Woke up to a rainy day! Today marks a week of visiting sunny Berlin and we couldn't complain about a little rain. We still managed to dodge some raindrops to hop into a museum called Topographie of Terrors.
It was only a block away....the area where the most terrifying Nazi political departments had built their headquarters. A perserved section of the Berlin Wall runs alongside the grounds beside the torture cells.There was an extensive exhibition that documents the Nazi crimes. About an hour of torturous pictures was all that we could stand. It was a sad and depressing exhibit.
The sun came back full force and we head out early to go to the tallest tower in Berlin for a second try of going to the top. After a fabulous bike ride...traffic was nill on Sunday....we found a huge line coming out of the building which made us go to Plan B.
We rode over to one of the many docks to take the boat ride on the Spree. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed every minute of the tour....the best part...not having to stand in line.
After the river trip we had a great picnic lunch while watching a four person group play various snake charming style tunes.
On we rode along the Spree River heading to the Berlin Train Station called Hauptbahnhof. The city was lively with throngs of people out soaking up the sun. Along the way we passed many German Beer Gardens.
Reclining lawn chairs facing the river were lined up for Berlin sun worshippers. Upon arriving at our destination we saw a fantastic, massive, ultra-modern structure....a huge shopping mall and train/metro station rolled into one. This was even better than the one we saw in Milan.
After exploring the infinite number of floors of the train station, we headed over to Tiegarten to escape the crowds. Here we visited the Memorial for Murdered Jews, a Holocaust memorial for Germany.
Construction of the memorial began in 2003 with it being opened to the public in 2005. The memorial consists of 2711 concrete blocks and a visitor center.
We opted to come back to the visitors center on another day....it was just too beautiful to go inside.
We ran into the most interesting gentleman...he had been riding his motorcycle around the world since 2000. He was mute but happy as can possibly be. Larry took a real liking to him quickly.
The rest of the day we biked the streets of Berlin. What a fantastic way to spend a Sunday!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Today is a National Holiday in Berlin so all the offices and most stores are closed. At a cool 55 degrees with a blustery breeze, Larry and I layered up and headed our bikes for a little ride south of Tiergarten, yet another area that we had never been to in Berlin. Our destination was to see Kaiser-Wilhelm- Gadachtniskirche....what long name!...a church that was built in 1895 and destroyed by a bomb in 1945 during WWII.
After the war the ruins were removed leaving only the massive front tower. Original mosaics adorn the ceiling. Authorities decided to leave the church as a reminder of the terrors of war. A new octagonal church in blue glass was built beside it.
This area, the center of Western Berlin, is an ultra modern district full of department stores, offices, and restaurants. It also displays the sculpture called "Berlin". Erected in 1987, it symbolizes the former divided Berlin.
We also rode by the Berlin Zoo....we felt chilled so we headed our bikes back to the apartment arriving just in time for lunch. We decided to enjoy the rest of the day by reading, watching a movie and catching up on the emails.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
With sun shining high, we decided to spend the day taking an extra long bike ride to see the greatest palace in Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg. We decided to go through Tiergarten and pass over the Spree River into an area that we had not traveled....the long way....but it was delightful! The park was gorgeous with nice little bird sounds. We followed the Bellevue Allee Path all the way to the Spree crossing the bridge in front of the German White House. We followed the river through an exclusive area of nice homes and guarded high rises. It was a fantastic ride with manicured gardens of flowers and blooming bushes and trees while the river meander along the way.
One of the sights that we have been seeing during the past days in Berlin...bears....all decorated and painted in various ways. A bear is on the Berlin flag and bears on bridges. The bear is a symbol for the city.
We arrived at the palace about 12:30 and found a bench in a park to sit down to some left over fried chicken from the day before. After lunch we enjoyed the palace and its French style gardens laid out in a geometric pattern.
King Fridrich I built his wife's summer retreat here at the end of the 17th century. The area became inhabited by wealthy people living in elegant villas and officially became apart of Berlin in 1920.
Anyway, we headed back to our apartment riding through Otto Suhr through the Ernst-Reuter Platz and the Berlin University and then down Strasse Des Juni. Oh the sights!
We dined out at a cute Chinese Restaurant that we had walked by several evenings on our daily strolls. Delicious! Simply a terrific day in Berlin!
Wednesday May 22, 2013
We enjoyed a gorgeous bike ride to Alexandersplaza today taking in some of the parks that line the River Spree.
Statue of Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels..."old order" of long ago.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Today we rode of to the edge of the Tiergarten to get tickets to enter the Reichstag. Standing in line for along time, we finally entered the building with our passports to get tickets to enter on Sunday. This is a very popular tourist site and we had rode by it several times saying, 'Oh we'll go do that on a rainy day". Glad we didn't have to stand in line on a rainy day to get the tickets. While waiting we saw quite a few entertaining sights.
Curry wurst is the rage here...heartburn city!
Have you ever seen a human statue earn a living laying around?
Today we rode bikes to a terrific little upscale area with shops and restaurants beside the Spree that Berliners and tourist enjoy strolling around. It was a great area for just sitting and watching the boats go by.
St. Nicholas Quarter
Window shopping for German Products
German Biergarten
We bought tickets the day before on line to go up in the Fernsehturm... Berlin's and Europe's tallest building....(we actually got tired of arriving there to find a long line to go up in it) So with prepurchased online tickets up we went (at 8:00pm in the evening) thinking we were going to have a nice ice tea on top....Surprise...the place was booked with reservations so we snapped a few shots up on top and came back down. It was not as spectacular as we thought it was going to be....if you've been in the Space Needle in Seattle, the Empire State Building in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago, I guess it all starts to look alike.
Saturday, May 24, 2013
It was a totally rainy day, but we managed to get out for a little walk. We came across this huge map of Berlin. The map showed the Berlin Wall in red. It was so alarming to us! Larry and I had never known that the Wall circled the city with the West side being in the middle.
When the Wall came down, a path of where the original wall had been was marked by stones left in the pavement.We were aware of the hardships that Eastern Berliners had lived. We had thought that it had primarily been a hardship for the East. This map pointed out that the Berliners in the west were surrounded by the wall and could only leave through the airport or one train station. Although the west was the free side of the wall, it appears that Western Berliners were held captive within the wall.They too suffered many hardships.
What an eye opener!
Sunday, May 26, 2013
The rain continued on, but we grabbed a couple of umbrellas and caught the metro to use the tickets that we had waited in line for so long on Friday to the Reichstag, the German Parliament....Similar to the Capitol in Washington DC.
Reichstag with the new glass globe in the back
Berlin has a lot of modern and old buildings combined.
To enter we had to have our passport and tickets at a specific day and time. Our tickets allowed us to enter at 11:15. The building was very, very secured with metal detectors. I had a small bicycle tool in my bag and they took it and saved it for me to pick up when we left. Anyway, it was a great place to go on a rainy day.
The front of the Reichstag was constructed between 1884 and 1894. It became the official site of the German government but was deserted by the Nazi leadership in 1933. The building remained unused after a fire destroyed parts of it during WWII. Renovations took place beginning in 1957 and 1972. A new portion was built on with a glass globe structure attached and the German parliament began meeting there in 1999. It is truly an antique and modern architecture rolled into one. Fantastic views of the city can be seen from the glass globe, even on a rainy day.
One of the numerous views from the globe
As we left the Reichstag, we saw a number of slates sticking upward from the ground in a row. They had names and dates on them. When we asked about them, we found that they were a commemorative tombstone for all the parliament members who had died during WWII due to Nazi rule.
We had a great German lunch after our tour and then we walked over to the Holocaust Museum. We waited about 20 minutes to enter and went through a metal detector before entering the displays.
The pictures inside of the Holocaust victims were very vivid and depressing. Children under the age of 14 were warned against entering. After about an hour, we had seen plenty of the ravages of Hitler. Since it was not raining, we walked back to the apartment just missing the next group of showers.
Outside the Holocaust Memorial
Monday, May 27, 2013
The sun was high in the sky today so we headed our bicycles toward Victory Park about a 45 minute ride to the south. The ride was enjoyable passing over the Spree Canal and lots of little businesses along the tree lined streets.
Here we enjoyed the highest hill in Berlin. Victory Park had a magnificent 24 meter waterfall...manmade. Lots of winding paths lead to the top of the hill. The park was built around 1894. At the top of the hill was a monument created in 1821 to commemorate the Prussian victory against Napoleon. We had a nice view of the city while eating lunch on the top steps of the monument.
We enjoyed the streets of Berlin and another great park right in the middle of the city. What a great way to spend the day!
