Through My Eyes: Day 7-8: Berlin

On Friday we got up, packed up our stuff, and headed back toward Germany. We drove on the A1 autobahn out of the Netherlands and across the border into northern Germany. We thought we'd drive through Hanover, but ended up just skirting the northern edge of the city. It was a pretty long drive, and northern Germany is not really so engaging, but in the afternoon we started driving through more wooded countryside until we reached the outskirts of Berlin.

It was so interesting to drive through west Berlin and into east Berlin! There are lots of cold-war era remnants to be seen, such as guard booths.

We checked into a hotel right on the western edge of Tiergarten (a huge Central Park-type park in the middle of Berlin).

Novotel Berlin Am Tiergarten-- A nice hotel, and finally one with a soft mattress! It was heaven on my back.

After checking in, we walked a mile or so to the Victory Column in the center of Tiergarten. To get to the column itself, you actually cross the road via an underground tunnel. The tunnel echoed with the music of a young man playing a violin just in front of the stairs leading up to the column.

Victory Column was built in the 1870's as a tribute to German military victories over Denmark and Prussia. It is enormous-- 220 feet high, and gorgeous, with intricate mosaics and friezes along all four sides of the base.

It survived the destruction of WWII, although there are numerous bullet scars still visible, and many parts of the relief sculpture had been blasted off.

The statue of Victoria at the top of the column stands just atop an observation deck. Ben and Brigham and Moses climbed 287 steps up to the top for a birds-eye view of Berlin.

Here are a few of the frieze panels along the base. You can see how a few heads and other elements of the sculpture are missing-- blown off by the bombings and shootings in Berlin at the end of WWII.

Ben took me part of the way up to the columned pedestal where I waited while he and the boys climbed to the top. The glass mosaics really were amazing.

We walked back toward the hotel, to a small restaurant just inside the Tiergarten. The food was great! Then back to the hotel for the night.

The next morning we got up early and walked across the street from the hotel to a train station. From there we took a train a short way to the Hackescher Markt S-Bahn station where we joined a guide for a half-day Berlin walking tour. The guide was a funny red-headed guy from Ireland, of all places, but he knew so much and was very entertaining. Here's the overview of the tour we took (not our exact tour-- that one didn't have an overview like this on their website, but we visited almost all the same sites):
Your guide will begin with an overview of how Berlin was founded, and will continue explaining the long, complex and fascinating history of Germany’s capital city throughout your tour.
Stroll down the Unter den Linden boulevard, linking the Stadtschloss royal palace to Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate. As Berlin grew and expanded to the west, Unter den Linden became the grandest and best-known street in the city by the 19th century.
Visit Museum Island, the Neue Wache memorial and the Berlin State Library, where Albert Einstein once worked, and walk under the triumphal arc of Brandenburg Gate, the monumental entry to Unter den Linden. Nearby you’ll see the Reichstag parliament building, Pariser Platz, Hitler’s bunker and the poignant Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial.
Follow the 'death strip' to Checkpoint Charlie, and stand in the square of Bebelplatz, the site of the infamous 1933 Nazi book burnings. Walk along the remains of the Berlin Wall, which once divided East and West Berlin, and learn of the momentous events leading to its collapse in 1989.
Pause outside the Topography of Terror museum, located on the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. Your guide will explain how the museum’s intentioned location reflects Berlin’s efforts at confronting and grappling with its past. Look down into the excavated cellars, where political prisoners were tortured and executed.

On a lighter note, get a taste of modern Berlin at Potsdamer Platz, with its urban architectural spread, and see how the area of Friedrichstrasse is being reinvented as Berlin's luxury shopping street. Your tour ends at the beautiful square of Gendarmenmarkt, and you'll be provided a city map with information regarding public transport and the best of Berlin's museums and nightlife.

Here is Mosey at the Neue Wache Memorial, or Mother with her Dead Son. It's officially called the "Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny."

Brigham in front of one of the Humboldt University buildings. Humboldt is the oldest university in Berlin, having survived the war. Famous students include Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Werner Eisenberg, Karl Marx, Hegel, Friedrich Engels, and Otto von Bismarck.

The University surrounded Bebelplatz, a square where the book burning memorial is. It's an empty underground room with shelf space for 20,000 books.

Seeing remnants of the Berlin Wall was especially poignant.

The Holocaust Memorial was also amazing. It is made of 2,711 concrete blocks on an almost 5 acre square just down the street from the Brandenburg gate.

We stopped midway through at a little cafe for lunch.

And here's Mosey, standing with one foot in East Berlin, the other in West Berlin. The site of the old Berlin wall is marked throughout the entire city.

Some other memorable sites:

Berlin Cathedral

Checkpoint Charlie

This parking lot of a generic communist-era apartment building is directly above the place where Hitler's bunker was-- the site of his suicide.

This is the Topography of Terror museum-- the site of the SS and Gestapo headquarters, where files for thousands upon thousands of regular East German citizens were kept during the cold war.

We also walked past the Air Ministry building, which was the headquarters for the Luftwaffe during WWII. It is the only Nazi-era building still in use today, and now houses the German Finance Ministry.

An enormous 1953 mural, showing the joy of living in soviet-controlled East Germany.

The tour ended at the Brandenburg Gate.

Just inside Brandenburg Gate is the Pariser Platz. This great big square has the U.S. embassy on one side, the French embassy on the other side, as well as the Adlon Hotel, where Michael Jackson dangled his baby. These buildings were all rebuilt after WWII, and unfortunately they are all pretty ugly buildings. :-)

That's where our tour ended. We stayed in the square for a while, deciding what our next move would be. After a few minutes, we walked out of the Brandenburg Gate, and realized we no longer had Mosey with us! After looking around for several minutes and not finding him, we sent Brigham and Joseph back to the hotel to see if he was there. Ben went back to the Holocaust memorial, since Mosey had said he wanted to go back there. I stayed in front of the gates, my eyes peeled. I wasn't terribly worried-- Mosey is pretty responsible, but I admit to being a little nervous as I watched a middle eastern protest group gathered in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Scenarios of kidnapping and ransom demands by terrorist groups passed through my mind. But finally we were reunited. Turns out that Mosey had not even left the Brandenburg Gate area. But there were so many people, we just didn't see him. I was very, very glad to have him back! We ended up walking to a mall nearby for Ben to buy some more clothing, and to find some food to eat.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Reichstag Building, now home to the German Parliament. It would have been fun to tour the glass dome, but that requires tickets and hours in line, so pictures in front would have to suffice.