the only surviving segments of the wall.There are many Holocaust memorials, but this one is explicitly for the murdered Jews. It is a grid of concrete pillars of differing heights designed, according to the architect, to create an illusion of instability in an apparent system of order.The Brandenburg Gate! This symbol of triumph and unity turned ironic when it became situated the no-man’s land between the inner and outer extents of the Berlin Wall. The tour bus symbolizes the inexorable march of commodification.Built in 1873 to commemorate the Danish-Prussian War, the Nazis jumped the gun on adding a fourth section to this victory column in 1939.
Following the tour, we wandered back to Alexanderplatz and found the last Oktoberfest celebration of the year in full swing!
The Berliner Fernsehturm or TV tower is the tallest building in Germany and the second tallest in the EU. A similar tower in Latvia is half a meter taller.The other option was a half-litre, and Yana had no use for that.The chicken danced for minutes, but the band played for hours!
We had to pick up their album. You can see the chicken near Yana’s finger!
The next morning we set out to a nearby park for a regular Sunday flea market. Among hundreds of booths was everything between the wares of slickly polished merchants and the detritus of garage-cleaning citizens.
We wandered through the maze of booths and found this flaming wheelbarrow hanging out near the back.Hotwein for sale!We were told these are actually easter bunnies who are missing their ears.
Fleeing the flea market for a picnic lunch, we caught a slice of weekend life in Berlin.
We also got the album of this funky band, Rupert’s Kitchen Orchestra. They all signed our copy! The bass player was on fire.Back in the flea market for more beer, we heard this duo cover of “I Wanna Be Like You” from the Jungle Book.
Drum line dance party into the night!Several folks were selling beer for the dancing people. We need more parks like this in the States!
The next day we set out for Museum Island. Following an indulgent brunch in a greatly overheated room with more trance music, we trekked back through Alexanderplatz to visit some of the greatest antiquities preserved today.
First was the great Pergamon Museum, home to some of the largest reconstructions of ancient ruins in the world.
The massive Ishtar Gate of Babylon was mailed, brick by brick, to Berlin in the 1930s, 2500 years after it had been built by King Nebuchadnezzar. Most of the actual wall is here in true color, with any missing bricks replaced with locally fired ones.Huge as it is, this was just the outer gate. The inner gate was twice as tall.The market gate of Miletus was similarly restored with about 60% original material. An important trading city in what is now western Turkey, Miletus was perhaps the richest of Greek cities but reached even greater splendor during the Roman period.
The ornately decorated Mshatta Palace Facade dates from eighth century Jordan. At 33 meters long, this is still only about 1/12 of one side what was probably a sprawling winter residence. It was a gift to Germany from the Ottoman empire after its discovery in 1840.
Following that was the Neues Museum, or New Museum, only one of the amusing historical misnomers to emerge from Berlin’s Museum Island. This museum houses the famous bust of Nefertiti, which truly is a glory to behold, but that room is one of the only ones which restricts photography.
This motif clearly spans cultures.
In many cases, the museum buildings themselves were as impressive as their contents.No doubt Dr. Seuss drew some inspiration from this museum.One of the great prizes of the museum, this is one of only four such Gold Hats and is the best preserved. Dating from the Late Bronze Age, it made from such a thin gold-silver alloy that it weighs only a pound and was probably used in astrological cult rituals. In fact, the markings around the outside indicate the ratio of the lunar month to the solar year and could have been used to predict eclipses.
There are five museums in all on Museum Island, but we couldn’t imagine going to more than two in a day. Leaving Museum Island afforded some lovely dusk views of the landmarks we’d been seeing.
We stopped by Kulturbrauerei on the way home. Formerly a massive industrial brewery, the “Culture Brewery” is now a protected monument and public space with bars, restaurants, and clubs.
German priorities: even mostly empty, there’s still more beer in the stein than water in the glass.Red beer, green beer!
We could have easily spent a week in Berlin, but we ran home to sleep and pack. The following morning would be a train ride to Prague and the fourth country on our adventure!
