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.