It was an easy process to eat breakfast and get packed up ready to be picked up at the hotel and taken to the airport.
I checked out paying for the three beers we had each had on our return to the warm hotel after eating out and they proved to be extremely reasonable. We were settled in the lounge when at exactly the appointed time our driver appeared to pick us up.
We found ourselves in the minibus heading out of the city with two of the people who had come in with us. A mother and daughter pairing who had also enjoyed Berlin very much, we had several similar experiences but there were different things which we had done this confirmed to us that Berlin would be worthy another visit in future.
On our walk to the restaurant on the first evening we had thought that the area we were in was no the best, as we drove through the region this was confirmed amongst the generally run down shops there were a high proportion of sex shops and massage parlours.
We reached the airport early and made the mistake of passing through the first layer of security before the Ryan Air desks were open for our flight, we camped out on the floor in the absence of any seating in the area and after 45 minutes we were well placed to join the check in line for our flight. I have never before been the first in such a line.
Check in was painless but the similar bag, weighed by my hand held luggage scale to be 14.5Kg, now registered 13.9 on the airline scales where it had been slightly over the 15kg weight coming out – there is no logic to this but we were not asked for excess baggage in either direction.
We read our books in a concourse and at last the gate was announced to be the furthest from the point we had chosen. Despite having to queue twice more we were able to get our hand luggage into the locker and had reasonable seats.
On our return to East Midlands Airport we picked up our car and were home by mid-afternoon.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Wednesday 23 Feb 2011- Berlin Blog
Once again we enjoyed our buffet breakfast but today we brought down to the dinning area our own British teabags and we also spotted some tea pots so we were as near to tea perfection as we could be. The hot water was close to boiling so the tea infused fully and we had the perfect English start to the day.
The temperature was higher than the previous day a mere minus 5 degrees but we were determined to cope with it and have a full day in the city.
We walked to our underground station and took a train to the 1936 Olympic Stadium. We emerged from a tree-lined walk into a large expanse of concrete with the Stadium standing impressively in front of us. As anyone with any regard for history will know this was the centre-piece for the 1936 Olympic Games which Hitler embraced as an opportunity to demonstrate the dominance of the Aryan master-race. By chance, and the strength of its construction, the Stadium emerged almost undamaged from the Second World War so that when it was later used in two world cups 1974 and 2006 its historic significance was not lost on observers.
The chief technician on the project, said to the BBC: "Whenever you enter, you will still know this was the site of the 1936 Games. You will pass all the old Nazi sculptures".
"The history is there, the totality of the buildings is there. The whole Nazi landscape has not disappeared", added the sports sociologist Günther Gebauer. "There are towers like in a fortress, and people who come will always ask where the Führer sat.”
We paid for admission and Julia rented a recorded commentary, the amusing thing was that as a deposit the stadium demanded a piece of Photo Id – as we had discovered on our cruises our England basketball licenses are always accepted as if they were much more important documents than they are in fact. We use them extensively on shore visits because they are so much less hassle to replace than a passport.
The stadium is now the home of Hertha Berlin now in the German Second division and in reorganization of that association the running track is in blue their team colour. Otherwise there is little colour involved and the solidity of the whole thing is almost military in appearance.
The fact that Jesse Owen messed up the Fuhrer’s party is well known but being there really brought home the pressure he must have felt.
I took several pleasing photos of the arena as I am coming to terms with my latest camera. For Christmas Julia booked me a photography course but it didn’t really help me much. The idea was to take over aperture control from the automatic settings and thus understand the depth of field better. I found the theory easy enough but practically it was difficult and I certainly never improved on the camera’s decisions!
On our return to Derby we discovered that a friend in basketball was stationed nearby in order to work in the stadium as a Physical Training officer for the occupying forces long after the war, he had plenty to tell about his stay in the city including ventures into the East which were profitable in terms of exchange rate but forbidden to his rank and unit.
From the Stadium we rejoined the underground and emerged close to Schloss Charlottenburg which Julia’s research had indicated to be well worthy of a visit. I say we emerged close to it we did but we had chosen the wrong exit from the underground station thus we were puzzled to see no signs of it. An elderly cyclist discerned our confusion and skidded to a halt by us and in limited English asked what we were seeking and gave us excellent instructions.
Charlottenburg Palace is the largest palace in Berlin and the only royal residency in the city dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family. It is located in the Charlottenburg district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf burough.
The palace was built at the end of the 17th century and was greatly expanded during the 18th century. It includes much exotic internal decoration in baroque and rococo styles. A large formal garden surrounded by woodland was constructed behind the palace. In the grounds of the palace various buildings were erected, including a belvedere, a mausoleum, a theatre and a pavilion. During the Second World War the palace was badly damaged but has since been reconstructed. The palace, its gardens and the buildings in the grounds are major visitor attractions.
We were planning to spend only an hour of so at each venue so we were put off by the high admission price. We walked along the front of the building hopeful at least of getting a view of the gardens which were the feature which had most attracted us. We were delighted to discover that the gardens were open to the public and we had not needed to pay at all.
The most stunning aspect of the place was the solid iced-over lake with couples strolling freely on it – that did make for some classy pictures.
The temperature was still well below freezing so it was no surprises that the river running alongside was a mere trickle between ice flows from both sides.
From there we rejoined the underground and travelled back across Berlin to the area close to where we had finished our walk the previous day. We found our way to our objective, the Jewish Museum, without any problems and noted that we were well on the way back to Check Point Charlie but from the other side compared to yesterday’s approach.
We had found from reading several guides that this is a “must-see”. Wikipedia says:
The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin), in Berlin, Germany, covers two millennia of German Jewish history. It consists of two buildings. One is the old Kollegienhaus, a former courthouse, built in the 18th century. The other, a new addition specifically built for the museum, designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind. This was one of the first buildings in Berlin designed after German reunification. The museum opened to the public in 2001.
It is impossible to appreciate the design of the modern part of the structure from inside – perhaps an expensive ride in the tethered balloon would have shown the design much better than we could understand from inside.
The museum adjoins the old Berlin Museum and sits on land that was West Berlin before the Berlin Wall fell. The Museum itself, consisting of about 161,000 square feet (15,000 square meters), is a twisted zig-zag and is accessible only via an underground passage from the Berlin Museum's baroque wing. Its shape is reminiscent of a warped Star of David. A "Void," an empty space about 66 feet (20 m) tall, slices linearly through the entire building. Menashe Kadishman's Shalechet (Fallen leaves) installation fills the void with 10,000 coarse iron faces. An irregular matrix of windows cuts in all orientations across the building's facade. A thin layer of zinc coats the building's exterior, which will oxidize and turn bluish as it weathers.
A second underground tunnel connects the Museum proper to the E.T.A. Hoffmann Garden, or The Garden of Exile, whose foundation is tilted. The Garden's oleaster grows out of reach, atop 49 tall pillars.
The final underground tunnel leads from the Museum to the Holocaust Tower, a 79 foot (24 m) tall empty silo. The bare concrete Tower is neither heated nor cooled, and its only light comes from a small slit in its roof.
Similar to Libeskind’s first building, the Felix Nussbaum Haus, the museum consists of three spaces. All three of the underground tunnels, or "axes," intersect and may represent the connection between the three realities of Jewish life in Germany, as symbolized by each of the three spaces: Continuity with German history, Emigration from Germany, and the Holocaust.
When I say that we were unable to appreciate the design I have to be honest and say that we couldn’t figure out what the building would look like from above but also it made no real impression on us emotionally – it seemed pretentious and there was only a sparse display of artifacts in the new part.
However Preston’s description of the derivation of the “Fallen Leaves” was haunting, he said that it was a floor covered in layers of iron faces of different sizes to recreate the early mass executions of Jews who were made to lie down in mass graves before they were shot. You are permitted to walk on the “leaves” but I felt uneasy watching kids pick up the faces to be photographed by their doting parents trying to copy the expressions!
Having felt less than impressed overall we found ourselves back in the older part of the museum which was, in contrast, fairly traditional but packed with interest to both of us. In a museum Julia will usually read every word of every label whereas I tend to travel faster but we absorb different things and often, in later conversation, discover things that we had missed.
Having returned from Berlin and looked up some of the places that we visited I must take exception to the statement above, “Its shape is reminiscent of a warped Star of David” the only set of circumstances which I can offer to support this is if you took a star, separated its various parts and then glued them roughly end to end, its shape is reminiscent of a crooked line, but who am I to judge.
Our travels next took us to the Check Point Charlie Museum, which had, we were told, good exhibits on some of the many escapes to the west from the east. We were a little put off by the prices charged and were just deciding if we had the time to do the place, and outlay, justice when we met up with the young couple from the previous day. We asked if it was worth the admission price but they couldn’t help us as they were just going in. We glanced at each other and decided that we could not inflict ourselves on these good people for another few hours so we decided to retreat back to the hotel.
That evening we returned to the first night’s restaurant and again enjoyed an excellent meal and hospitality before again enjoying a beer in the warm lounge of the hotel.
The temperature was higher than the previous day a mere minus 5 degrees but we were determined to cope with it and have a full day in the city.
We walked to our underground station and took a train to the 1936 Olympic Stadium. We emerged from a tree-lined walk into a large expanse of concrete with the Stadium standing impressively in front of us. As anyone with any regard for history will know this was the centre-piece for the 1936 Olympic Games which Hitler embraced as an opportunity to demonstrate the dominance of the Aryan master-race. By chance, and the strength of its construction, the Stadium emerged almost undamaged from the Second World War so that when it was later used in two world cups 1974 and 2006 its historic significance was not lost on observers.
The chief technician on the project, said to the BBC: "Whenever you enter, you will still know this was the site of the 1936 Games. You will pass all the old Nazi sculptures".
"The history is there, the totality of the buildings is there. The whole Nazi landscape has not disappeared", added the sports sociologist Günther Gebauer. "There are towers like in a fortress, and people who come will always ask where the Führer sat.”
We paid for admission and Julia rented a recorded commentary, the amusing thing was that as a deposit the stadium demanded a piece of Photo Id – as we had discovered on our cruises our England basketball licenses are always accepted as if they were much more important documents than they are in fact. We use them extensively on shore visits because they are so much less hassle to replace than a passport.
The stadium is now the home of Hertha Berlin now in the German Second division and in reorganization of that association the running track is in blue their team colour. Otherwise there is little colour involved and the solidity of the whole thing is almost military in appearance.
The fact that Jesse Owen messed up the Fuhrer’s party is well known but being there really brought home the pressure he must have felt.
I took several pleasing photos of the arena as I am coming to terms with my latest camera. For Christmas Julia booked me a photography course but it didn’t really help me much. The idea was to take over aperture control from the automatic settings and thus understand the depth of field better. I found the theory easy enough but practically it was difficult and I certainly never improved on the camera’s decisions!
On our return to Derby we discovered that a friend in basketball was stationed nearby in order to work in the stadium as a Physical Training officer for the occupying forces long after the war, he had plenty to tell about his stay in the city including ventures into the East which were profitable in terms of exchange rate but forbidden to his rank and unit.
From the Stadium we rejoined the underground and emerged close to Schloss Charlottenburg which Julia’s research had indicated to be well worthy of a visit. I say we emerged close to it we did but we had chosen the wrong exit from the underground station thus we were puzzled to see no signs of it. An elderly cyclist discerned our confusion and skidded to a halt by us and in limited English asked what we were seeking and gave us excellent instructions.
Charlottenburg Palace is the largest palace in Berlin and the only royal residency in the city dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family. It is located in the Charlottenburg district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf burough.
The palace was built at the end of the 17th century and was greatly expanded during the 18th century. It includes much exotic internal decoration in baroque and rococo styles. A large formal garden surrounded by woodland was constructed behind the palace. In the grounds of the palace various buildings were erected, including a belvedere, a mausoleum, a theatre and a pavilion. During the Second World War the palace was badly damaged but has since been reconstructed. The palace, its gardens and the buildings in the grounds are major visitor attractions.
We were planning to spend only an hour of so at each venue so we were put off by the high admission price. We walked along the front of the building hopeful at least of getting a view of the gardens which were the feature which had most attracted us. We were delighted to discover that the gardens were open to the public and we had not needed to pay at all.
The most stunning aspect of the place was the solid iced-over lake with couples strolling freely on it – that did make for some classy pictures.
The temperature was still well below freezing so it was no surprises that the river running alongside was a mere trickle between ice flows from both sides.
From there we rejoined the underground and travelled back across Berlin to the area close to where we had finished our walk the previous day. We found our way to our objective, the Jewish Museum, without any problems and noted that we were well on the way back to Check Point Charlie but from the other side compared to yesterday’s approach.
We had found from reading several guides that this is a “must-see”. Wikipedia says:
The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin), in Berlin, Germany, covers two millennia of German Jewish history. It consists of two buildings. One is the old Kollegienhaus, a former courthouse, built in the 18th century. The other, a new addition specifically built for the museum, designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind. This was one of the first buildings in Berlin designed after German reunification. The museum opened to the public in 2001.
It is impossible to appreciate the design of the modern part of the structure from inside – perhaps an expensive ride in the tethered balloon would have shown the design much better than we could understand from inside.
The museum adjoins the old Berlin Museum and sits on land that was West Berlin before the Berlin Wall fell. The Museum itself, consisting of about 161,000 square feet (15,000 square meters), is a twisted zig-zag and is accessible only via an underground passage from the Berlin Museum's baroque wing. Its shape is reminiscent of a warped Star of David. A "Void," an empty space about 66 feet (20 m) tall, slices linearly through the entire building. Menashe Kadishman's Shalechet (Fallen leaves) installation fills the void with 10,000 coarse iron faces. An irregular matrix of windows cuts in all orientations across the building's facade. A thin layer of zinc coats the building's exterior, which will oxidize and turn bluish as it weathers.
A second underground tunnel connects the Museum proper to the E.T.A. Hoffmann Garden, or The Garden of Exile, whose foundation is tilted. The Garden's oleaster grows out of reach, atop 49 tall pillars.
The final underground tunnel leads from the Museum to the Holocaust Tower, a 79 foot (24 m) tall empty silo. The bare concrete Tower is neither heated nor cooled, and its only light comes from a small slit in its roof.
Similar to Libeskind’s first building, the Felix Nussbaum Haus, the museum consists of three spaces. All three of the underground tunnels, or "axes," intersect and may represent the connection between the three realities of Jewish life in Germany, as symbolized by each of the three spaces: Continuity with German history, Emigration from Germany, and the Holocaust.
When I say that we were unable to appreciate the design I have to be honest and say that we couldn’t figure out what the building would look like from above but also it made no real impression on us emotionally – it seemed pretentious and there was only a sparse display of artifacts in the new part.
However Preston’s description of the derivation of the “Fallen Leaves” was haunting, he said that it was a floor covered in layers of iron faces of different sizes to recreate the early mass executions of Jews who were made to lie down in mass graves before they were shot. You are permitted to walk on the “leaves” but I felt uneasy watching kids pick up the faces to be photographed by their doting parents trying to copy the expressions!
Having felt less than impressed overall we found ourselves back in the older part of the museum which was, in contrast, fairly traditional but packed with interest to both of us. In a museum Julia will usually read every word of every label whereas I tend to travel faster but we absorb different things and often, in later conversation, discover things that we had missed.
Having returned from Berlin and looked up some of the places that we visited I must take exception to the statement above, “Its shape is reminiscent of a warped Star of David” the only set of circumstances which I can offer to support this is if you took a star, separated its various parts and then glued them roughly end to end, its shape is reminiscent of a crooked line, but who am I to judge.
Our travels next took us to the Check Point Charlie Museum, which had, we were told, good exhibits on some of the many escapes to the west from the east. We were a little put off by the prices charged and were just deciding if we had the time to do the place, and outlay, justice when we met up with the young couple from the previous day. We asked if it was worth the admission price but they couldn’t help us as they were just going in. We glanced at each other and decided that we could not inflict ourselves on these good people for another few hours so we decided to retreat back to the hotel.
That evening we returned to the first night’s restaurant and again enjoyed an excellent meal and hospitality before again enjoying a beer in the warm lounge of the hotel.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Berlin Blog –Tuesday 22nd Feb 2011- Best of Berlin Walking Tour
Julia as usual had done the internet research for this visit and she was now determined that we would see Berlin best on a walking tour. There was one which set off from one of the nearer underground railway stations but she preferred Brewers Tours, which had been set up by Terry Brewer who started his tours as a member of the British occupying forces showing round visitors as part of the post war settlement. The deciding factor was simply if the nearest underground station sold the 48 hour ticket we wanted we would take the train from there and join the Brewers Best of Berlin walking tour.
We enjoyed our buffet breakfast in the hotel despite firstly losing our table to another group of guests who failed to notice our registration card on the table and simply moved in on it, and secondly, our enforced move placed us next to a German family from Hell, neither child was capable of sitting quietly and father was determined to ignore them and the mother despite their excesses. When they, the children, decided to drum on their table with their room keys mercifully mother allowed them to leave their table as she continued her sulk based, I believe, on her partner’s lack of support or interest in her plans for their day.
At this point we added another condition to our plans, if this family showed up at either of our options we would take the other.
We found that we were able to buy the 48 hour tickets at the first station we came to and for 16 Euros each we were able to take unlimited journeys on the underground and/or bus system. The Underground proved to be excellent; we arrived a every platform within 5 minutes of the next train and no journey even involving changes took longer than half an hour.
Thus we arrived at Friedrichstrasse station by 10.00am; our instructions were to meet our guide in front of the Bandy Brooks shop at 10:30. It was about now that we realised six hours was going to be a long time in the sustained cold of minus six degrees. Slowly our group gathered there were five Dutch people and a young British couple to join us on the tour. We noted that as it was Tuesday there was also a “Tours with Terry” available and lasting a mere four hours. Our guide arrived promptly and introduced himself as Preston, he was too tall to easily misplace and we realised early in our acquaintance that he was America; it later transpired he was from Oregon.
After a brief wait for further walkers we set off. Our first stop was to be the New Synagogue but on the way there we stopped into two hostels with a view to picking up others wanting the tour. No business resulted from these stops but Preston had his thermos topped up with coffee to equip him for a long day walking and talking.
We duly arrived at the New Synagogue and met Terry who was accompanied by another three walkers. We gave him the five Dutch people while in return we received on Australian young lady making our party six in total including our guide.
While Terry negotiated where his party wanted to go, his tours are bespoke in that the guests tell him the sort of things they want to see and he devises a tour to suit, we were able to set off. In the weak sunshine Preston told us that we would hear two repeating themes in his commentary, destroyed or severely damaged by the RAF and not repaired by the East Germans. Our entire group were representatives of the allied side in WW2 but I felt no inclination to apologise for the damage done by our air forces.
Sadly Julia’s mother lost her brother early in the war and he flew in the RAF, Julia’s Uncle Albert was shot down over Holland as a crew member of a Wellington bomber and spent a tough war in various POW camps.
It was notable that the Synagogue still had an armed police guard outside, when Julia asked about this Preston replied that it is still Germany so the authorities take no chances.
Another recurring theme which cropped up in various contexts is that Berlin as a city is flat broke, not rubbing along with no savings but 600 Billion Euros in debt. We stopped and viewed a large industrial building with a painted sign on it, “How long is Now?” this is rented by an artists’ commune but owned by a bank which wanted the artists out but then went bust itself so the community continues on borrowed time in a building which still displays bomb damage – see recurring themes one and two!
We cut through some attractive tenements which are now very desirable but when built they were vertical slums each apartment housed at least two families and two floors shared one toilet on a landing midway between the levels. When there were protests about the under-provision of these facilities the city government answered by calculating that since men would be at work and children at school the toilets were only required to cope with the women of the families and at an average of four minutes a visit there was in fact over capacity. Despite this there was rampant disease and considerable civil unrest.
Around this part of the journey we paused to look at a typical East Berlin Bar, which was close to where Preston had lived for a period. Another regular at the bar was the Finance Minister who lived in one of the apartments in the same block. The bar has gone downhill recently but it had been excellent previously and Preston often invited members of his tour to join him for an evening meal there despite the fact that none of the staff spoke any English. On one occasion after ordering for his guests he went to the bathroom, and while away the food orders arrived but were not what anyone had ordered. On his return he found the government minister patiently translating the conversation between the staff and tourists.
We next came to Museum Island, Preston noted that Berliners tend to name their locations very literally and thus an island with five museums on it is Museum Island. Before we got past the first museum he pointed out a sign under the bridge visible to the river traffic which indicated that there was some WW2 ordinance on the riverbed at that point. Berliners are very blasé about such things, there was a recent account of a man who found a grenade in a park and, concerned that it might be disturbed by children and go off, he packed it into his briefcase and crossed the city by underground train to hand it in at a police station.
Outside of the first museum Preston explained that it was originally named “The Museum” until another museum opened and it then had its name changed to “The Old Museum”.
Outside of the museum there is a huge marble bowl balanced on marble blocks, during the war it was moved to avoid damage by the bombing but when the East Germans decided to replace it after the war they dropped it and split it into two parts which they roughly glued together.
We took a bathroom break in one of the museums; Preston has deep-seated objections to paying for the bathroom and offers his group the chance to stop wherever there are free facilities.
We exited onto Unter den Lindern which again displays the basic naming technique the road is under the Lindern trees so that’s the name sorted!
We passed the site of the book-burnings early in the National Socialist period, Bebelplatz opposite the Humboldt University administration building. The square was formerly known as Opernplatz and was the site of the book burning rites by the Nazi youth groups in 1933 where about thousands of books by prominent German authors were set on fire.
This brought us to the Brandenburg Gate; there was a protesting group of Libyans and, incongruously, a guy in a bear suit and a couple dressed as Soviet soldiers for tourists to take photos with.
The Berlin wall has gone in the Brandenburg Gate area but its location is shown by a seam of cobbles set into the ground. Interestingly at the Brandenburg Gate the wall arced back in a semi circle perhaps to allow photo-opportunities from both sides of the gate.
We had instructions to buy a Russian doll from an old lady at the Brandenburg gate but no such lady was available but we did complete our mission later at Checkpoint Charlie.
Crossing the “wall” we arrived at the Reichstag, the fire at which gave the National Socialists an excuse to seize further powers.
To quote Wikipedia:
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
At 21:25), a Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament, was ablaze. The fire started in the Session Chamber, and, by the time the police and firefighters had arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was engulfed in flames.
Inside the building, a thorough search conducted by the police resulted in the finding of Marinus van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe was a Dutch insurrectionist, council communist, and unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany, ostensibly to carry out his political activities. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that the Communists were beginning a plot against the German government. Van der Lubbe and four Communist leaders were subsequently arrested. Adolf Hitler, who had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany four weeks before, on 30 January, urged President Paul von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree to counter the "ruthless confrontation of the Communist Party of Germany". With civil liberties suspended, the government instituted mass arrests of Communists, including all of the Communist parliamentary delegates. With them gone and their seats empty, the Nazis went from being a plurality party to the majority; subsequent elections confirmed this position and thus allowed Hitler to consolidate his power.
Meanwhile, investigation of the Reichstag fire continued, with the Nazis eager to uncover Comintern complicity. In early March 1933, three men were arrested who were to play pivotal roles during the Leipzig Trial, known also as the "Reichstag Fire Trial": Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov. The Bulgarians were known to the Prussian police as senior Comintern operatives, but the police had no idea how senior they were; Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe.
Historians disagree as to whether Van der Lubbe acted alone or whether the arson was planned and ordered by the Communists or by the Nazis, then dominant in the government themselves, as a false flag operation. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research.
Preston told us while outside the Reichstag that Hitler had been completely single-minded in his pursuit of power and, because mass media was only in its infancy, he was able to tell everyone what they wanted to hear. When speaking to farmers he was happy to promise them higher food prices while in cities he supported reductions of the food price.
Having gained power he was ruthless in hanging onto it and at the front of the Reichstag is a small memorial to the 96 mainly centrist or left-wing members of the German Parliament who were persecuted - and in many cases murdered - after the National Socialist Party's rise to power in 1933.
What isn’t in doubt is that Hitler hated the Reichstag but he still ordered his depleted army to fight to the last man over it. While Stalin ordered his troops to have the Red Flag flying over it by May 1945 so two madmen conspired together to have 6000, 3000 on each side, die for a useless building.
After the Reichstag we had a break for dinner back at the concourse of the Friedrichstrasse station where there was a wide choice of fast food and cover from the cold. Julia and I were joined by the young couple from London in a bakery where we had a good hot chocolate and a pastry. We learned that the young couple were teaching assistants on their half term break from a school in London ironically rebuilt after bomb damage during the war.
We noted that by this time Preston had not collected any money from us and if we four absconded at that point he would have only 12 Euros to show for his day. Fortunately for Preston we were far too honest, and the tour was too interesting for us to escape.
We met up with him on time and he remembered to collect his 12 Euros per head so our chance of exploiting his good nature was gone. He was still only paid 60 Euros for over six hours work and he seemed quite philosophical about this as in better times he would have groups of fifteen or so.
Shortly after lunch we reached the huge Luftwaffe building which occupied a whole city block but miraculously survived with little or no damage despite it being an obvious military target throughout all the war opposite the building on land which had been totally cleared by the bombing were two commercial enterprises. One is a static balloon which for more Euros than we would have paid lifts you to a height above the city which commands a brilliant view. The other is more controversial because it rents out Trabant cars; the mass produced vehicle of the communist state of East Germany. The vehicle in itself should not have been popular had there been any alternatives but since there was no competition they were sought after and there was a 10 – 15 year waiting list to purchase these. Currently there is controversy regarding their rental because they are specifically exempted from government regulations regarding emissions while Germany has the strictest rules for all other vehicles. We saw several of the cars in museums and as many on the road, apparently they are a nightmare to drive and, since their body work is only 35% metal, they crumple on impact with anything more substantial than a pigeon. They remain an iconic part of the East Berlin Heritage.
We had been introduced to another East German icon at the Story of Berlin, but Preston was able to elaborate on the story. The Green and Red men on pedestrian crossings were jauntily equipped with hats, when the Wall came down and, in due course, Germany was reunified these lights were replaced as they broke down with the basic figure common to the rest of Europe. The outcry which resulted touched a nerve with the Berliners and factories were set up to produce the “hatted” men again, along the way they became the iconic souvenir of Berlin, in every form you can imagine from bottle openers to sweatshirts. Sadly, although the designer of the men was still alive and had documentation to prove his provenance, he had not registered his copyright and someone else did making them the recipient of all royalties accruing. It seems ironic that the fight for capitalism had produced such a sad casualty.
Incidentally, there was a period when you could have known whether you were in East or West Berlin just by looking at the pedestrian lights but now broken lights are mended with whichever lights come to hand so no such division survives.
Our next major point of interest was the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. We had no idea what to expect so we came upon it uninformed. It consists of a 19,000 square meter site, which occupies an entire city block, covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38m (7.8') long, 0.95m (3' 1.5") wide and vary in height from 0.2 m to 4.8m (8" to 15'9").
Preston suggested that we separately make our way through the area and gather on the other side of it where we could go inside a coffee bar and he could there explain the monument and the next few sites of interest. I found the walk through the blocks quite moving.
When we were in the warm of the coffee house we gathered round to hear some of the most interesting content of the day.
First he dealt with the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe; it was conceived and built in controversy. It had not pleased everyone that the venture was allowed to take up an entire city block. It was criticised for not clearly being a monument of any kind, resulting in families picnicking on the larger blocks and youngsters jumping from block to block. It was criticised for singling out the Jews as victims of the holocaust, the Jewish community were somewhat uneasy about this and offered to dedicate the monument to all victims. However the greatest challenge to the monument was that as an obvious target for graffiti the blocks were impregnated with a chemical which rendered any paint removable by washing, as Preston said, the firm who produced the chemical had been around for a long time and during the war had produced Zyklon B the killer gas used in the extermination camps! We were speechless but the monument remains and under it is a Jewish education centre which is probably worth a visit.
Next, with ill-concealed distaste, Preston described Hitler’s final days in his bunker. Apparently Hitler cowered underground eating chocolate cake by the plateful while 12 year old German children were armed and thrust into merciless street fighting against the rampant Red Army. Before the Soviet army could capture the bunker Hitler committed suicide along with his newly wed bride Eva, and their bodies were placed in a pit and burned with a large amount of petrol. When the Russians overran the area they destroyed much of the bunker with explosives and now there is no visible evidence of its existence, as much as anything to avoid the development of the site of the bunker evolving into a Neo-Nazi shrine.
Finally Preston outlined the history of the divided Berlin and its Wall from the end of the war to its final reunification in 1989. I fully intend to research this history for myself and Blog about it separately so I will finish this entry in brief in order to post it today.
We left the warmth of the coffee shop and came upon the truly unremarkable plot which covers any remainder of Hitler’s Bunker.
We next came upon a remaining standing section of the Berlin Wall and followed it to a reconstruction of Checkpoint Charlie. We learned more than I intend to list here but we did take some photos in the failing light before moving on.
After walking through Underground stations and Department stores to avoid the cold we finished our tour in Gendarmemarkt, one of the most attractive squares in Berlin.
We found an Underground station nearby and returned to the hotel smoothly. After warming up thoroughly in the hotel we walked to the nearest restaurant, the Spanish one, and enjoyed another very reasonable and enjoyable meal.
We again had a beer before bed and thus finished one of my most interesting days ever.
We enjoyed our buffet breakfast in the hotel despite firstly losing our table to another group of guests who failed to notice our registration card on the table and simply moved in on it, and secondly, our enforced move placed us next to a German family from Hell, neither child was capable of sitting quietly and father was determined to ignore them and the mother despite their excesses. When they, the children, decided to drum on their table with their room keys mercifully mother allowed them to leave their table as she continued her sulk based, I believe, on her partner’s lack of support or interest in her plans for their day.
At this point we added another condition to our plans, if this family showed up at either of our options we would take the other.
We found that we were able to buy the 48 hour tickets at the first station we came to and for 16 Euros each we were able to take unlimited journeys on the underground and/or bus system. The Underground proved to be excellent; we arrived a every platform within 5 minutes of the next train and no journey even involving changes took longer than half an hour.
Thus we arrived at Friedrichstrasse station by 10.00am; our instructions were to meet our guide in front of the Bandy Brooks shop at 10:30. It was about now that we realised six hours was going to be a long time in the sustained cold of minus six degrees. Slowly our group gathered there were five Dutch people and a young British couple to join us on the tour. We noted that as it was Tuesday there was also a “Tours with Terry” available and lasting a mere four hours. Our guide arrived promptly and introduced himself as Preston, he was too tall to easily misplace and we realised early in our acquaintance that he was America; it later transpired he was from Oregon.
After a brief wait for further walkers we set off. Our first stop was to be the New Synagogue but on the way there we stopped into two hostels with a view to picking up others wanting the tour. No business resulted from these stops but Preston had his thermos topped up with coffee to equip him for a long day walking and talking.
We duly arrived at the New Synagogue and met Terry who was accompanied by another three walkers. We gave him the five Dutch people while in return we received on Australian young lady making our party six in total including our guide.
While Terry negotiated where his party wanted to go, his tours are bespoke in that the guests tell him the sort of things they want to see and he devises a tour to suit, we were able to set off. In the weak sunshine Preston told us that we would hear two repeating themes in his commentary, destroyed or severely damaged by the RAF and not repaired by the East Germans. Our entire group were representatives of the allied side in WW2 but I felt no inclination to apologise for the damage done by our air forces.
Sadly Julia’s mother lost her brother early in the war and he flew in the RAF, Julia’s Uncle Albert was shot down over Holland as a crew member of a Wellington bomber and spent a tough war in various POW camps.
It was notable that the Synagogue still had an armed police guard outside, when Julia asked about this Preston replied that it is still Germany so the authorities take no chances.
Another recurring theme which cropped up in various contexts is that Berlin as a city is flat broke, not rubbing along with no savings but 600 Billion Euros in debt. We stopped and viewed a large industrial building with a painted sign on it, “How long is Now?” this is rented by an artists’ commune but owned by a bank which wanted the artists out but then went bust itself so the community continues on borrowed time in a building which still displays bomb damage – see recurring themes one and two!
We cut through some attractive tenements which are now very desirable but when built they were vertical slums each apartment housed at least two families and two floors shared one toilet on a landing midway between the levels. When there were protests about the under-provision of these facilities the city government answered by calculating that since men would be at work and children at school the toilets were only required to cope with the women of the families and at an average of four minutes a visit there was in fact over capacity. Despite this there was rampant disease and considerable civil unrest.
Around this part of the journey we paused to look at a typical East Berlin Bar, which was close to where Preston had lived for a period. Another regular at the bar was the Finance Minister who lived in one of the apartments in the same block. The bar has gone downhill recently but it had been excellent previously and Preston often invited members of his tour to join him for an evening meal there despite the fact that none of the staff spoke any English. On one occasion after ordering for his guests he went to the bathroom, and while away the food orders arrived but were not what anyone had ordered. On his return he found the government minister patiently translating the conversation between the staff and tourists.
We next came to Museum Island, Preston noted that Berliners tend to name their locations very literally and thus an island with five museums on it is Museum Island. Before we got past the first museum he pointed out a sign under the bridge visible to the river traffic which indicated that there was some WW2 ordinance on the riverbed at that point. Berliners are very blasé about such things, there was a recent account of a man who found a grenade in a park and, concerned that it might be disturbed by children and go off, he packed it into his briefcase and crossed the city by underground train to hand it in at a police station.
Outside of the first museum Preston explained that it was originally named “The Museum” until another museum opened and it then had its name changed to “The Old Museum”.
Outside of the museum there is a huge marble bowl balanced on marble blocks, during the war it was moved to avoid damage by the bombing but when the East Germans decided to replace it after the war they dropped it and split it into two parts which they roughly glued together.
We took a bathroom break in one of the museums; Preston has deep-seated objections to paying for the bathroom and offers his group the chance to stop wherever there are free facilities.
We exited onto Unter den Lindern which again displays the basic naming technique the road is under the Lindern trees so that’s the name sorted!
We passed the site of the book-burnings early in the National Socialist period, Bebelplatz opposite the Humboldt University administration building. The square was formerly known as Opernplatz and was the site of the book burning rites by the Nazi youth groups in 1933 where about thousands of books by prominent German authors were set on fire.
This brought us to the Brandenburg Gate; there was a protesting group of Libyans and, incongruously, a guy in a bear suit and a couple dressed as Soviet soldiers for tourists to take photos with.
The Berlin wall has gone in the Brandenburg Gate area but its location is shown by a seam of cobbles set into the ground. Interestingly at the Brandenburg Gate the wall arced back in a semi circle perhaps to allow photo-opportunities from both sides of the gate.
We had instructions to buy a Russian doll from an old lady at the Brandenburg gate but no such lady was available but we did complete our mission later at Checkpoint Charlie.
Crossing the “wall” we arrived at the Reichstag, the fire at which gave the National Socialists an excuse to seize further powers.
To quote Wikipedia:
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
At 21:25), a Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament, was ablaze. The fire started in the Session Chamber, and, by the time the police and firefighters had arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was engulfed in flames.
Inside the building, a thorough search conducted by the police resulted in the finding of Marinus van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe was a Dutch insurrectionist, council communist, and unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany, ostensibly to carry out his political activities. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that the Communists were beginning a plot against the German government. Van der Lubbe and four Communist leaders were subsequently arrested. Adolf Hitler, who had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany four weeks before, on 30 January, urged President Paul von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree to counter the "ruthless confrontation of the Communist Party of Germany". With civil liberties suspended, the government instituted mass arrests of Communists, including all of the Communist parliamentary delegates. With them gone and their seats empty, the Nazis went from being a plurality party to the majority; subsequent elections confirmed this position and thus allowed Hitler to consolidate his power.
Meanwhile, investigation of the Reichstag fire continued, with the Nazis eager to uncover Comintern complicity. In early March 1933, three men were arrested who were to play pivotal roles during the Leipzig Trial, known also as the "Reichstag Fire Trial": Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov. The Bulgarians were known to the Prussian police as senior Comintern operatives, but the police had no idea how senior they were; Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe.
Historians disagree as to whether Van der Lubbe acted alone or whether the arson was planned and ordered by the Communists or by the Nazis, then dominant in the government themselves, as a false flag operation. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research.
Preston told us while outside the Reichstag that Hitler had been completely single-minded in his pursuit of power and, because mass media was only in its infancy, he was able to tell everyone what they wanted to hear. When speaking to farmers he was happy to promise them higher food prices while in cities he supported reductions of the food price.
Having gained power he was ruthless in hanging onto it and at the front of the Reichstag is a small memorial to the 96 mainly centrist or left-wing members of the German Parliament who were persecuted - and in many cases murdered - after the National Socialist Party's rise to power in 1933.
What isn’t in doubt is that Hitler hated the Reichstag but he still ordered his depleted army to fight to the last man over it. While Stalin ordered his troops to have the Red Flag flying over it by May 1945 so two madmen conspired together to have 6000, 3000 on each side, die for a useless building.
After the Reichstag we had a break for dinner back at the concourse of the Friedrichstrasse station where there was a wide choice of fast food and cover from the cold. Julia and I were joined by the young couple from London in a bakery where we had a good hot chocolate and a pastry. We learned that the young couple were teaching assistants on their half term break from a school in London ironically rebuilt after bomb damage during the war.
We noted that by this time Preston had not collected any money from us and if we four absconded at that point he would have only 12 Euros to show for his day. Fortunately for Preston we were far too honest, and the tour was too interesting for us to escape.
We met up with him on time and he remembered to collect his 12 Euros per head so our chance of exploiting his good nature was gone. He was still only paid 60 Euros for over six hours work and he seemed quite philosophical about this as in better times he would have groups of fifteen or so.
Shortly after lunch we reached the huge Luftwaffe building which occupied a whole city block but miraculously survived with little or no damage despite it being an obvious military target throughout all the war opposite the building on land which had been totally cleared by the bombing were two commercial enterprises. One is a static balloon which for more Euros than we would have paid lifts you to a height above the city which commands a brilliant view. The other is more controversial because it rents out Trabant cars; the mass produced vehicle of the communist state of East Germany. The vehicle in itself should not have been popular had there been any alternatives but since there was no competition they were sought after and there was a 10 – 15 year waiting list to purchase these. Currently there is controversy regarding their rental because they are specifically exempted from government regulations regarding emissions while Germany has the strictest rules for all other vehicles. We saw several of the cars in museums and as many on the road, apparently they are a nightmare to drive and, since their body work is only 35% metal, they crumple on impact with anything more substantial than a pigeon. They remain an iconic part of the East Berlin Heritage.
We had been introduced to another East German icon at the Story of Berlin, but Preston was able to elaborate on the story. The Green and Red men on pedestrian crossings were jauntily equipped with hats, when the Wall came down and, in due course, Germany was reunified these lights were replaced as they broke down with the basic figure common to the rest of Europe. The outcry which resulted touched a nerve with the Berliners and factories were set up to produce the “hatted” men again, along the way they became the iconic souvenir of Berlin, in every form you can imagine from bottle openers to sweatshirts. Sadly, although the designer of the men was still alive and had documentation to prove his provenance, he had not registered his copyright and someone else did making them the recipient of all royalties accruing. It seems ironic that the fight for capitalism had produced such a sad casualty.
Incidentally, there was a period when you could have known whether you were in East or West Berlin just by looking at the pedestrian lights but now broken lights are mended with whichever lights come to hand so no such division survives.
Our next major point of interest was the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. We had no idea what to expect so we came upon it uninformed. It consists of a 19,000 square meter site, which occupies an entire city block, covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38m (7.8') long, 0.95m (3' 1.5") wide and vary in height from 0.2 m to 4.8m (8" to 15'9").
Preston suggested that we separately make our way through the area and gather on the other side of it where we could go inside a coffee bar and he could there explain the monument and the next few sites of interest. I found the walk through the blocks quite moving.
When we were in the warm of the coffee house we gathered round to hear some of the most interesting content of the day.
First he dealt with the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe; it was conceived and built in controversy. It had not pleased everyone that the venture was allowed to take up an entire city block. It was criticised for not clearly being a monument of any kind, resulting in families picnicking on the larger blocks and youngsters jumping from block to block. It was criticised for singling out the Jews as victims of the holocaust, the Jewish community were somewhat uneasy about this and offered to dedicate the monument to all victims. However the greatest challenge to the monument was that as an obvious target for graffiti the blocks were impregnated with a chemical which rendered any paint removable by washing, as Preston said, the firm who produced the chemical had been around for a long time and during the war had produced Zyklon B the killer gas used in the extermination camps! We were speechless but the monument remains and under it is a Jewish education centre which is probably worth a visit.
Next, with ill-concealed distaste, Preston described Hitler’s final days in his bunker. Apparently Hitler cowered underground eating chocolate cake by the plateful while 12 year old German children were armed and thrust into merciless street fighting against the rampant Red Army. Before the Soviet army could capture the bunker Hitler committed suicide along with his newly wed bride Eva, and their bodies were placed in a pit and burned with a large amount of petrol. When the Russians overran the area they destroyed much of the bunker with explosives and now there is no visible evidence of its existence, as much as anything to avoid the development of the site of the bunker evolving into a Neo-Nazi shrine.
Finally Preston outlined the history of the divided Berlin and its Wall from the end of the war to its final reunification in 1989. I fully intend to research this history for myself and Blog about it separately so I will finish this entry in brief in order to post it today.
We left the warmth of the coffee shop and came upon the truly unremarkable plot which covers any remainder of Hitler’s Bunker.
We next came upon a remaining standing section of the Berlin Wall and followed it to a reconstruction of Checkpoint Charlie. We learned more than I intend to list here but we did take some photos in the failing light before moving on.
After walking through Underground stations and Department stores to avoid the cold we finished our tour in Gendarmemarkt, one of the most attractive squares in Berlin.
We found an Underground station nearby and returned to the hotel smoothly. After warming up thoroughly in the hotel we walked to the nearest restaurant, the Spanish one, and enjoyed another very reasonable and enjoyable meal.
We again had a beer before bed and thus finished one of my most interesting days ever.
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