Equipped with 7-day
travel tickets we explored Berlin using S-Bahn (surface railway),
U-Bahn (underground railway), buses, trams and a great deal of
walking. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, especially
considering that it rained on our way to Berlin on Wednesday. It was
cold, sometimes as low as 8ยบC,
but we had wall-to-wall sunshine and beautiful blue skies until about
two hours before Ann and Nick were due to leave when the clouds
gathered and we had gentle drizzle.
Highlights of the week
for me, apart from being with Ann and Nick, were the Reichstag Dome
(wonderful views over Berlin, excellent Norman Foster design and a
very good audio guide), the Pergamon and Altes Museums (archaeology)
and the Berlin Wall Memorial Site. The latter is an outdoor
exhibition between the Nordbahnhof and Bernauer Strasse U-Bahn
stations and includes a section of original Berlin Wall. The Michelin
Guide only makes a casual mention of it but it is essential viewing
for anyone who is interested in the Berlin Wall. I suspect that it
has been improved and added to over the last couple of years and
consists of many installations all along that stretch of Bernauer
Strasse. Nordbahnhof station has been left as it looked when the wall
was built as it was closed during the whole life of the wall,
becoming a so-called 'ghost station'. An exhibition in the station
takes about the other 'ghost stations' some of which, were passed
through every day by West Berliners travelling on lines that briefly
dipped into East Berlin. East German police guarded the station
platforms to ensure that the trains didn't stop.
Just outside the
station is a visitors' centre (we didn't visit this due to lack of
time) and this is then followed by a modern church marking the site
of one demolished by the DDR when they reinforced the wall. A section
of the wall has been restored complete with the second wall on the
DDR side and the so-called 'Killing Zone' between them overlooked by
a control tower. A Documentation Centre has been built opposite here
and has a tower attached that allows visitors to climb to a height
where the walls can be viewed. All along the road there are
installations that give information, in German and English, about the
history and construction of the wall, the buildings around it and the
escapes that took place in that area. This includes photographs,
voice recordings of the stories of the people and even a number of
videos – all in the outside installations. This free exhibition
come highly recommended. More detail is covered in the Checkpoint
Charlie Museum but reading, hearing and seeing the stories in the
place where they happened made them so real.
Some of the other
sights that we saw were: The East Side Gallery (sections of the wall
painted by many artists); Brandenburg Gate and Unter Den Linden
(architecture); The Holocaust Memorial (very well presented and
heartbreaking); Potsdam; The Checkpoint Charlie Museum (very busy,
chaotic layout, not cheap at €12.50 but absolutely fascinating and
worth the money).
Our favourite
restaurant was Max & Moritz in Oranienstrasse (recommended by a
friend of Ann's niece – thanks Kate), which has excellent
traditional German food, a good atmosphere and lovely beer
(especially their unfiltered house beer).
Photos: One of the many
paintings on the wall at the East Side Gallery; A view of the wall
from the observation tower on Bernauer Strasse; A small section altar
frieze of Pergamon, an ancient Greek site in Turkey; There were a
number of multi-person peddle-power tours available of the city
centre – this one allowed you to drink beer whilst peddling away. I
doubt whether much sightseeing was done but it looks like great fun;
The mirrors under the Reichstag Dome designed to reflect light into
the parliament building below; It was the Festival of Lights whilst
we were there and many buildings were floodlit.
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