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Thursday 24 December 2015

Berlin and Potsdam...outsider view

...or, How Long Ago Was the War, Again?!

For me, Berlin was pretty complicated and confusing. I really liked it there, found it to be a pretty, modern, progressive, well-organized, and welcoming place. The confusing part for me was trying to figure out how much attention to pay, and in which circumstances, to all that history.

Doesn't anybody else notice how completely in your face the effects of WWII and and the consequent Cold War are? Do they just not see it anymore, or do you only see it if you're an outsider or someone old enough to have lived through some part of it? Reunification was 25 years ago, after all.

Pretty much every major building or statue more than 75 years old has bullet and shell and  bomb shrapnel marks on it.
One of the columns of the Brandenburg Gate...I guess colour matching was not a priority with the East German repair guys.

Kind of hard to see, again, but look closely at the columns...that's not supposed to be some kind of "spotty" stone.

See that Maltese cross, on top of the Brandenburg Gate?  It has its own story, put up there, taken down, put up again...just depending on who was ruling the country at which time.
The Wall is gone,
(but they put in a line of cobblestones along the line the Wall used to stand on...East Germany to your left, West Germany to your right, Brandenburg Gate in the background just left of center)
but there are a lot more really ugly less-than-70-year-old buildings in what used to be East Berlin than in West....and a lot fewer historical buildings, like churches, in general, too. There are still lots of former East Berliners who look askance at the money being poured into what used to be their side of the Wall, much like residents of the downtown East side of Vancouver regard the gentrification of their neighbourhood.

There are very quiet little brass plaques in front of lots of apartment buildings that say that so-and-so, born on such-and-such, was arrested or removed or deported from this location on this date and died in another location on this other date. The other location was very frequently recognizable as a concentration camp and the date of death was very frequently before 1945.

There is of course the (to me) incomprehensible Holocaust Memorial,
Maybe I just need to be TOLD what to think, but I didn't get it, the Holocaust Memorial.  I can hardly imagine the debates that were had and money that must have been spent to arrive at this.
and a museum built on the foundations of the former Gestapo HQ building called The Topography of Terror.
Photo of a photo from 1945 showing Gestapo HQ in the middle, and a building labeled "Museum" on the right.  Note how damaged the museum building is.

Photo from summer of 1988, East Germany on the right, Wall in the middle, flattened site of Gestapo HQ just to the left, and that Museum building in the background.

That Museum building is to the left, the Wall runs through the middle, and now the foundations of Gestapo HQ host museum exhibits just below the Wall.

Along the Wall, looking back towards that last shot.  That damaged building labeled museum is behind me. The Topography of Terror exhibits are all under the glass stretching away on the right.  This is the sidewalk that ran in front of Gestapo HQ.

Museum building details.  Go back up a few photos and look at what a mess this building was in 1945.  Somebody somewhere still knows how to do work like this.

Another detail of the Museum building next to the Topography of Terror museum.  Note the varying colour of the stone.
It details the rise and fall of National Socialism. I got what was probably the intended message: that it was much more insidious than many might imagine, and that anyone who believes such a thing could never happen in their world should think again. Heaven knows the world has seen plenty of subsequent examples, even among the winners of WWII.

Okay, enough, already. I'm just saying that for me, every time I turned around, I saw some other reminder of the 55 or so very troubled years between about 1934 and 1990. It must get exhausting not thinking about that, yet it must be completely necessary to not think about it and notice it like tourists do. I know this blog is just supposed to be fun, but...
The Reichstag, house of German government.  I think this building stood vacant from at least 1945 to 1990; it may have been vacant since it mysteriously burned in 1933, giving Hitler an excuse to enact all kinds of excellent law and order laws.  In any case, it's in use now.  There is a huge open space behind and to the left of me, I guess in case anyone wants to have a gigantic political rally.

The main reason it was easy to see a lot of things was that the place we stayed at came with bikes for us to use - big heavy black iron horses with 6-speed Shimano hubs. Happily, Berlin is mostly flat. Much more importantly, the whole place is absolutely set up for cyclists, with bike lanes on most streets and sidewalks and often, at the busiest intersections, bike traffic lights. You can go anywhere easily and quickly. Every bike has a little 10-cent bell on it, and as a pedestrian you very quickly become attuned to the single chime everyone uses to tell you politely to get out of the way, dumkopf, you're in the bike lane. I want one of those little bells.
Here's Dale, fearlessly pinning a series of tour buses to the curb with his all-powerful 10-cent bell.  We're approaching the Brandenburg Gate.

We stayed in the neighbourhood of the Kurferstendammerstrasse, Berlin's Robson Street, very BERY high end shopping...
Prices are hard to see, but they're high...REAL high.

yet food was just normally expensive. Also, this was my first discovery that Germans don't appear to have much more zest for vegetables than the average 7 year old. I'm not a vegetable guy and even I sure noticed their absence. The beer was the compensation.
I discovered that this same beer out of the same bottle here at home was not the revelation it was the "100-Bier Haus"

Potsdam was another great surprise, for me at least. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and if you like palaces, this is the place to go. Even here, though...Potsdam is where the famous Gleineke Bridge (aka the Bridge of Spies (and how I wasn't mistaken for Tom Hanks I'll never know....probably because I look so much like George Clooney)) is,
This is it, the Spy Bridge...and the Marble Palace, where they drew the Cold War lines, is just out of sight across the lake to the right.
where East and West exchanged captured spies at the height of the Cold War.  It's also where the Marble Palace is, where the winners of WWII sat down to agree on dividing Germany between them, in the Potsdam Accord.
The Marble Palace.  There's some helpful tourists on the left, posing just to add perspective.  It's like some kind of  Royal Ranch House thing.

Not the most imposing of the Potsdam palaces, but they really changed the world after being in here a few days.
Even the palaces themselves exhibit the impact of Soviet ideology and economics during decades of Soviet proprietorship - lots of damage from neglect as well as damage from looting. Nobody HAS to think about this stuff while enjoying all that imperial excess but I found it hard not to, and I don't even know much history.
This is the New Palace, a gigantic thing that they've been pouring money into restoring since the early '90s.  Apparently the roof leaked and it was open season on souvenirs for the whole duration of the Communist regime.  Money was tough to find if you wanted to restore or sustain monuments to imperialism, I guess.

This is a detail from I think the Grotto Room of the New Palace...a very large space completely decorated with shells and coral and mother of pearl, an ocean theme.  So now we know that it has always been true that spending a great deal of money doesn't always guarantee beauty.
This is the servants quarters and kitchens for the New Palace.  There's a tunnel from this building to the palace so the food would stay warmer.

These are the guest quarters for the New Palace.  I would have thought there'd be room at the Big House way off camera to the right, given its size, but maybe you got stuck over here if you weren't a big enough shot.
This is a gilded lion spouting water into a pool, at the gates to a summer palace just near the Spy Bridge.  A gilded lion, spouting water.  Oh, and pinning down some kind of gilded orb, probably the world. I wonder why all lion statues seem to have a mandatory "right front paw raised" pose.

I don't know about you, but whenever I'm building a ridiculously opulent fountain, I insist on a minimum of two life-sized gilded lions spouting water.  Minimum.  This guy broke the rule, went with left front paw raised.

This is the Dutch Quarter in Potsdam.  Built about 1680 (I think...my fact-checker is off for Christmas), the idea was to tempt skilled but religiously-persecuted Dutch craftsmen to come and live and work in Germany, decorating opulent palaces.  So this is what the Germans thought would look like home to the Dutch artisans.

This is part of the same summer palace that has the gilded lions.  It's called The Great Curiosity...which suggests nobody really knew what it should be used for, but it would be cool for it be circular, and gilded.

I believe this was called the Orangerie, not sure why.  Possibly because it was intended as a place where you could grow oranges, kind of a super-deluxe greenhouse.  Possibly not.

There was a big fad amongst European royalty for all things Chinese.  This pavilion is intended to be a little piece of the orient right here in Potsdam.  All the figures are intended as asian, in Chinese dress and theoretically representing something to do with life in China.  Nailed it. They look like European opera stars, possibly from the 1950s doing "Madame Butterfly".

I didn't even get the name of this palace, but I bet it's The Windmill Palace or something a lot like it.  No idea what the thinking was here.  Moulin Rouge?

A lot of people I don't know obligingly posing in front of Sans Souci, the famous summer palace.  As palaces go, this place was somewhat unassuming, but it was easy to see the appeal.

I told them all to get lost and took another shot.  I have this feeling those may not be the original doors.

The view from the front doors of Sans Souci.  See?  I can easily imagine a folding chair and a glass of lemonade, sitting out front and taking in this view, a respite from the trials of running an empire.

This is not a palace of any sort, but some kind of house that someone deliberately built to look like a ruin.  There must be a story here.  It's right next door to the Marble Palace.

This trendy storefront on the Kurfurstendammerstrasse reflects the height of leather fashions in Berlin.  This is not cheap rent, so someone is paying a lot of money for those clothes.

Another very expensive leather store.  I wish I was as cool as that guy in the middle.Wait, I am...

An un-fun note: we saw lots of the well known highlights of Berlin and they were great. We also saw Checkpoint Charlie, another well-known landmark, and it was a cheesy tourist-trap disgrace.  Just don't, I say. 

A fun note to end: on the trains they have these symbols telling you what you may not do: a cigarette with a red line through it means no smoking, a side of fries with a red line means no eating junk food, I guess...but check out these symbols from the u-bahn (underground) and the s-bahn (above ground or surface) trains:

Had some trouble with image sizing, but pretty straightforward, right?  "Nothing with alcohol in it on this train".  Not surprising....except when we got on a surface train.
This is the symbol on the surface train.  We had dinner with a couple of German guys, and they explained that my assumption that this symbol means "no beer on the train" was wrong wrong wrong.  This symbol means "When you've finished your beer on the train, don't throw the empty out the window". Well, okay, thanks for the tip. Makes me wonder why there aren't other symbols for other petty crimes one might unthinkingly commit, like "Don't push kids and old people under the train" or "No leaping out the window".



Thursday 12 November 2015

Munich to Berlin....

...or, Whoa, Dude, It's Gone All Europe Out.

I've been trying to decide whether what I think about this part of the trip is really about the impact that a strange foreign place makes when you first arrive - land in Munich at 10 in the morning their time after leaving Vancouver at 1 pm our time, not really too sure WHAT time it actually is, blunder around the airport trying to find your buddy arriving on a different flight...it's a strange kind of fun.

We rented a car at the airport and headed out. I was in a daze and have no pictures of the car but it was a nice Ford compact of some sort. First thing I notice: windmills.  Big huge ones like the one up Grouse Mountain, only these ones are all turning. Lots of them, you start to get that "War of the Worlds" feeling.

They're everywhere! If I lived around here I think the first thing I'd do every morning is look out the window to make sure none of them moved in the night.
Then I notice that buildings everywhere have solar panels. Conclusion: electricity is expensive here, and it must be windy, too.

There are other fun things to see, like lots of three wheeled motorcycles pulling little trailers, coming home from their weekend camp-outs. Why three-wheeled motorcycles?  Who can know...



Eventually we got off the autobahn and went into a town called Hof, our first real stop.
This is the city hall for the town of Hof.  I don't know when it was built, but to me it just SCREAMS apfel strudel.
All the buildings and sreets are strange and charming, people are nice, coffee is good. I didn't realize that Dale, my travel partner/guide, came here for more than just coffee. When we got back in the car we stayed on side roads and soon came into some tiny little hamlet that had its own little Wall, and a museum where you got the rundown on how it all worked. This little tiny place, about 50 people, has a brook going through it, you could jump across it in flip-flops, and when they made the deal in '45 on dividing Germany, this brook was part of the border. East and West spent the next 45 years looking at each other across that brook, a Wall, guard towers, a checkpoint, dogs, guns, barriers...the works. We toured it.  Here's a link to a site that sort of describes it...Modlareuth is the name of the place.
See how narrow this road is?  And yet at the bottom of this hill they had a Wall of their own, with a gate and dogs and guards...I think that white thing just left of center is their little Wall, now part of a museum.

There is still a fence and car barrier and patrol road and bare strip of raked earth for a long ways along the border here, even though it can now be crossed freely..
The concrete was to drive on while patrolling, the little post used to be for communications, the bare dirt strip was kept herbicided and raked so footprints were easy to see...fence is to the far left, this used to be East Germany.
Guard tower...you could climb up into it and look out through all the little shooting slots...
Finally, we arrived in Nuremberg and navigated to our AirBNB place.  Nuremberg was very picturesque, and it was some kind of Medieval Days festival at the castle a few blocks from our place. We wandered around, stopped for a beer, looked at old old churches, and had a great dinner at a local place our host recommended. Totally Europe.
Inner courtyard at Nuremberg Castle...It's old here, real old....maybe a little TOO old.

Medieval Days at Nuremberg Castle, between the inner and outer walls.  Note the whole pig on a spit to the left. Close examination will also reveal people in costume. No bagpiping skinheads in this shot, though.

Just a detail on the inner wall at the castle.  I guess "money to burn" has always equated to just "power".

That same wall, just for some context on the worth of doing all that carving, for that one corner piece.

Detail on one of four very elaborate old churches in the old part of Nuremberg.  Again, "money to burn"....and I don't know what that gilded caption says or means other than "1509".

Longer view of that same church.
From a bridge in old Nuremberg, very near where we sat and enjoyed a quiet beer, watching people cross the bridge.  Jet lag can be quite peaceful. 
The view from the 4th floor walkup in Nuremberg.  I particularly like the cabling job across the street on the roof, from the satellite dishes to people's apartments.
I was going to skip this, but since (a) I made such a fuss about it when we were there and (b) we didn't have time to go see what's left of the great rally area from the bad old days, I have to mention it, and ask questions: is there such a thing as medieval bagpipes?  Were there ever bagpipes in Bavaria?  And do bagpipes currently have some connection to skinheads? I ask because one of the tents in Medieval Days at Nuremberg Castle featured a bare chested skinhead in a kilt and army boots screaming out lyrics about death and violence and playing bagpipes apparently made out of wood and animal skin. You can thank me later for not having pictures, because I'm still haunted by everything wrong with that guy in that place. You don't want the visual; the visual makes me wish I could poke out my mind's eye.

The good meal, pleasant host, cool castle, and a sound sleep made most of the bagpiper conundrum dissipate.  The next day, feeling all happy about the reunification of Germany, we resumed the Autobahn.  More windmills and even what looked like a nuclear plant.
Pretty sure those are cooling towers just left of center...
Here's a very short video of a couple of cars in the fast lane passing us as we bumbled along the Autobahn at a turtle-like 140 kph... cars going real fast

Anyway...after that it was a pleasant couple of hrs in Leipzig followed by deep gratitude for GPS having been invented and getting us to Berlin.
I'm not doing Leipzig any favours with this shot...a typically really ugly Soviet-era public building with some kind of inspirational message in Latin next to a kind of latter-day workingman's glockenspiel..."Omnia Vincit Labour"...no mixed up messaging here at all.

Trying to make amends to Leipzig with a picture of an ornate memorial fountain in front of I think their very modern university.