We arrived in Berlin and took a taxi to Pankow, a nondescript residential neighborhood in former East Berlin, where we settled in to Shalev's studio. Thanks Shalev! The next morning, we had breakfast at the bakery next door, where the baker listed to our orders spoken in ratty German sounded out from the labels in front of each type of pastry, corrected our pronunciation, then insisted on hearing our corrected pronunciation before turning over the pastries. After some most excellent rhubarb pastries, we headed downtown. We heard so many horror stories about not validating one's S- or U-bahn tickets, it seemed appropriate to commemorate the act:
We took the S-bahn to the Brandenburg Gate, a former city gate and symbol of Berlin:
Pretzel and sausages, the cuisine of my people. Great shot of every single tooth in my lower jaw, no?
The real purpose of our trip to Germany:
The Reichstag, which was famously set on fire in 1933 by a Dutch communist. After the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenberg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties and which the Nazis used to ban publications that were not friendly to the Nazi cause. Pretty much the beginning of the Nazi era of Germans-behaving-badly. The Reichstag was reconstructed beginning in 1990 and reopened in 1999 as the meeting place of the Bundestag, the German parliament:
Remember how one of the iconic images of the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall was the East German Trabants driving on the Autobahn? Now you can drive them through Berlin on a Trabi-Safari. Alison, who is too young to remember the fall of the Berlin wall, could not understand why Hannah and I got all nostalgic at the site of crappy cars with blue clouds of oil smoke coming out the tail pipes. Trabi-safari:
On Friday Ronni took the train to Berlin from Cologne. We met her at the train station and went with her to Kreuzberg. (Later in the trip I went with her to this cute bar in Kreuzberg with the fox tail with binoculars:)
We stopped for pizza in Kreuzberg, where there was a picture of the funny and bossy guy behind counter with a Hitler mustache penciled in and the words "Pizza Nazi" written across the top. I didn't know you could call people "____ Nazi" in Germany, but I guess Seinfeld desensitized us all to that. Here are some helpful directions:
The River Spree:
Saturday Ronni met us in Prenzlauer Berg, where we walked around, shopped, had a cup of coffee, and tried to avoid disturbing the radishes:
Sunday I met Ronni for the exhibit at the German Historical Museum called "Hitler and the Germans." We spent a few minutes being annoyed by the exhibit, then left and cruised around museum island. This is what is known in my house as a Noamage, an homage to Noam - Noam loves him some photos that juxtapose old and new:
Sunday evening we walked through the Topography of Terror, a history of scary things Nazis did, located at the site of the Nazi security apparatus. We were relieved to note that the German treatment of this material is pretty similar to Yad Vashem's treatment (the national holocaust memorial in Israel). This is a picture from the Topography of Terror, *shudder*:
Actually the creepiest thing we saw was a picture from the 1960s of a Waffen SS reunion. Monday Alison and I headed out to Charlottenburg, home of Charlottenburg Palace, a palace built in the 17th century by the wife of Frederick I, the first king of Prussia. Charlottenburg Palace is the only royal residence in Berlin. Pretty neighborhood:
On our last day, I dragged Alison out to the suburb of Wannsee to see the Wannsee villa, where Hitler's lieutenants agreed on the final solution of the "Jewish question." The villa is on a street along the lake crammed with huge mansions. The villa was owned by the Nazi party and used by party higher ups for R and R. Disturbing to think of the premeditation, that the final solution was discussed not in a bunker but at a business meeting in this beautiful place - I can imagine some SS Gruppenfuhrer saying to his secretary "Lena, cancel my eleven o'clock, I have to schlep out to Wannsee for this meeting" (okay, maybe he didn't say schlep). The view from the Wannsee villa conference room:
I finally ate currywurst at the Wannsee train station, pretty much sausages with barbeque sauce. On our last evening, Alison and I waited in line to go inside the Reichstag. I am glad we bothered to do that, since shortly after we returned, I read that the Reichstag is now closed indefinitely to visitors due to security concerns. This is from near the top of the glass globe on the top, looking down into the chamber:
Thursday morning, we dropped the keys with the baker next door at 5 AM and took a taxi back to the airport. Bye Berlin!
We took the S-bahn to the Brandenburg Gate, a former city gate and symbol of Berlin:
Pretzel and sausages, the cuisine of my people. Great shot of every single tooth in my lower jaw, no?
The real purpose of our trip to Germany:
The Reichstag, which was famously set on fire in 1933 by a Dutch communist. After the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenberg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties and which the Nazis used to ban publications that were not friendly to the Nazi cause. Pretty much the beginning of the Nazi era of Germans-behaving-badly. The Reichstag was reconstructed beginning in 1990 and reopened in 1999 as the meeting place of the Bundestag, the German parliament:
Remember how one of the iconic images of the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall was the East German Trabants driving on the Autobahn? Now you can drive them through Berlin on a Trabi-Safari. Alison, who is too young to remember the fall of the Berlin wall, could not understand why Hannah and I got all nostalgic at the site of crappy cars with blue clouds of oil smoke coming out the tail pipes. Trabi-safari:
On Friday Ronni took the train to Berlin from Cologne. We met her at the train station and went with her to Kreuzberg. (Later in the trip I went with her to this cute bar in Kreuzberg with the fox tail with binoculars:)
We stopped for pizza in Kreuzberg, where there was a picture of the funny and bossy guy behind counter with a Hitler mustache penciled in and the words "Pizza Nazi" written across the top. I didn't know you could call people "____ Nazi" in Germany, but I guess Seinfeld desensitized us all to that. Here are some helpful directions:
The River Spree:
Saturday Ronni met us in Prenzlauer Berg, where we walked around, shopped, had a cup of coffee, and tried to avoid disturbing the radishes:
Sunday I met Ronni for the exhibit at the German Historical Museum called "Hitler and the Germans." We spent a few minutes being annoyed by the exhibit, then left and cruised around museum island. This is what is known in my house as a Noamage, an homage to Noam - Noam loves him some photos that juxtapose old and new:
Sunday evening we walked through the Topography of Terror, a history of scary things Nazis did, located at the site of the Nazi security apparatus. We were relieved to note that the German treatment of this material is pretty similar to Yad Vashem's treatment (the national holocaust memorial in Israel). This is a picture from the Topography of Terror, *shudder*:
Actually the creepiest thing we saw was a picture from the 1960s of a Waffen SS reunion. Monday Alison and I headed out to Charlottenburg, home of Charlottenburg Palace, a palace built in the 17th century by the wife of Frederick I, the first king of Prussia. Charlottenburg Palace is the only royal residence in Berlin. Pretty neighborhood:
On our last day, I dragged Alison out to the suburb of Wannsee to see the Wannsee villa, where Hitler's lieutenants agreed on the final solution of the "Jewish question." The villa is on a street along the lake crammed with huge mansions. The villa was owned by the Nazi party and used by party higher ups for R and R. Disturbing to think of the premeditation, that the final solution was discussed not in a bunker but at a business meeting in this beautiful place - I can imagine some SS Gruppenfuhrer saying to his secretary "Lena, cancel my eleven o'clock, I have to schlep out to Wannsee for this meeting" (okay, maybe he didn't say schlep). The view from the Wannsee villa conference room:
I finally ate currywurst at the Wannsee train station, pretty much sausages with barbeque sauce. On our last evening, Alison and I waited in line to go inside the Reichstag. I am glad we bothered to do that, since shortly after we returned, I read that the Reichstag is now closed indefinitely to visitors due to security concerns. This is from near the top of the glass globe on the top, looking down into the chamber:
Thursday morning, we dropped the keys with the baker next door at 5 AM and took a taxi back to the airport. Bye Berlin!
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