Berlin, Germany
August 2 - 9

There are also pages about the Musikinstrumenten Museum (Musical Instrument Museum),
the East Side Gallery (Art on the Wall), and the Berlin Bierfestival (Beer Festival).

Four million people. It's a big city. It's the locus of all the history of the 20th Century. WWI, WWII, and the Cold War were all centered right here.

Like Dresden and Leipzig, much of Berlin was destroyed in the 1940s. Like them, serious rebuilding didn't start until the 1990s. And like them it's progressing like gangbusters. Streets that went through yesterday don't today. But at least the streets are named and have proper, findable signs. We actually drove in to a laundromat, to the beer festival, Checkpoint Charlie, and back out again with only a couple of deviations from our planned route - although the first time in Berlin we got totally lost and detoured to Potsdam to find our way out.

As you expect, a lot of our rambling around Berlin was centered on the Wall. Having only been gone for 15 years, it's likely to be the major tourist attraction for the next 40 years or so. We also hung around an in-town neighborhood for a bit and a smaller town out on the ring road autobahn, Ludwigsfelde.

Bob spent three days at the Internationales Berliner Bierfestival, one with Terry. She wandered Berlin one day via the trains and wandered Ludwigsfelde on the other through a small village summerfest without a camera. It also rained off and on each day we were in town and hovered around 70° each day.

First, random scenes around town.

Berlin's mascot is the bear. Try to spot the American logos.

The German state library.

Bebelplatz. The aptly-named place of the first Nazi book burning.
There's supposed to be a small plaque but we didn't look for it.

Schloss Charlottensburg.

Street pickups for recycling are everywhere.
Separate your glass into clear, green, and brown. Paper, metal, and other.

The old and the new are interchangeable, block to block.

The Soviet war memorial.

The first Soviet tank to enter the city in 1945.

Brandenburg Tor (Gate). The symbol of Berlin.
It was just inside the East section.
The crane in the background is a common sight, as is the TV tower.

Berliner Dom (with TV tower).

Karl Marx Allee on the east side (with TV tower).

Line of tourists to go up the TV tower.
Lonely planet describes the view from the TV tower as the best in Berlin,
if only because it's the only place in Berlin you can't see the TV tower.

Potsdamer Platz is a new, vital center of business. MB and Sony have big complexes and a half dozen more are being built.

In 1972

There's, of course some of the wall
as well as two rows of bricks where the wall was.

In one block along the Niederkirebner Strasse, 60 years of history all comes together. It's an outdoor free museum called the Topography of Terror. On the south side (below) a 2-block long chronological display is built against the foundation of the old Hotel Prinz Albrecht which was the headquarters of the Gestapo. (The hotel was destroyed by bombing in 1945 and torn down in the 1950s). This massive display details the Gestapo's crimes with names, pictures, and details.

Just to the north of this is a 200 meter section of the Wall that, since 2000, has been behind a protective fence. Several plans have been put forth to build an appropriate building for the Gestapo displays but it just seems right the way it is.

Then, of course, there's Checkpoint Charlie. The most visited tourist site in town. You've seen the pictures. The guard jumping the barbed wire. People being lowered from windows down to the West side. The US and Soviet tanks faced off against each other. Kennedy's speech.

Most of the traffic between the sectors went through this point and it was here people escaped in trunks and gas tanks of cars. One woman smuggled a baby out in a shopping bag.

It was here Conrad Schumann, a Soviet guard, jumped the barbed wire a couple of days after it's October 19, 1962 erection - wonderfully filmed - he takes a wide leap and throws his gun down in one smooth movement.

After the barbed wire and before the wall.
The "East" is to the north (top) and the "West" is to the south (bottom).

They rebuilt the Checkpoint building in the middle of Friedrichstrasse.
Now the sandbags are filled with concrete.
You can take your picture with appropriately uniformed "guards" and flags for just 1€.
We can't think of a better use for the grim thing.

Looking north ("East") today. All new buildings - and a reproduction sign.

Looking south.

There's a Subway nestled among the dozen gift shops and traffic drives down the street trying to avoid the pedestrian photographers.

But there's one special museum where we spent more than 3 hours. The "Haus am Checkpoint Charlie" has been displaying memorabilia about the Wall, escape attempts, famous people, movies of famous events, etc. since - get this - 1962. It was built right at the US Army checkpoint and actually had a stray bullet go through a window in 1973.

The founder, Rainer Hidebrandt, publicized and encouraged escape attempts and gave employment to Easterners who escaped. The museum displayed messages to GDR guards and knew which ones had indicated they would not shoot escapees.

The list of notable people who have visited is long (and prominently displayed). Konrad Adenauer, Elena Bonner Willy Brandt, Ela Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Henry Kissinger, Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Steinbeck, Lech Walesa. It probably wasn't delightfully shoulder to shoulder for them as it was for us.

They have the original You Are Leaving the American Sector sign; an Isetta, a VW, and 4 other escape cars; the shopping bag the baby was smuggled in; home-made balloons and ultralights; two surfboards glued together and hollowed out which hid one woman; dirt carts used in tunneling; on and on.

One famous tunnel got 57 people out but the tunneler wouldn't let some neighbors go through since he thought the small crawl-hole would be to strenuous for them (aged 46 to 81). So 9 of the neighbors built their own 5ft high and they and their wives all walked 90ft to the West.

Two rooms are devoted to non-violent protest and detail successes by Gandhi, Walesa, King, as well as the downfall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. The "Three Days in August" in Moscow when the military coup against Gorbachev was put down gets special attention as does Gandhi (with several personal artifacts donated by his family - including a sari spun and made by Kasturba, his wife).

All really powerful stuff. The mood is quiet and everyone is overwhelmed. German parents are explaining things to their pre-teen children. Tourists just read (all signs are in German, English, and Russian). This place, by itself, is reason enough to go to Europe.

Then, down the street. How wonderful.

Feedback

Bob Burns thinks the Beetle Carhenge being nose up is a bit optimistic. The Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, TX has the fins in the air.

He asks: "What does the average German drive? VW? Opel? Some damn French or Czech car? Diesel, no doubt?"

I've been surprised that the cars are so new. No smoking rattletraps (in fact even the Trabants don't smoke). We thought there must be a state inspection, well Terry mentioned it and, lo and behold, an hour later we went past a garage with an "Inspection 19.-" sign. But that's the only one we've seen so it probably meant something else.

VWs are by far the most common. Opels are scarcer - almost all of them wagons. More Opels than Audis. Plenty of MB A-series and Smart Cars. A smattering of BMWs. There's plenty of Nissan, Honda, and Renault dealers. Skodas are more plentiful than I would have thought. So are SEATs - you forgot damn Spanish cars. And some Citroen Ax's. And ugly Ka's. Actually the Skodas and SEATs look like real cars nowadays, go figure.

A walk down a side street in Berlin showed a Ford Focus, 2 Fiestas, an Escort; VW Polo, Lupe, 3 Passats, and 2 Golfs; 3 Opel Vectras; 2 MB Cs and an A; Huyundai Atos; Peugeot 206; Chrysler Voyager van; Nissan Micra; and a Mazda 323.

Small wagons are popular. Lots of VW-sized vans like the ubiquitous Ford Transit and small pickup-based vans are running around also. Plus small SUVs (including the MB A-series to think about it). In the old East Germany we're seeing dozens of Trabants every day.

At least half of all of these are Diesel. It's 20cents less per liter. Thought the whole of Europe would smell like an engine house but they are really clean - although our Renault knock-rattles annoyingly at idle on some days. Our Renault is getting about 6.8 liter per 100km and fuel averages about 1.06€ per liter. We've gone a bit over 12,000km so far. I'll leave the calculations to you.

There's one motorcycle for every 10 cars - and 10 bicycles for every car. Saw a Firebird the other day. Also saw a 4-wheeler ATV with a license plate driving down the street.