Berlin

After our sobering stop at Flossenburg, we drove north to Berlin. Berlin is a sprawling city, much different from the petite towns we had just visited. On the highway entering the city we noticed large bleacher seats along the road, aligned as if the spectators would watch traffic. They obviously had not been used for years. I assume a sports stadium had once occupied where the highway now passed, but money was saved by leaving the bleachers untouched. Our hotel was a modern place within walking distance of the Kurfurstendamm a street modeled after the Champs Elysees in Paris. Before dinner we meandered along the Kurfurstendamm; there were many people walking and the sidewalk cafes were full, but we did not feel crowded. Berlin is sized for a much larger population; the 3.5 million residents are engulfed by the wide streets, which feel empty. Almost immediately our eyes were caught by a broken church steeple towering over the neighboring buildings. Intrigued we walked for a closer look. At first we were not sure if the steeple had been designed to appear broken, but once we stood in its shadow it was clear that the church had taken direct hits during the bombing of Berlin. Only the portion of the cathedral supporting the damaged spire remained. The spire perched uncertainly on a foundation of blasted stone that was supported by a massive steel belt wrapping tightly and large steel i-beams jutting at various angles. It was a bit disconcerting to walk to the foot of this fiasco; I had the impression that the entire stone and steel edifice was about to topple. Later we learned that this was the Kaiser William Memorial Church that was left standing as a memorial to the damage caused by the bombing. An interesting first taste of Berlin, foreshadowing the focus of our remaining time in the city.

The next morning we had a delicious breakfast of croissants and pastries at a walk-up counter, then walked to the meeting place for a Berlin walking tour. Since Berlin is an overwhelming city, we decided it would be best to maximize our day by seeing the main sights through a tour. Our guide was an enthusiastic, young New Zealander, who was a 20th century historian (he was a great guide, the best of the excellent guides we had on our trip). I’ll copy the list of the sites we visited from the tour company website to document what we saw and then highlight the most interesting:

Brandenburg Gate
The Berlin Wall
Hitler's Bunker (stand above)
Site of Goebbels' bunker
The "Deathstrip"
Checkpoint Charlie
Nazi Air Ministry
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial)
Reichstag Dome (new home of the Bundestag)
Pariser Platz (and site of new American Embassy)
Museum Island and Pleasure Garden (Lustgarten)
Pergamon Museum
Bebelplatz, scene of the Nazi Bookburning
Potsdamer Platz
Site of SS and Gestapo HQs (Topography of Terror)
"Ghost Station"
Palace Square (Schlossplatz)
Unter den Linden
New Synagogue
Red Town Hall
Royal Armoury (Zeughaus)
Russian Embassy
War Memorial (Neue Wache)
TV Tower
Berlin Cathedral
Catholic Cathedral (St. Hedwigs)
Friedrichstrasse (1920s cabaret mile!)
Humboldt University
State Opera
Gendarmenmarkt
Royal Hunting Grounds (Tiergarten)

We passed by numerous cathedrals and museums with classically impressive architecture. Berlin is spending money it doesn’t have to rebuild the city as it was before the WWII bombings leveled the majority of the city. Many of the buildings stand again as copies of the originals. There are still several projects underway, including the resurrection of a massive palace that was originally replaced by a modern structure. Staggering under the debt load of this architectural spree, the city has adopted the slogan “Poor, but sexy”.

The Unter den Linden is a broad, tree-lined street that begins at the symbolic heart of Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate, stretches past the modern international embassies, the renowned Humboldt University (which claims 29 Nobel Prize winners and where Hegel, Einstein, Max Planck, Karl Marx, and Frederich Engels studied), to the Museum Island where several world class museums are huddled in classic buildings. Across from the Humboldt University we stopped at the Bebelplatz to see a memorial to a Nazi bookburning that took place here. The memorial was underground; we looked through a cloudy plexiglass window in the cobblestones into a dimly lit room, painted white with empty book shelves as the walls.

We heard many stories about the Berlin Wall. There are still sections of the wall standing, in one place the wall has been protected by a wire fence to prevent Berliners from destroying it. Where it has been torn down there are bricks in the pavement marking where the wall once was. There were a few versions of the wall. The first was a short strip of wire fence and barbed wire that the East Germans built to test the response of the US. There was no response, other than to celebrate that Communism was in such dire straits that they needed to build walls to keep their people from leaving. Within a day or so the building of a more substantial wall made of concrete and stone began. Almost immediately there was a mass exodus of people to West Berlin. The first casualty of the Berlin wall was a women jumping from an upper floor of a building located along the wall. The wall was built through densely populated areas and initially buildings were part of the wall. But people began jumping through windows on the first floor to escape. So the first floor windows were bricked up. People moved to the 2nd story and started jumping. So the 2nd story was bricked up. People moved to the 3rd story and continued jumping. It was from here that an older woman died from injuries sustained in a fall from the 3rd story. Eventually the upper story windows were sealed as well.

One of the metro stops we passed was called the “Ghost Station” during the Cold War. When the wall divided the city the metro lines were also divided into East and West trains, but there were a few trains in the West that passed by stations in the East. The trains did not stop at these since no one was allowed to exit by the heavily armed guards standing watch, but the trains had to slow down for safety reasons while passing. The West Berliners could look through the windows at these Ghost Stations occupied only by guards.

Hitler’s bunker still exists in Berlin, despite numerous attempts to blow it up with explosives. To prevent Neo-Nazis from using the site as a place of honor the bunker has been closed off and visitors can only stand above it and read a small sign indicating the significance of the location. There was not even a sign until the soccer World Cup was in Germany a few years ago and the tourism office bowed to requests from the numerous visitors to identify the place. The bunker was fed by extensive tunnels leading to the ugly, blocky, gray Nazi administrative buildings.

One comment as an interlude to the heavy history, the crosswalk signs in Berlin are of tourist interest in their own right. They use little Dutchman to indicate walk and don’t walk: a briskly stepping green man in a Dutch hat with hand raised to indicate “walk” and a one-legged red man in a Dutch hat with hands extended straight out to indicate “don’t walk”. These are quite amusing and popular; there is various paraphernalia available, including actual replicas of the crosswalk sign.

We also passed by a tour company that gives tours in the infamous Trabant, the East German creation that resembles a car. I believe the Trabant is actually worth less than the sum of its parts and is a strong competitor for the worst transportation vehicle ever imagined. I will quote from a Time website which says it better than I can (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658533_1658030,00.html):
“This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness (actually, the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wood). A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle — a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. But history has been kind to the Trabi. Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell, which made it a kind of automotive liberator. Once across the border, the none-too-sentimental Ostdeutschlanders immediately abandoned their cars. Ich bin Junk!”

Our tour passed through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, an intriguing, thought-provoking monument of square pillars of varying heights aligned in long rows in a large square area. The pillars were shorter at the outside and as you walked toward the center they gradually became taller until you could see only the sky above, the path in front, and periodically the side paths to your right and left. The feeling was one of disorientation and uncertainty, which was relieved as you progress towards the opposite side and reached the blocks shorter than you. I enjoy the interactive monuments and this was abstraction at its best; a creative use of art to simulate the confusion and helplessness of the Jews during this period.

After the tour ended, we walked to a memorial to the Berlin wall where you can still see the wall as it looked during the Cold War. The wall was actually two walls, one on the East, one on the West, with a “dead-zone in between wide enough to allow time for the guards to shoot runners or dogs to chase down border crossers. We peered through a slit in the wall into the dead-zone and climbed a tower to look down into this area.

From there, we returned to Checkpoint Charlie, which we had briefly visited on our walking tour. The museum at Checkpoint Charlie was a moving tribute to how far man will go to achieve freedom. There is still a large, white sign, with black, block letters stating that “YOU ARE ENTERING THE AMERICAN SECTOR” in English, German, and French. Checkpoint Charlie was the 3rd checkpoint between East & West (Checkpoint C after Alpha, Bravo, Charlie). The museum opened while the hostilities of the Cold War were at their height as a showcase for the elaborate schemes that were used to escape East Berlin. Located in full view of the wall, anyone could enter and see descriptions of tunnel digging, balloon flying, and hidden compartments in vehicles. Some of the most intriguing included a guy who invented a board with propellers attached that he held onto while it dragged him through the North Sea to Denmark. Upon arriving in Denmark he patented the invention, which is now used by the Marines in amphibious exercises. Another guy built an airplane on his kitchen table. He took a car engine, attached a body and foldable wings on the table. Then carried it outside to where he had enough room to take off and flew just far enough to cross the border.

Our day finished with a visit to the Reichstag building, a classically styled building with a modern dome above the rooms where the German parliament meets. Entrance is free, and after a short wait we were whisked by elevator to explore the dome accompanied by a modern audio guide that automatically described what we were seeing by sensing our location as we climbed the dome. As in Munich, government transparency is a theme of the dome. Visitors can look down through the opening into the room where the legislators debate. The glass dome is an exceptional example of attractive styling combined with functional features. The center of the dome is open to the air, and acts as a natural ventilator for the building. Mirrors arrayed on a central funnel direct sunlight down into the building. The pathways of the dome are creatively aligned to direct rain away from the rooms below. We had a great view of the city, including the massive Tiergarten (a large park) and the Frank Gehry designed DZ Bank building. Viewed from above, the glass and steel roof of the Gehry building looks like the tail of a whale rising above the sea. Earlier we had stepped inside the building to see the massive titanium sculpture “whale” that shields a conference room beneath. Gehry also designed the Astaire and Rogers Dancing House in Prague.

Our condensed visit to Berlin ended the next morning. We had seen the highlights, but Berlin is definitely deserving of an extended stay.