Berlin on steroids…and a good wee story!
Now don’t get excited because it’s after 10 and time for bed after a huge and utterly amazing day in the city and I won’t last long enough to tell you about it here. Suffice to say, the walking tour exceeded all expectations for the huge amount of history covered, as well as the stories our entertaining guide told…so I will have time to write and post pics tomorrow and can’t wait to recall and reflect on the many special moments…until then, night night!
There seem to be many bears in Bearlin!
So sorry everyone but haven't managed to work out the wifi at Schloss Boitzenberg yet. Hopefully I can sort it out in the morning and normal services can resume.
Love from me to you💕
Good morning from the Schloss. So much to tell between Thursday and now…so I’ll start from then.
Richard and I headed out to the first of many tube stations. My first impression was of the many hundreds (if not thousands) of bicycles secured all around it.
Great way to get around but it’s too far to ride to work. (Fun fact: around 2000 bikes a day are reported as stolen).
We reached the Rotes Rathuis-the red brick city hall- named after the red bricks it’s made of but possibly also because we were standing in East Berlin. We found the guy wielding a yellow umbrella-Alex- who was to be our guide for the “free” walking tour ( as in, choose how much you want to pay him, depending on how good you think he is). Alex is man from Reading, who arrived in Berlin 15 years ago, to party with his mates for 4 days, and never left. But he hasn’t lost his British sense of humour. He started by pointing out the Tv tower- the highest building in Berlin by many metres, and built in 1963 by the Communists. His take was that it didn’t need to be built in the centre, or be so tall, but that the Reds were just proving a point. And so it went…with so much sound knowledge mixed up with his opinions on everything. I just wish I could put it down verbatim, but I couldn’t remember it all and it would get boring for you. So…some of the highlights:
The huge and beautiful stone building which was completely empty apart from the most beautiful statue placed in the middle of the floor under a glass dome. It’s called “A mother and dead son”, and was sculpted by an artist, Kathe Kollwitz, between the wars. Her first son died 4 days after joining the army in 1914 and her other son in the 2nd WW. She died shortly before the Russians came in to take Berlin. Heartbreaking…
The amazing pink Berlin Opera House; the huge Hugenot and Lutheran churches built opposite each other and vieing for the greater height…the German statue holds an olive branch so supposedly wins- but nobody has been able to check; Humboldt University-26 Nobel prize winners- think Einstein, Marx, Engels…; Hitlers bunker- it’s just a car park - no glory attributed to Hitler; the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe; the Bebelplatz where the Nazis burnt thousands of books in 1933…
And so it went, always with a story. One of my favourites was when we reached the Brandenberg Gate, which was trapped between the East and West walls. The vast bronze statue on top …horses, chariot, Victoria (goddess of victory) was taken by Napoleon in 1806 when he conquered Berlin. Apparently it was not put on display for public viewing in France but (according to Alex) was kept in a back room of Napoleon’s house. So when his mates came to dinner he would invite them to view what he’d brought back from Germany!. The victory of the Alliance brought it back to Berlin eight years later..
The many bikes at Richard and Silke’s local station of Pankow
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Hugenot and Calvinist churches
Mother and dead son
Humboldt University
(The 2 women I front of this pic were Kiwis-they’d just completed Mont Blanc in 7 days! Both well into their 70s.
Well, that put my ebiking in the shade!)
Emperor Frederick Wilhelm III
The facade of this building remained intact but everything else was destroyed in the bombing
Alex and his favourite church- he likes the mishmash of styles
The iconic tower
And many more iconic tourist pics…..
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
GDR car- the Trabant or “Trabbie”
We got off at this stop to admire the starry ceiling, made more dramatic by the bright yellow trains.
Then we heard the most beautiful singing. We followed it upstairs and found a lovely young Italian woman with a cello. At the end of her song she explained that it was a Ukrainian wedding song. She then sang an Italian song and told us about her upcoming concerts. What an amazing interlude that was!
After the walk Richard took me over to the beautiful Academy of the Arts building, of spectacular modern design. A good place to take advantage of a loo, I thought. I’m finally getting used to the fact that you need to pay to wee, in Austria and Germany (now we know why they talk of “spending a penny”). This being a highbrow place, a toilet visit cost 1€ rather than the earlier bargain wee, which was only 50c. I’d reached the turnstile and was scratching around for the requisite coin, when I young French woman came out, obviously muttering loudly about the cost of her visit. Fortuitously, she had the audience of 3 more French women, who had recently arrived, and her complaints intensified. They immediately got into a huddle to discuss the potential problem of paying €3 for entry. Happily, they quickly reached a solution to their dilemma. They lined up at the turnstile, backs to fronts- the senior member of the party counted: “un, deux, trois”, whacked the coin in the slot, and they sallied happily forth to their ablutions.
How I laughed! I would have paid them to do it again.
But wait, there’s more. The day was not yet over. Next, Richard took me to another iconic Berlin spot: a purveyor of fine sausages for nearly 100 years. We had bisonwurst, rolls, mustard and chips. SO good!
Man with sausage dog, eating sausages.
Did I mention that this was situated on a traffic island between 2 very busy roads in a trendy part of Berlin?
The day was not over yet. After a short rest back in Pankow, Richard and I headed out to visit the Reichstag building. Weather was looking ominous and thunder rumbling. Made it to the tube and all was well until we exited and a hurricane style wind whipped our umbrellas inside out. The rain came down and we made a dash for the covered entrance of the smartest hotel in Berlin, the Adlon. Others had the same idea and the smart porters with their red braces genially tolerated the scruffy group of refugees crowding their stairs as they rushed hither and thither with umbrellas to protect the real guests on the red carpet!
The rain and wind stopped as quickly as it started and we hot footed it to parliament. Passport checks and body check (yes, my metal knees set off the alarm again) and we could get up to the amazing dome. There were stunning views over all the city and even a peek of parliamentarians debating under the glass ceiling below us. A worthwhile visit but we were exhausted by then and went home to some delicious dumplings cooked by Reike and her boyfriend, Elias.
Slept well…😴
But
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