My trip to Berlin was a real eye opener and Bettina and I spent the better part of 8 hours a day cruising around looking at all the buildings, parks, museums and shops that we could squash in. We stayed with Bettina‘s sister Urs and husband Peter. Their appartment is very central and has several underground rail links within a block or two. The Berlin underground rail or U-Bahn as it is called is once again a model of efficiency and just so very fast. I think that the longest wait we had for any train was 3 minutes. As Peter and Urs where both taking time off from work to stay home and do renovations, we were able to make use of their monthly rail passes to get around the city. A big saving in itself.
We were very lucky with the weather and despite some days being quite cool we saw very little rain which enabled us to do some very long walks across the city and parks. I won’t elaborate in too great a detail on all of our outings but we covered all the main tourist bits such as The Reichstag, Brandenburg Tor, Berlin Dome, Checkpoint Charlie, Technical Museum, Jewish Museum, Potzdamer Platz and Ka De We shopping centre (the Harrods of Germany).
I would have to say that the first thing that really strikes you about Berlin is the fabulous modern architecture. Some of the new complexes such as Potzdamer Platz are so 21st century that the architecture leaves you feeling like you have stepped onto another planet. Way, way cool ! We took an elevator up to the 36th floor of one building to have a walk on the viewing platform. The elevator took 8 seconds to go from ground to roof, fastest in Europe, no sense of stomach falling only minor pressure change in the inner ear. So quiet, so smooth, so quick.
The whole Berlin skyline is a mass of cranes which are not only working on new constructions but are in use as they renovate old churches, public monuments and buildings. The rebuilding of east Germany since the wall came down in 1989 has been constant as the soviet government had let it go to pot so badly. They have been getting rid of the tawdry public housing estates and run down old office buildings and basically rebuilding it section by section. It was quite staggering to see the difference between the two halves of the city. The west with all its wealth and power and the east, after 45 years of communist rule, grimly displaying its post war legacy of cardboard and string public housing architecture mixed with the few remnants of its former glory, retained soley by a handful of mosques and townhalls.
I was not aware till going to Berlin that it was in fact an island city having being cast adrift by geopolitical boundaries. The western alliance comprising of the U.S., France and Britain cut a deal with Russia that in return for the western half of the city the Russians could have a huge swag of surrounding countryside. The Russians gave up half of Berlin but in effect the territory that the alliance had relinquished effectively saw West Berlin completely cut off from the rest of Germany. All of the surrounding land was now under Russian control. From the border of East / West Berlin heading east it is approx 100 km to Czechoslovakia and going in the opposite direction to the West meant crossing 200km of Russian territory to reach the rest of Germany. The Russians attempted to blockade the western half of the city in the early fifties to stop the flood of money and goods from the east to the west. They threw up barricades around the entire perimeter of West Berlin with the intention of collapsing the financial infrastructure within. The west Berlin people opened an airbridge with the help of the western alliance and for 16 months all food and commercial goods were flown into and out of Berlin from Frankfurt and Hamburg. When the Russians saw that the blockade was ineffective they changed their tactics and built the wall to give them better control over the flow of people, goods and cash. So began the cold war and the very famous ``Checkpoint Charlie´´ in Freidrich Strasse.
The new Jewish Museum which has only just been opened, is a real eye popper, as the skin of the triple building complex has been covered in stainless steel and has angular, vertical and horizontal lines and triangular shape cutting at random across the walls, these lines and shapes are in fact the windows. Really spacey. The museum is a brilliant work of modern architecture. It is also an intelligent, well thought out and unbiased display depicting over 2,000 years of German Jewish history.
You can have a look for yourself by clicking on this link http://www.jmberlin.de/ .
The way that they handled the period of the holocaust was also very tactful. The area relegated to this period had huge vertical spaces above the displays which gave one a sense of air and room to breath. There were no pictures of concentration camps, mass graves or Nazi troops. They kept the depictions simple yet emotionally moving. Lots of small windows with photos of people, a brief history of their life, letters written to loved ones or diary notes they had made after being taken prisoner. In most cases a small card was at the bottom of the casement saying that they were then taken to Dachau or Auschwitz etc. where they were murdered. One of the larger vertical space halls was the Hall of Contemplation which ran some 30 meters long. The entire floor was covered in hundreds of symbolic faces cut from individual pieces of inch thick steel plate with an oxy-acetylene torch. It is a very quite area and the only thing you can hear is the clanking of the steel faces as they shift under your feet when you walk the length of the room. Another surprise was that one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and business men of all time, a man named Moses Mendelsshon, was in fact the father of the reknowned composer. It was well worth the 10DM entry fee even if the effect of a very somber yet enlightening experience left one feeling in a deeply contemplative mood.
The Reichstag was another of those amazing buildings which despite near total destruction in WW` has been rebuilt with the addition of a fabulous new dome on the roof. The centre column of the dome is a octagonal pillar which flutes out towards the top and is covered in hundreds of mirrored panels. Circling around the interior wall of the dome is a spiral ramp that wends it way to the top observation area. It then returns down again with the descending ramp interleaved with ascending ramp so as the foot traffic is all one way both up and down. Great views of the entire city skyline and a great liitle coffee shop for that much needed caffiene boost after queing for over an hour to get in. Security not only at the Reichstag but at all museums and public buildings etc. have metal screening and bag checks like the airports. All very labour intensive and it slows crowd movement to an absolute crawl through admission areas. Still most things are worth the wait. The best links to most of the pictures in and around Berlin if you want a Captain Cook are
http://www.berlin.de/home/English/VisitorsGuide
as well as
http://www.photomann.com/europe/berlin.htm
The security issue which is forever in your face at the moment was never more obvious than at the British Consulate, American Consulate and jewish mosques. The buildings were surrounded outside with razor wire barricades, machine gun toting police and armoured troop carriers with mounted water cannon and machine gun on top. I guess people there are used to them but it still makes my skin crawl just to walk within 10 feet of these dudes. It makes our police and there 9mm Glock side arms look like characters from Sesame Street.
The street flea markets were also really interesting as just about every imaginable item that could be smuggled out off Russia on the black market was available. Not just a lot of militaria such as full fighter pilot suits and helmets but also really ornate building fittings and Russian Orthodox religious icons. Some of these had quite high price tags. More akin to Southerby’s than a street market. One guy that I spoke to assured me that anything, but anything was available given a weeks notice and the right amount of folding stuff. Most of the traders seem to be either Czechoslovakian or Hungarian and I imagine that they feel vindicated in selling off their prime enemies national religious treasures and surplus military hardware. `` Pssst......I’m not Russian, I justa wanna kweek sale´´
All over Berlin they have huge fibreglass bears ( about the same size as real polar bears ) either walking on all fours, standing or doing headstands. Each one is painted with different art work or messages and some are just down right hillarious. Outside the Credit Suisse bank for instance there is one that is canary yellow and has holes all over it like swiss cheese and beside it another painted in red and white checks has an apple on its head with an arrow through it symbolising the William Tell bit. Outside the art gallery there is one covered in Piccasso style images. Or near the Unifiction sculpture there is an all white one in a walking stance coming nose to nose with an all black one. A really nicely thought out application of a city wide arts project. Hundreds of artists from all over the country have given up their time to painting them.
There are a huge number of parks and playgrounds every where you walk and at first I was really impressed that the government had enough vision to see the needs of the city as it expanded into the 21st century. Peter explained that yes, there were hundreds of parks and playgrounds through out the high density housing areas, sadly that no, it had nothing to do with bureaucratic forethought and that they were in fact locally refered to as, ``Bomb Gaps´´,and were simply the areas blown up and never rebuilt after the war. They are fairly easy to spot as the walls of the housing blocks on either side are invariably blank without windows. They have smply removed the demolished sections and bricked up the ends to strengthen them. Without a doubt, the myriad parks and playgrounds make a truly wonderful legacy for the people of Berlin. Maybe some clouds do have silver linings after all.
Berlin is surrounded and dissected by a maze of rivers, canals and lakes. Some of the larger lakes are far bigger than Sydney Harbour and the water way system reaches out all the way to Hamburg on the north west coast. A great deal of cargo and construction materials are transported throughout the district on massive barges that are pushed from behind by regular size tug boats. As one would expect there is a huge yachting community as well as the fleets of luxury motor yachts.
We visited one of the islands situated at the western end of the main lake, The Wennsee. Known as Pfaueninsel Naturschutzgebeit (Peacock Nature Reserve) the island has a castle, manor house and small chapel which were all built by Friedrich Wilhem ` for his mistress Wilhelmine Enke as a Summer retreat. The castle is distinctly odd in that it consists of two circular towers of about 6 floors each set apart by some 15 meters with an arched bridge, containing two floors of rooms, connecting the two turrets. The gardens are beautifully presented and as the name suggests our feathered friends were dotted around most of the parklands with their kaleidescopic plumage bristling. It is about a four kilometre walk on the track circumnavigating the grounds with marvelous views across the water, which on this particular day was just a mass of colourful sails as various sailing clubs competed in what would probably be one of the last races of the season. The majestic water front homes and private moorings across on the mainland have ``We’re alright Jack´´ stamped all over them. Berlin and big money really do go hand in hand.
After catching the ferry back to the mainland we walked around the edge of the lake to the lovely little church built by Freidrich I in the period just prior to those built by his son on the island. It is set high up the cliff with commanding views for miles to the east. On this particular day the carillon in the belfy was in full swing and you could only imagine how far the peeling chimes must have carried across the waters to the surrounding country. A really great outing with the only downside being the very cool weather of mid-Autumn and the stirring breeze emanating from the Nordic north.
Taking about Berlin and big money was never more evident than visting the Ka De We department store. Each of the shop windows were filled with a different replica crown from various germanic monarchs throughout the ages along with an item which could be purchased within. ``Wow, check out that crown. It must have cost the guy a fortune in chiropractic bills to wear that one. Oh and look, a beautiful silver tea pot at only 22,500 DM (take off 10% to get the Australian equivilant), wouldn’t it make for a grand cuppa char.´´ There were dresses in the windows at 30,000 DM which I guess are for when you have the neighbours round for a cuppa on Sunday arvo. Like Harrods of London, it is store with everything from the ludicrously expensive knick knacks through to a food hall that was enough to make a grown man cry. Someone pass me the kleenex please! I was impressed with the number of janitors working throughout the food hall although I suspect that their main vocation in life was simply to trail around after visitors like me mopping up the drool. They had vegemite at 12 DM for the small size jar and although I was sorely tempted to purchase one, I would never have been able to raise a large enough bank loan for the toast to go with it. It leaves one to wonder, who are these people that have 670 DM to purchase a whole Scottish salmon and just how can I get to meet them. One thought springs to mind, ``Excuse me I seem to have forgotten my phone number, can I have yours ?´´ Well hell it normally works in the local pub !
One of the other oddities that we came across was an initiative by Deutsches Post called Love Letters Building. They have wrapped the entire outside structure of a 4 storey corner building in the downtown area with some 35,000 poster size individual love letters. People were encouraged to write into the post office from all over Germany as part of the Unification Celebration. Inside there are a further 115,000 letters that you can sift through and read. There is a large room set aside with lounge seats where you are encouraged to sit a write your own folorn masterpiece.
I asked my partmner if we could stage a stand up, full blown, domestic barney outside the door as our contribution to artistic difference. You know the sort of thing, pottery in motion. Although the idea amused her, it was one arts project that was never going to get funding. In another room they had small upright posts with speakers fixed in the top and when you stood close enough you could listen to people reading their letters. Some of the posts were dedicated to letters written between historically famous people such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine. Unfortunately, to my somewhat unsympathetic ear, I could find nothing remotely romantic about a bunch of lovestruck lemmings ratting on in a language as abrupt and gutteral as German. Still it was a nice project with world peace overtones and it would be good to see it copied elsewhere around the planet.
One other building that we visited and worthy of mention was the Berlin Dome. As one of the skylines most recognisable features it is the main catholic church in the city and situated on the banks of the Spree River next to the state museum. The interior as expected is circular with the vast vaulted dome ceiling rising above to a central window of stained glass with images of doves inlaid. The dome itself is a replacement with the original having been obliterated in 1945. Nice patch up job if I do say so. About one quarter of the first level gallery is dedicated to the organ and its pipes. The pipes are racked in eight seperate boxed tiers each comprising of some 50 pipes as near as I could count. There were about 15-20 individuals scattered about through the rows of pews and as we walked down the central isle the organ suddenly burst into life playing some sort of Wagnerian choral piece. Very black, very heavy, very sinister and enough bass to make any respectable home boy turn green with envy. For once in my life I had no urge to ask for the volume to be turned up. People, let me tell you, this organist had the pedal to the metal, it was deafening. Bettina and I could only look at each other and grin. Awesome stuff. It had a real phantom of the opera kind of atmosphere to it. The subsequent mental effect of etherealization was to put it mildly, mind numbing. We escaped from the musical barrage after some minutes down a staircase into the crypt below. ``Back to the crypt´´. Lying in state are the caskets of most of the former kings, queens and bishops of Germany. A lot of the caskets had been made from lead and the lids were buckling inwards with the effects of several centuries of gravity. Several were split at the seams and rendered apart from the very bombs that destroyed the dome. Wilhelm III looked as if he caught the brunt of it. Good thing he had his armour on. Quite a shame about the casket as the ornate sculptures adorning the outside really were beautiful in thier craftsmanship.
We did quite a few of the bars annd night spots and sampled a few of the locallly brewed pils. The Holzwurm (Woodworm) was my favourite closely followed by the Hell & Dunkel (Light and Dark) named as such because they are the only 2 styles of beer that they brew. Part 2 was nice little place but a bit wierd as the whole thing was based on some sort of tropicana theme and the floor was completely covered in several inches of fine white sand. Bit odd when it’s close to snow outside.
The trip up and back on the ICE express was really good. The backs of some seats have little tele screens like on some of the jets with movies and games etc. They have read out screens at both ends of the carriage that tell you time and distance to the next station as well as the final destination. They also read out the speed at which you are currently going. I never caught it over 255kph but even so that’s fairly motoring along. Superbly quiet and very comfortable. The lounge car was great as you could sit at the tables running lengthwise down the carriage and look out through big panoramic windows at the countryside blurring past.
