Arrived in Berlin

After a cooler and somewhat cloudy week in Barcelona, our last afternoon was what you would expect for there.  It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon with the blue Mediterranean sea as a backdrop for a crowded beach full of bathers.  We found a bench and just people watched for awhile.  Left the next morning for Berlin.

We were picked up at the airport by a couple we had met the previous year on our Alaska trip.  They gave us a tour of Berlin, highlighting what we might want to visit during our stay, and topped off with a traditional German meal at a local restaurant.  Klaus and Sophie were very generous with their time and information while we were there and we had a delightful week with them.  Klaus and Doug had a friendly competition in eating large platters of traditional German sausage and cabbage dishes and drinking German beers.  Whatever Klaus suggested, Doug was all for, including pigs feet.  I enjoyed less exotic German dishes and totally enjoyed the German Reislings.  I so wish I could have brought a couple cases home with me.

Both Klaus and Sophie were in Berlin while the wall was still up and shared some very interesting personal insights into what it was like then.  Sophie is a tour guide so she pointed us to a wall museum that, I think, brought home more completely than Checkpoint Charlie what it was like having the wall cut through the city.  I don't think I appreciated what it was all like until we toured the grounds at that museum.  Whole neighborhoods were just dynamited to make room for the expansion of the wall as time went by and the Russians decided to reinforce their barrier by building two walls with the deadman's zone in-between.




This is a wall of pictures of those that were killed trying to cross the wall.










The museum grounds is where a church used to be that was dynamited.  The grave yard is still there but the church was just taken down.  It had been there for centuries but that didn't matter.  I lived through that period but we are so isolated here in the states, or at least I was, in our little bubble.  That is probably a total generalization and doesn't apply to everyone, but I think it does to too many people here.  I certainly knew about it.  It started when I was a young teen and didn't come down until my kids were teens but it becomes more real when you see it "up close and personal".  Maybe that just applies to me but I was very impressed.

Berlin did not want to forget the period of the wall when Germany reunited, so there are parts of the wall that were preserved before the whole thing was torn down.  One big section was left and artists from all over painted the wall.  It was a freeing exercise to be able to paint on something that had been such a negative symbol.  So we saw all the iconic paintings.  Even the graffiti is part of the expression of freedom that was denied for so long.

Berlin also laid a double row of bricks in the streets to follow the whole path of the original wall.  We had a section of it right outside our hotel and we were actually staying in what had been East Berlin.









There are also several Russian monuments in Berlin that, by law, must be maintained as part of the agreement the Russians made when Germany was reunited.  The biggest one is really big and dedicated to Stalin's teachings.  The reliefs along the sides are very worker/soldier themed and one side has Stalin quotes in Russian while the other has them in German.