Berlin - Gut, Schlechtes & Schokolade***

Last weekend was a three day Bank Holiday weekend here in England and Snake had been bugging us to go to Berlin for some time so off we went. We lucked out and the weather was extremely warm. In fact, we were unprepared completely for the weather to be warm - no sunscreen, mostly long sleeved tops, jeans etc. It was nice problem to have.

Berlin is a surprisingly interesting city. It is not as quaint as some of the other European cities we have visited, it doesn't have any of that old city charm. Mostly because quite a bit of it was bombed flat or burned during WWII. So quite a few of the buildings are a bit more modern than we are used to or if they "look" old, really they are restored or remodeled to look old. It also seemed sort of empty, the streets aren't full or bustling. There is history all over the city and it was fascinating getting a first hand look at it.

Our hotel was very close to Checkpoint Charlie, so that was our first stop.
Checkpoint Charlie was a crossing point between East and West Berlin, when the Berlin wall was still in place. There were other crossing points but this was the one assigned to foreigners and military personnel. There is an interesting display nearby on the fences, detailing the history of the Berlin wall and of the checkpoint. This hut is a replica, the actual hut is in a museum nearby. This one makes a nice photo op for the tourists, as do the "soldiers" standing in front. The uniforms are not really authentic and they appeared to this military brat to be a weird combo of US military and policeman. I think the other uniform is supposed to be Russian but I was a little unsure. The soldiers have a friend nearby who for a small fee will stamp your passport with "authentic" Checkpoint Charlie passport stamps. Kiki was all for it and had it stamped in her passport. Snake looked at it scornfully and told me he didn't want any "unofficial" stamps in his passport. But he was happy to take a paper with the stamps on it. For my sake.

After Checkpoint Charlie we wandered over to the Brandenberg Gate. This is the last gate in a series of gate through which one would enter Berlin. It was built in the late 1700s and has been the scene of many historic events over the past few centuries! It was the scene of the famous Reagan speech when he implored "Come here to this gate. Mr Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" There was a big bike race the day we were there and the grounds around the gate had a little festival so we wandered through there a bit. As usual with any kind of race, there were lots of sponsors handing out free goodies. Snake picked up a noise maker that much to Kiki's dismay was used successfully throughout the weekend to annoy and irritate her. The gate opens onto Pariser Platz, which is surrounded by a few embassies (the U.S. embassy is there, the modern monstrosity that it is) and some cafes and shops. We stopped and had some German sausage & beer and watched the world go by. And when the world was going by, so did these guys wearing weird white masks and operating this puppet kind of thing. Each person operated one limb or section of the body. I am not quite sure why, I guess it is some kind of performance art. Performance art is lost on me, much in the same way modern art is lost on me. I am not smart enough.

The next morning we headed over to the Reichstag, which is the German parliament building. It was the seat of the German government from 1894 until 1933 when it was set fire supposedly by a communist who was tried, convicted and executed for the crime. But he was most likely framed by the Nazi party, who used the "crime" as an excuse to suspend human rights in Germany. The government met elsewhere for a while and the building was further damaged by bombing in WWII. The building was restored in the 1960s but by that time Berlin was a divided city and the Bundestag, the German parliament, had been meeting in Bonn for quite a few years. After German Unification in 1991, the Bundestag voted and returned to the Reichstag. We went to the top and you get a beautiful view of the city.



So the Berlin wall. . . For something that dominated a city for so long and being pretty much the symbol of the city, it is really hard to find the Berlin Wall. Most of it has been torn down but there are remnants you can you go to, if you have the patience. We had heard that there was a pretty good size section still remaining in another area of Berlin that is not really near all of the historical sites. So we took a train over, transferred and found it. It was pretty amazing and it really does give you a good idea of what it must have been like to have this wall, just surrounding and dividing
the area. It is not as big or tall as I would have thought but something about seeing it fills you with a sadness or despair. It was really easy to imagine how demoralizing that wall must of been to citizens on both sides. The remnants are all brightly painted with murals. I am not sure how organized the mural painting is, if there is someone in charge who assigns panels. We spent quite a bit of time wandering past the panels, looking at the art work, reading some of the graffiti. I took a few pictures.









I think this is my favorite scene. I think it looks like souls escaping through an opening on the wall. I think it is haunting.



A view of the wall from across the street.


When viewing the wall, it is easy to forget that quite a few people risked and lost their lives trying to get to the other side. I wondered how someone could possibly monitor every square inch of the wall, why wasn't it easy to slip across. In actuality, many more
people were able to cross the wall then got caught. Supposedly there were over 5000 successful escapes and only 200 or so unsuccessful. But you paid with your life. East German border guards were encouraged to use their firearms even if the escapees were women and children. Near the Reichstag, we saw an exhibit of crosses that represented some of the people died trying to cross the wall. The last death was in February 1989, just a little over six months later the wall would come down.

We also visited a local concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. Not necessarily a "fun" activity, but I think a useful and educational one. This entrance gate has a slogan which was included in the gates at many concentration camps. Translation: Work will set you free. Hmmmm. Sachsenhausen was not an extermination camp per se meaning that it was not used for the "routine" extermination of Jews, but it was a death camp all the same. It is believed that over 30,000 people were executed there for a variety of "crimes", mostly political in nature. Several thousand prisoners of war, mostly Russian, including Joseph Stalin's son, were executed here. This camp was a training center for the SS officers who would later be sent to run and serve at other camps. The conditions at the camp were deplorable and prisoners were used as laborers in local SS factories. Over 100,000 Jews died there of "natural causes" which included exposure, malnutrition, disease, pneumonia, tuberculosis etc. Their bodies were then cremated and dumped into mass graves. During some restoration work recently, they found another mass grave filled with ashes. The mass graves are marked by low cement benches. Tourists coming to the site mark these benches with stones which I think is a Jewish tradition to show that the dead are not forgotten, sort of a remembrance tribute. It was humbling to be in this place. Where so many truly innocent people lost their lives at the hands of their neighbors. It is a dark period, not just in Germany's history but in world history. We would like to think that it wouldn't have happened in our country, but I just don't know. It is important to remember these types of horrible events and to be uncomfortable and sad. So hopefully we will learn something.

Kiki has developed
a real love of European chocolate (thanks Chizz!) and loves to try the local chocolate when we go into town. So she quickly located Fassbender & Rausch. The store was huge. Truthfully, while Snake will indulge every now and then, chocolate is really not his thing. So he and I spent some time looking around and came across these chocolate sculptures in the shop. The detail is pretty spectacular. This is the Reichstag, all in chocolate. And the boat, the Titanic. It is pretty realistic. Perhaps that is what happened to the original ship. I think a chocolate ocean liner would go down pretty quick if it ran into an iceberg. Just a thought.

Okay so Snake pointed out something pretty interesting while we were there. He noticed that Hitler's name was very rarely mentioned at any of the historical monuments we visited. Most of the literature and the exhibits mention the SS, the Nazis, the 3rd Reich, Himmler, and Goebbels etc. quite prominently. But unless absolutely necessary to whatever the event being described, you don't see Hitler's name in print. We wondered if that was in conscious effort or if it was just the by product of a country trying to move past a very horrible part of its past. After he pointed it out, I made an issue of trying to see if his observation was accurate and he was right.

Our last night we had a great dinner at a very old pub, Zur Ietzten Instanz. It claims to be the oldest built in 1621 and I don't think I can argue that. It seemed very old German, dark paneling, small rooms. We had some typical German food and of course a beer or two or four.

We enjoyed Germany in a different way then we have other trips. It wasn't a slap your knee, guffawing type of a good time. But it was good learning about the city and its history, all of it -- even the distasteful parts. And we brought home some great chocolate which sweetened our memories.









****Berlin - Good, Bad & Chocolate