Ich bin ein Berliner
Thanks for the title, JFK!
These buildings are an example of old East German Soviet architecture - gray, efficient buildings that haven't yet been restored or replaced. Do you notice the nice wide streets here in former East Berlin? In the Communist state everyone could afford a Trabant car, unlike those capitalists who exploit their workers! However, 1) they didn't make enough so the waiting list could be 15 years, and 2) they were horribly dirty. Our guide remembers feeling sick from the pollution when she had to go into East Germany as a child. Fun fact: some West Berliners didn't realize the wall had come down until they saw streams of Trabis driving by on the streets.
The Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) is one of the structures on World Heritage Site Museum Island. We made sure to go back and visit this during our free time! Wil and I climbed nearly 300 steps to the top, which made up for not being allowed inside due to an event. Along the way, we learned that all the plaster molds survived the bombing and were used to recreate the statues on the exterior of the church. Berliner Dom also houses a restored crypt with remains of many of the Hohenzollern royal family.
Walking around the island later, we found out that these pillars, near the Alte Nationalgalerie, are not just old - they're riddled with bullet holes. We noticed them on the Berliner Dom too.
Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point, no longer exists except for an open-air exhibit and a replica guard house and sign.
Berlin remembers victims of the Holocaust in their Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial is made up of 2711 concrete slabs. Both the slabs and the ground are off-kilter to make visitors feel uneasy and off balance. Nearer the middle, the ground is even lower so the visitor is completely surrounded by gray concrete, like victims might have been in concentration camps.
We drove through a sector of Berlin full of political buildings and offices. The first picture below is the Chancellery where Angela Merkel works! The second picture is the German Parliamentary building, or Reichstag, which lay in West Berlin only feet from the Berlin Wall. Interestingly, Parliament didn't meet here often during the Nazi regime due to a fire. It has been restored but you have to register in advance to visit, so we didn't go.
This is the Berlin Victory Column, erected after Prussia defeated a bunch of different countries in war in the 1800s. Do you see those gold rings? They're actually gilded cannons captured from the losers! The Victory Column also overlooks a street called Unter den Linden, famous because of the People's Uprising of East Germany. On 16 June 1953, East Berlin construction workers went on strike, and on 17 June it turned into a widespread revolt, quelled only by military intervention. Continuing but smaller uprisings eventually prompted the Socialist party to construct the Berlin Wall.
Berlin has a super awesome rail network of which we took advantage! This is the Hauptbahnhof, Berlin's main railway station. It actually opened in 1871, but the current building opened in 2006.
The other museum Grandpa and I (and later Wil) visited was the hands-on DDR Museum, which depicts life in former East Germany, known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). You can try on old clothes, walk through an apartment, sit in a Trabat, and inspect interrogation and surveillance rooms. The lights in the picture below were a common fixture across the Eastern Bloc.
And finally, Buddy Bears. Berlin is studded with Buddy Bears: life-sized sculptures that promote friendliness and unity. They started in Berlin and have spread around the world as a sign of unity!
Our final ~36 Germanic hours were spent in lovely Berlin: enormous city, capital of Germany in times past and present, famously divided and reunited, and center of science, politics, and culture. Berlin was originally two cities on either side of the Spree River. They formed strong trade ties, created an alliance, and eventually merged with a couple other surrounding areas to become the Berlin we know today. Unfortunately we could only visit a fraction of the sights to see here, but we certainly gave it our best shot!
We began our Berlin day with a bus tour of the city center. Besides the suburbs, one of our first sights was a long section of the Berlin Wall that remains standing and features work from local artists. Later on we saw longest remaining section of the wall, behind which is the indoor/outdoor museum Topography of Terror, which focuses on Nazi repression. The cellar of the Gestapo headquarters was found and excavated, and Topography of Terror grew from it.
These buildings are an example of old East German Soviet architecture - gray, efficient buildings that haven't yet been restored or replaced. Do you notice the nice wide streets here in former East Berlin? In the Communist state everyone could afford a Trabant car, unlike those capitalists who exploit their workers! However, 1) they didn't make enough so the waiting list could be 15 years, and 2) they were horribly dirty. Our guide remembers feeling sick from the pollution when she had to go into East Germany as a child. Fun fact: some West Berliners didn't realize the wall had come down until they saw streams of Trabis driving by on the streets.
The Altes Museum (also on Museum Island) currently holds the antiquities collection of the Berlin State Museums.
Walking around the island later, we found out that these pillars, near the Alte Nationalgalerie, are not just old - they're riddled with bullet holes. We noticed them on the Berliner Dom too.
Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point, no longer exists except for an open-air exhibit and a replica guard house and sign.
Berlin remembers victims of the Holocaust in their Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial is made up of 2711 concrete slabs. Both the slabs and the ground are off-kilter to make visitors feel uneasy and off balance. Nearer the middle, the ground is even lower so the visitor is completely surrounded by gray concrete, like victims might have been in concentration camps.
We drove through a sector of Berlin full of political buildings and offices. The first picture below is the Chancellery where Angela Merkel works! The second picture is the German Parliamentary building, or Reichstag, which lay in West Berlin only feet from the Berlin Wall. Interestingly, Parliament didn't meet here often during the Nazi regime due to a fire. It has been restored but you have to register in advance to visit, so we didn't go.
This is the Berlin Victory Column, erected after Prussia defeated a bunch of different countries in war in the 1800s. Do you see those gold rings? They're actually gilded cannons captured from the losers! The Victory Column also overlooks a street called Unter den Linden, famous because of the People's Uprising of East Germany. On 16 June 1953, East Berlin construction workers went on strike, and on 17 June it turned into a widespread revolt, quelled only by military intervention. Continuing but smaller uprisings eventually prompted the Socialist party to construct the Berlin Wall.
Berlin has a super awesome rail network of which we took advantage! This is the Hauptbahnhof, Berlin's main railway station. It actually opened in 1871, but the current building opened in 2006.
The other museum Grandpa and I (and later Wil) visited was the hands-on DDR Museum, which depicts life in former East Germany, known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). You can try on old clothes, walk through an apartment, sit in a Trabat, and inspect interrogation and surveillance rooms. The lights in the picture below were a common fixture across the Eastern Bloc.
And finally, Buddy Bears. Berlin is studded with Buddy Bears: life-sized sculptures that promote friendliness and unity. They started in Berlin and have spread around the world as a sign of unity!
Oh! And Wil found a craft fair and finally got that stein he's been searching for!
I'm happy to be home now, but I'll miss Germany. We met lovely welcoming people, saw a country full of people dedicated to green space and renewable energy, and performed an iconic requiem in centuries-old churches. I will happily visit again someday :)
Wow, wonderful Sammy! Thanks for such a great travel diary to help us all enjoy this a little bit with you and Wil and gramps!!! :) ♡
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