Berlin, Germany - Day 2

I was excited about exploring more of the city today and after a breakfast of cheese and crackers that I had brought back from the grocery store last night. I decided to walk around the city for a few hours before getting back on the tour bus. It's so cold here so I put on a few more layers so I was actually pretty warm most of the time.

I started my walk in my adorable neighborhood which is mostly residential and has an elevated subway train outside the hotel. There are so many great pre-war buildings with large high ceilings with tree-lined pedestrian streets and parks. It's great here and although most tourists don't stay in this area I'm told it's fabulous for anyone who likes to see how the locals live and still be close to all the tourist attractions.

On my walk I found this adorable painted bear sculpture outside one of those amazing apartment buildings. And as I looked at the plaque under it's base and realized it was a public art initiative and that there were many of them all decorated differently depending on who sponsored it. This bear stands in front of the famous German actor who died in 1960, Hans Albers' home here in Berlin.

I walked for about 2 and half hours past canals, over bridges and to a main center in town where the European Headquarters for Sony is as well as Daimlerchrysler's development of about 16 buildings including retail, residential and hotels. The Sony complex's center building has a large dome made from metal and fabric and is shaped like the Japanese volcano, Mt. Fuji and at night it lights up and when I saw it later in the evening while on the tour bus it really did look like a volcano except brightly lit in a happy purple hue.

More public art in the form of a giraffe made out of Lego's, I just love it.

I made my way to the Potsdamer Platz where it is said that the first traffic lights in Continental Europe were placed. There is a reproduction of that traffic light which you can see in my picture here it looks like a large metal five sided post with five clocks on each side and green, red and yellow lights at the very top. These lights still work with the flow of traffic controlled by the new traffic lights in the square. It's also very interesting that the Berliners have turned their new street light walk figures known as Ampelmannchen. They even have shops dedicated just to items like clothes, hats, bags, etc. dedicated solely to the two figures. I found the following online and now it makes sense why it's so important. You can also see them in the two pictures I took of the lights, one with the red man and one with the green man. " (Ampelmännchen (help·info) (German: little traffic light man, pl. Ampelmännchen) is the symbolic person shown on traffic lights at pedestrian crossings in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR - East Germany). Prior to the German reunification in 1990, the two German states had different forms for the Ampelmännchen, with a generic human figure in West Germany, and a generally male figure wearing a hat in the east. The Ampelmännchen is a beloved symbol in Eastern Germany, "enjoy[ing] the privileged status of being one of the few features of communist East Germany to have survived the end of the Iron Curtain with his popularity unscathed." After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Ampelmännchen acquired cult status and became a popular souvenir item in the tourism business."

I also found in interesting as you can see since I took a picture that they have a people who go around and wash off all of the traffic lights to keep everything moving smoothly. You've got to love the efficiency of the Germans.

Info on the interesting Potsdamer Platz - "Potsdamer Platz (German: [potsdamaː plats] ( listen), literally Potsdam Square) is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about one kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate. After developing within the space of little over a century from an intersection of rural thoroughfares into the most bustling traffic intersection in Europe, it was totally laid waste during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects."

I then walked to one of two locations where the Berlin Wall is still standing. They took down most of it in the early 1990's but this and a longer portion I saw a little later on the tour bus are still standing but all the barbed-wire that stood behind the wall has been removed. The wall, as you can see from my pictures, looks like it's been attacked and in a way it has and the Germans refer to all those tourists and I'm sure locals as well who came and chiseled off pieces as Mauerspechte" (wall woodpeckers.) You can read more about this and how the process of the wall coming down took place. "The Berlin wall, a forbidding barrier of concrete slabs, and barbed wire, once separated Berlin in 2 zones. east Germany and west Germany formed in to Berlin. the Berlin wall was opened in 1961 and knocked down in 1989. it took about 3 decades until the wall was torn down!!!!! Yes but it was torn down over a series of weeks.  Günter Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of announcing that the Berlin checkpoints were going to be opened for people to travel. This was meant to start the next day but Schabowski got it wrong and told the press conference that it was effective immediately. This resulted in thousands of East Berliners rushing to the six checkpoints to get out. The guards didn't know what to do and didn't want to use lethal force so they let them. After crossing through many West Berliners jumped on top of the wall, and were soon joined by East German youngsters. They danced together to celebrate their new freedom. Over The date on which the Wall fell is considered to have been 9 November 1989 but the Wall in its entirety was not torn down immediately. Starting that evening and in the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers or otherwise hammers and chisels to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process and creating several unofficial border crossings. These people were nicknamed "Mauerspechte" (wall woodpeckers). Then the East Berlin started to tear it down themselves to make way for more roads. Overall it progressively fell."

From the wall I started walking around the former East Berlin walled and back through Check Point Charlie and found a few pieces of the wall now painted by artists and placed in various positions across from the check point and in a small area where there are fast food restaurants. I liked this one done by New York Artist Lisa Grubb and it's titled "From New York to Berlin/New York Woof 2012. And on the plaque is says about the work "Lisa Grubb connects Berlin and New York through her pop art imagery.  With her colorful cityscape she brings the American lifestyle to a historical monument.  Grubb's paintings are recognized by her unique signatgure style, bold colors and fun subject matter. Lisa paints all over the world and lives in New York. "I am very proud to be invited to paint on the Berlin Wall. It's an honor to bring my city to Berlin.”

There are several places where you find more pieces of the wall including in Potsdamer Platz where they also have an exhibit of old photographs and a history of the wall, it's a great outdoor exhibit.

I came across this interesting plaza with two large sculptures. As you can see in the picture the first is an extremely large ball with other sculptured items like chairs or doors intertwined on the surface of the ball. I couldn't find a plaque for the artist or works name but it's colorful and interesting and standing in front of it was a small group of English speaking tourists with their English speaking tour guide. Just as I approached the guide was telling his totally attentive group a story about a man who wined and dined an American women years ago when East Berlin was still occupied and he got the young girl drunk and then when the girl went to the bathroom he stole her passport and ran. He made sure the women he chose to seduce looked very much like his wife and then got the passport to his wife who would then just casually walk through the check point and to freedom. The tour guide had his group laughing because he told this story in a very animated fun way and then ended that this was common practice and that a man in love would do whatever he could for the women he loved so you can't really fault the guy for stealing from the girl although that girl did have to spend around 5 months behind the wall in Communist Berlin until she somehow was able to get them to believe she was an American citizen.

Now behind this huge sculpture is a metal structure outlining what looked like a domed church. The information I found nearby explained that it was an artists attempt to memorialize the Bohemian Bethlehem Church which one stood on this exact spot but was bombed during WWII and then later demolished by the Communist regime. I love this idea and you really can, see when you use your imagination, what the church must have been like her because it's all life size and the bricks on the ground are either white, red or black and the white represent the outer foot print of the church and the red the inside and then the black ones are where the pews were. The ground was covered in snow so I had to clear off a few parts to find all three colors and see where some of the pews were under the dome. Here is what I found online about the church and the art. "The Spanish artist Juan Garaizabal gives back the Bohemian Church to the city of Berlin at its original location in Bethlehemskirchplatz with a 31 meter high structure made with steel and light. The lost Bohemian Bethlehem Church was a unique building in the middle of Berlin, representing one of the most beautiful chapters of the relations between Germany and Bohemia. In 1943, it was badly damaged by bombing. Later, in 1963, the church was demolished and the site incorporated into the facilities of Checkpoint Charlie.  The Urban Memory Berlin  makes part of Juan Garaizabal’s international project  Urban Memories . This project focus on recovering and giving worth to architecture elements or historical buildings that have been lost in the course of time. This exhibition Wandering Church was shown already at DOX in 2011. The lost Czech Bethlehem Church (Böhmische-Bethlehemskirche) that was in Berlin and was part of Czech-German history, was a unique building. Thanks to the generosity of King Frederick William the 1st, Czech refugees who left their homeland because of religious reasons were admitted in the Friedrichstadt District in Berlin. Two years ago, Garaizabal began to look for signs of missing Berlin church and collected numerous documents found in Berlin and the Czech Republic. The final aim is once again to portray the church in its original size (a height of 30m) and its original location in Berlin. The project is preceded by the presentation of its model in Prague, the capital city of Bohemia. It is the region from which the refugees came, and which was an inspiration for aesthetic and ethical content of the original church.”

I then walked toward the Brandenburger Gate and on my way met an adorable group of 4 young people from  Madrid, Spain. They had just arrived and wanted a picture of them all jumping in the air with the Potsdamer Platz in the background. I was happy to help and took their picture and so they took a picture of me which was very nice.

I left them and had lunch at this wonderful Asian restaurant called Coa near the Sony center. It was packed with people on their lunch break and inexpensive but really, really amazing food and I had this Vietnamese soup that tasted a little like the Chinese Herbs I used to take in New York and since a friend who also took them once said that "If evil had a taste it would be these herbs." Well I got so used to drinking the concoctions that this just reminded me of NYC and also of health and well being since that's what all the herbs did.

I got to the Brandenburger Gate about 1:15pm. It's a massive structure and was on the inside of the wall so was part of East Berlin for 28 years and no one was able to enjoy it or driver through it for many years. "The Brandenburg Gate (German: Brandenburger Tor) is a former city gate, rebuilt in the late 18th century as a neoclassical triumphal arch, and now one of the most well-known landmarks of Germany. It is located west of the city centre at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building. The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which formerly led directly to the city palace of the Prussian monarchs. It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791. Having suffered considerable damage in World War II, the Brandenburg Gate was fully restored from 2000 to 2002 by the Stiftung Denkmalschutz Berlin (Berlin Monument Conservation Foundation). During the post-war Partition of Germany, the gate was isolated and inaccessible immediately next to the Berlin Wall, and the area around the gate featured most prominently in the media coverage of the opening of the wall in 1989.

About a block down from the Gate is the American Consulate and inside their entrance was one of those public art bears and this one was painted like a bear version of the Statue of Liberty, I just had to get a picture. It didn't come out great since I wasn't allowed to get close the two police officers made sure of that and they didn't even smile.

Across the street from the American Consulate is the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. I found it very moving with thousands of differing sized cement slabs almost looking like coffins. You walk through this maze (although orderly with a very distinct walking path grid.) What struck me is when you walk from the outside you are passing shorter slabs and then as you go inward the slabs get larger and some on a slant and you feel like you're being isolated from society and then as you emerge up some very small hills you feel like you're coming out into the light, into civilization  It worked as a memorial by my standards but I found from listening in on a tour guide give his English speaking guests information on why this memorial which takes up a large piece of land, is was controversial when it was built. Firstly, it has no symbolic element referring to the Jewish Holocaust people just weren't getting it's point; secondly, people felt that it shouldn't have only been for the Jewish people who were killed but for all people like the many gay people who were also murdered and then thirdly, the artist used these massive concrete slabs and being that Berlin youth have always liked putting graffiti on any clean surface they can the memorial would be defaced. Originally the artist said he didn't mind if people put graffiti I guess he felt it was part of everyone's right to expression but then he changed his mind and worked with a chemical company who had developed a paint of some kind that would be put all over the slabs whenever it was defaced with paint the paint would be easily washed off. The chemical was a great invention and clearly a great choice for the memorial because the slabs are all clean. The controversy came because it turned out later that the company that made the chemical was a subsidiary of a company that years earlier, during the war, actually made the gas that was used to kill the Jewish prisoners. The artist apparently said he didn't care because try and find a German company that doesn't have some connection to the Nazi atrocities.

I'm glad I got to walk through it and it was even more moving for me with all the snow on the slabs and all around the paths and with the sky being so bleak. The only thing that broke the contemplative mood was the bus load of either Spanish or Italian high school students who arrived and then proceeded to chase each other along the maze throwing snowballs. I don't know where the teacher was but they were rather annoying. I know that it's probably better to have joy and laughter in the world than sorrow but it just didn't seem right.

"The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe[1] (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000 square metres (4.7 acres) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.8 m (8 in to 15 ft 9 in). According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. A 2005 copy of the Foundation for the Memorial's official English tourist pamphlet, however, states that the design represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman did not use any symbolism. An attached underground "Place of Information" (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem. Building began on April 1, 2003 and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately €25 million. The memorial is controversial, and was described by Ignatz Bubis, the then leader of the German Jewish community, as unnecessary."

I then walked through the impressive Tiergarten which is a massive public park right in the center of town. "Tiergarten (German for Animal Garden) is a locality within the borough of Mitte, in central Berlin (Germany). Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, Tiergarten was also the name of a borough, consisting of the current Bezirk of Tiergarten (formerly called Tiergarten-Süd) plus Hansaviertel and Moabit. A new system of road and rail tunnels runs under the park towards Berlin's Central Station in nearby Moabit."

Also in the center of the park which has many parts with lakes, rivers and lots of natural beauty, is the Victory Column. "The Victory Column (German:  Siegessäule (help·info)) is a monument in Berlin, Germany. Designed by Heinrich Strack after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), giving the statue a new purpose. Different from the original plans, these later victories in the so-called unification wars inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victoria, 8.3 metres high and weighing 35 tonnes, designed by Friedrich Drake. Berliners, with their fondness for giving nicknames to buildings, call the statue Goldelse, meaning something like "Golden Lizzy".

I got back on the tour bus at that point having walked about 4 hours in total in the freezing cold. We passed the Bellvue palace and the Charlottenburg Palace (German: Schloss Charlottenburg), the largest palace in Berlin, Germany, and the only surviving royal residence in the city dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family. It is located in the Charlottenburg district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough.

The tour took us back around from the start and it was nice to hear the history and see everything again having walked so much of it because it just makes more sense now. Walking a city is always the best way to see it and then to do the tour is and added bonus to get the history of what you've seen and are seeing.

We went past the incredible Parliament building which I took a few pictures of but as you can see they're blurry since it was dark but I liked them anyway so I've included them here. The Parliament building has partly old and partly new architecture including this enormous glass dome where you can walk up the circular ramp all the way to the top. It's open until 10pm but since I'm afraid of heights it wasn't even a thought.

The tour ended at 5pm at the main train station which was completed in 2006 for the World Cup which interestingly mom and I were in Europe at that time and were talking to lots of guys who were in Amsterdam staying there because it was so cheap and then taking the train to Berlin to see the games.

I took the number M85 public bus directly to my hotel (recommendation by the tourist information office) and got my bus ticket for tomorrow morning when I'll take the M85 going back to the station for my train to Warsaw, Poland.

We also passed on the tour bus and I had forgotten until I saw the pictures, the area just beyond the Palace which has some really amazing Art Deco architecture and this one above of a glass building with Art Deco accents is actually a gym with one floor clearly visible from the bus as a basketball court. What a great space for playing any sport.

I had a nice dinner at a pub style restaurant across the street from my hotel and it was delicious and inexpensive. I've been so lucky to find good places to eat for little money. I think it helps I am staying in a residential area because the restaurant was filled with locals who I'm sure don't want to spend much money but want good food.

A finally added note about something I saw. I was walking along the path of the wall near the check point area and saw these adorable little cars that were clearly from decades ago. I walked around the area and found it was a different kind of city tour you can take where you rent the car for an hour or so and see the city. These cars are called Trabant's and were made in the former East Germany. They're small, low to the ground and look like minitures of larger car versions. I took a few pictures of the cars covered in snow and painted all different colors and some even have stripes and crazy bright colors. Here is some info on the car itself and then info on the tours which sound fun if you drive. "The Trabant /trəˈbɑːnt/ is a car that was produced by former East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau, Saxony. It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was also exported to countries both inside and outside the communist bloc. The main selling points were that it had room for four adults and luggage in a compact, light and durable shell; it was fast (when introduced); and it was durable. With its mediocre performance, outdated and inefficient two-stroke engine (which returned poor fuel economy for the car's size and produced heavy exhaust), and production shortages, the Trabant is often cited as an example of the disadvantages of centralized planning; on the other hand, it is regarded with derisive affection as a symbol of the failed former East Germany and of the fall of communism (in former West Germany, as many East Germans streamed into West Berlin and West Germany in their Trabants after the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989). It was in production without any significant changes for nearly 30 years with 3,096,099 Trabants produced in total. In 2008, Time magazine rated the Trabant as one of the 50 worst cars ever made. In the West, much has been written about the Trabant with mostly negative. Emphasis was placed on the shortcomings of the Trabant, and its benefits have not been pointed out. However, many of the former owners of the Trabant still emphasize its advantages such as high capacity - Trabant was able to drive over 1000kg of cargo."

 "TRABI-SAFARI  - A few years ago only a few enthusiasts dared to show themselves in public with their Trabis. Anyway, times have changed - so now the cult vehicle of the East is back. "To drive a Trabi once in a lifetime" has not only become the dream of car and "East" fanatics, but is ranging amongst the cultural "musts" for any visitor. With this unique sightseeing offer in Germany you you can combine unsurpassed driving feeling and nostalgic sightseeing with the real atmosphere of the past "East". No matter which colour your Trabi has or whether it's a convertible or a genuine closed one, on a tour with our all but ordinary fleet, driving fun is guaranteed. On this tour it will be YOU taking over the steering wheel and maneuvering this unique vehicle. While you are enjoying the sights passing by the windows of your personal Trabi, your guide provides you with information about historical facts and funny things via radio. A Trabi-Safari will be an incomparable experience for everyone and for sure one of the ultimate highlights of your visit in Germany!"