Benelux-Germany Trip Series: Berlin (Part 3)

Hi again,

I don’t even know where to begin. We spent 4 days in Berlin doing as much as possible while we were there. In such a historical city with such a high importance in the 20^th century, you have to divide and conquer; something we tried to do.

I guess I can start with the train ride to Berlin. We left Brussels around 10 PM, and for the first time, I was to experience a sleeper car. 6 tiny beds compacted into a small room made for an interesting night of sleep. I kept feeling the stopping and starting of the train throughout the night. I almost fell out of my bed a few times too.

We arrived at the train station at 4:30 AM. Yes, I said 4:30 AM. Not really the time of day I like starting at, but I really had no choice. I changed clothes and tried to wake up, but nothing was even open for breakfast yet. After waiting in the train station for several hours, Zach and I ventured out to the Reichstag, Tierpark, Victory Column and Embassy row. 

Reichstag at 8 AM

Siegessaüle (Victory Column)

Egyptian Embassy (During the protests and revolution)

We walked through the part of the southern area of the main city for a while. We found the residency of the German president, as well as the building in which Operation Valkyrie, an assassination attempt on Hitler and coup on the National Socialists, was planned.

There was a memorial to the people involved in the plot as well as a museum of Nazi Resistance with artifacts and records of the plots. The main conspirator, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who was portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 2008 film, Valkyrie, and his co-conspirators were actually executed in the courtyard of the building. The exhibit was quite cool, but artifacts were all in German, a little tough for non-speakers and myself.

"Here died for Germany on July 20th, 1944...." at the planning site of Operation Valkyrie

We grabbed a quick bite to eat near the Jewish Museum. It is grandiose and huge and modern and abstract. I really liked the bottom floor. It was very stunning. The upstairs portion was well designed too, but even to a Jew, it was too much to take in.

Around 3 PM, we went in search for a bar or restaurant to watch FC Bayern and other German soccer matches. The place we saw first and decided to go to was a Turkish place, in which we were the only two white people there. It was very smoky, but sufficed. Everything was great until Bayern decided to blow a 2-0 lead and lost to Cologne 3-2.

That was pretty much our Saturday. Not sure if I explained this before, but our best friends on the trip were the lockers at the train stations. For 5 Euros a day, we could leave our things safe until check in time at our hostel. Generally, we would go get our stuff late in the day and check in at night, making the lockers invaluable to us.

We got our stuff from the Hauptbahnhof, made it to the hostel in the rain and got some delicious Italian food. That was just the first day…

We woke up early and determined to accomplish a lot because of our time wasted during the day before watching soccer. However, we didn’t seem to get as much done on Sunday, as we had wanted to.

We went to Museemsinsel (Museum Island) to go to 3 of the 5 museums there. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to fit in one of those because we also visited the German History museum. We would have to save the Pergamon museum for Tuesday because museums are closed on Mondays.

At the history museum, we went through the Hitler exhibit, something that used to be completely taboo for Germans. I would say it was very well done and very thought provoking. The Neues museum, filled with Egyptian artifacts, was also really cool. I’m not a huge fan of ancient history, but it was still nice to see. The third museum we saw was the Old National Gallery, which was very cool.

German History Museum

Zach’s favorite artist, Caspar David Friedrich, was featured in a hall there, so we had to see it. We saw some realism and impressionism galleries. I was glad to spend a rainy day indoors seeing great works of art.

Our plans of doing anything else productive were shot. Liverpool FC was to play Chelsea in a very important match. We went to an Irish pub and barely found a table. We were there from 4-6 and ate a really early dinner consisting of potato wedges and nachos (not really the best thing). There was something else going on at the bar that night. I am trying to remember what it was…oh yeah, THE SUPER BOWL!!! No big deal

Hours later, we walked back to the pub to try to get a table. Again, it was already pretty crowded (11:30 PM for a 12:30 start) and we ended up in the same spot as earlier in the day. We met some other Americans there, one kid from Stanford and one from Ohio State.

Because of where my seat was, I actually ended up spending more time talking to some of the people we met, including this German girl that Zach and I would later have conflicting opinions on. (He thought she was a bitch, I thought she was funny) All in all, the game was good and I had a fun time meeting people. Since the game started at 12:30 and it is the super bowl, we ended up leaving the pub around 4:30 AM. It wasn’t a huge deal, but we decided to sleep in the next day.

Everyday along the trip, we were constantly waking up before 7 AM in order to maximize daylight. So we “slept in” on Monday like I said, but only until 9:30. It turned out to be one of the best days on the trip.

We decided to first go to Checkpoint Charlie and the Topographie des Terrors. The Checkpoint Charlie museum costs 9.50 Euros, so we did the free open-air exhibit. The Topographie des Terrors hosts parts of the Berlin Wall and was on the exact street as the SS administrative buildings. The foundations remained with small plaques explaining which SS building had been there.

Checkpoint Charlie (albeit a reconstructed version)

Where the Berlin Wall stood (near Checkpoint Charlie)

Topography of Terror
(The wall in the middle is the Berlin Wall and underneath is where the SS headquarters were)

From there it’s just a short walk over to Potsdamer Platz. Once a part of desolate East Germany, it now has some of the country’s most modern buildings and stores. The Canadian embassy happened to be right there too for Zach’s edification.

Potsdamer Platz

As we headed north, we went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It is a bunch of granite slabs of different heights. Rant: The design is cool, but if you don’t go to the exhibit underneath, which was closed when we went by, you don’t really get the whole message. It turns into a playground for kids and even their parents. Games of hide and go seek can be fun, but this isn’t particularly the most appropriate venue. End of Rant Take a look for yourself!

Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe

US Embassy

We moved on to the Brandenburger Tor and Pariser Platz, which is absolutely incredible and an icon of Cold War and present Germany. We walked from that point all along Unter den Linden (Under the linden trees) seeing the amazing sights and historical buildings. The sun was out for maybe the second time all trip, and the weather was nice. I’m including tons of pictures all along the street. So many historically significant landmarks are along the street that I will only describe them in the annotations of the pictures.

Pariser Platz (Former No Man's Land during Cold War)

Hook 'em Horns at the Brandenburger Tor

Neue Wache (Outside)

Neue Wache (Inside)

Bebelplatz
(Site of the first Nazi book burnings and located directly at Humboldt University)

Humboldt University (Founded in 1810)

St. Hedwig's Cathedral (AKA The Upside Down Teacup)

Gendarmenmarkt
Französische Dom on the left (French Cathedral)
Deutscher Dom on the right (German Cathedral)
Not pictured: Konzerthaus in the middle (Concert House)

Reichstag made of Chocolate
Fassbender & Rausch Chocolatiers

Berliner Dom (Left) and Fernseher Turm (Right)
(Berlin Cathedral on the Left and TV Tower on the Right)
I did a little bit of photo editing to make this look really cool

It really was an incredible day. After walking around pretty much all day, we went to the DDR Museum. They had so many different nostalgic items from East Germany that you could touch, play with and watch. At times, I felt the museum was a little too juvenile, but for 4 Euros (student price), it was well worth it.

Next was the Rotes Rathaus (Red City hall), Nikolaiviertel (Nicholas Quarter), a part of the old city and the Fernseher Turm (Television Tower) at Alexanderplatz. Let’s just say I appreciated knowing where Alexanderplatz was later on in the night, when I would get lost by myself.

Rotes Rathaus
(Red City Hall)

Alexanderplatz at the base of the TV Tower

Central Time Zone on the World Clock

Central European Time Zone on the World Clock

The look from the top isn’t nearly as cool as the TV tower in Munich because you aren’t outside up there. You are stuck behind windows, which unfortunately have glare at night.

On the way back to Hackescher Markt, where our hostel was, I saw something fall onto the ground. I ran over and saw it was two passports. I ran after the guy I thought they belonged too. He boarded a Straßenbahn (street car) and I got on as well.

I catch up to him and it turns out, they don’t belong to him….what now?

The passports were of the same guy, but one was Israeli and the other Hungarian, as well as an Israeli drivers license. I got off the Straßenbahn at the first stop I was able to. It wasn’t too far away from our hostel and I recognized a few buildings so I walked a familiar way, or so I thought.

I kept going for a while, expecting to run into other familiar buildings; however, I straight up walked all the way to Alexanderplatz. Knowing this is just east of Hackescher Markt, I followed the train path back to our place. Zach had done the right thing in going straight to the hostel and using the phone to call me. We had a plan in place just in case.

We decided not to worry about the passports for now and went to sleep. We would deal with it in the morning and we still had plenty of things to do.

We called Tuesday our “miscellaneous catch-up day.” Since we didn’t have anything formally planned for the day, we spent it doing (almost) everything that we had forgotten or skipped in the day’s prior.

First thing to catch up on was the Reichstag. We had only seen it briefly the first day on the way to the Tierpark. Unfortunately, the dome was closed, so it was impossible to go in without an actual arranged group. I took some really good pictures to make up for it.

Reichstag

Reichstag in full

Our next plan was to see some less modern Jewish parts of the town. We travelled a little bit north of Hackescher Markt to the new synagogue. With its large dome, the new synagogue also boasts a museum of artifacts from before the war and an exhibit about the reconstruction of the building. We went up in the dome, but weren’t allowed to take pictures.

New Synagogue

In the area around the synagogue is the Jewish cemetery, which used to be a school for Jewish boys in the 1800s, but was turned into a holding facility for the Jews of Berlin before being transported to concentration camps. That building was eventually destroyed and the cemetery was formed. Not many of the headstones still remain, but the main purveyor of Jewish life in Berlin before World War II, Moses Mendelsohn’s grave is found there.

Grave of Moses Mendelsohn

In the same area of town is the house of Bertold Brecht, a famous communist writer during the early stages of East Germany’s existence. Before World War II, Brecht fled Germany because he was a dissident of Hitler’s and feared he would be held prisoner. He finally settled in Los Angeles. Interestingly enough, one of the funniest things to watch is his testimony during the McCarthy Trials in the early 50s. With his German accent, he remains adamant that he is not a communist. When socialist East Germany was formed, Brecht moved back to Berlin and began writing more and working at a nearby theater that he opened with his wife.

The Brecht house is one of the coolest places in Berlin because of the magnificent condition that has been kept. Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel lived separated on different floors of the apartment. They fought terribly, but never got divorced. After his death, Weigel kept everything on his floor exactly how he had it.

The same furniture that Brecht kept while he lived there for 3 years had been maintained. His widow even paid for all his books and works to be scanned and archived. For a wife that didn’t get along much with her husband, she seems to understand the importance of his work. She died in the 80s and since then, the house has been a museum and archive of Bertold Brecht’s life.

Just outside of the house is a cemetery, in which Bertold Brecht is buried. He always said that enjoyed looking out his window and seeing a cemetery. It was comforting for him. Unfortunately he died at a relatively young age (56), but they didn’t have to take the body very far.

Grave of Bertold Brecht and Helene Weigel
They are buried just yards from their house

After this great exhibition, we headed back to the Unter den Linden to the Neptune fountain and location of the destroyed former city castle on our way to the Pergamon museum.

Neptunbrunnen (Neptune Fountain)

The Pergamon is an incredible museum with reconstructed walls and columns of the ancient city/fortress of Pergamon. I was walking around inside when I happened to run into the same people we watched the super bowl with. Zach and I had split up at the museum to do our own thing, and it turned into me talking to these two girls instead of really seeing much there. I think I got the gist of the place.

Part of the Great Altar of Pergamon

From the museum island, we decided to hand deliver the passports (yes, those passports) to the Israeli embassy. While we had seen many an embassy in Berlin, the Israelis like to keep a low profile in the city. Their embassy is miles away from the main area of town. We took the U-Bahn and tried to find it from there.

However, we got slightly confused by the names of the train stations and ended up not very close to the embassy. We were going to try to walk it and get there before 5 to hand the passports in. It was a lot further than we thought, so we luckily grabbed a cab and he took us there. Once at the embassy, the guards outside said they couldn’t take the passports from us… which was disappointing.

We hopped on a bus which took us to a U-bahn to one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, KaDeWe. Kaufland des Westens is a signature of Berlin boasting 380,000 different items within 7 floors, the first 5 of which are clothing. The 6^th is the most amazing selection of food items that exists in the world today. The best part of which was THE AMERICAN SECTION!!!!

KaDeWe (Kaufland des Westens)

Just as we were about to leave, I see a display with tons of items imported from the US. Being in Germany for 5 months makes you susceptible to missing certain food items. I got my Reece’s peanut butter cup, Hawaiian punch and buttered popcorn fix satisfied. Other products there include JIF peanut butter, Smucker’s Grape jelly and some Canadian beer brand that Zach got upset seeing in the “American section.” I would have purchased every last thing there had it not cost a fortune.

(I also got to go to the Berlin flagship Adidas store. Blew my mind)

We went back and caught the sleeper train to Munich. In the next blog post, the number 220 will be significant. But until then, thank you for putting up with my long rambling post about Berlin. It may have been the most writing I have ever done in my life (Just kidding Adam’s former English teachers if you are reading this and have not yet had a coronary from all the grammar mistakes). I will certainly have to go back because you can’t do everything in 4 days.

Adam