Martin and I have been traveling again, and we just got back from a long weekend in Berlin.
We left on Thursday night after work on a night train, which was super-exciting for me. We leveled up from the super-cheap sitting cars to a sleeping car to make sure we were actually awake on Friday--someday we'll be able to upgrade to the James Bond-level private rooms. Our sleeping car had six bunked beds (berths? Are we cool enough to call it that?), just long enough for me and not quite long enough for Martin. The train left around 8:30 in the evening, so we packed a little snack and a bottle of wine and watched the world go by for a little while before reading ourselves to sleep with our guidebooks.
Our first stop in Berlin was Martin's cousin's place where we were staying. He and his girlfriend were really cool about us showing up at 8-something AM, and we had a quick breakfast and washed up a bit before hitting the city.
Day one (Friday) was all about the historical city center. It was raining, so we started at the Pergamon Museum where they have entire ancient monuments that were discovered, deconstructed, and transported to Berlin in the 1920s and 30s to be reconstructed in the museums. Berlin has a museum scene to rival New York or London, so we had to be a little selective. Of the museums on Museum Island--which I'm guessing the Allies didn't bomb too much during the counter-Blitzkrieg that destroyed most of the city--the Pergamon is the only one we spent any time in. My favorite part was the grand gates of Babylon.
The rain cleared up while we were in the museum, so we walked in towards the central part of the city along Unter den Linden, which is a grand boulevard lined with museums, opera houses, and churches. It's under construction at the moment, but it's got lots of impressive buildings. We poked our heads in a few places before stopping for lunch. The food scene in Berlin is like that in major American cities: diverse, delicious, and cheap! Thank goodness for all the walking, because we really enjoyed the opportunity to eat Thai, Chinese, modern German, Indian, and all kinds of other food.
After lunch, we hit a bunch of other landmarks including the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), which is very similar to Paris' Arc du Triomphe in spirit. It sits at the plaza ending Unter den Linden, and is a major landmark of the city. During the separation of Berlin, it was just beside the wall. Today, the plaza where it's located is home to lots of foreign embassies including that of the US.
We saw the site of Hitler's famous bunker (now filled with concrete and gravel and made into a parking lot) and followed the line of the wall to Potsdamer Platz, which was the busiest plaza in Berlin before the wars, became an uninhabited death zone while the wall was up, and has returned to modern prominence with landmarks like the Sony Center, where they hold the German equivalent of the Academy Awards. There is a small wall display in the plaza between shopping malls and cinemas, and the brick line of the wall runs straight through the busy intersection.
Next up was Checkpoint Charlie, a gap in the wall that became the only point at which people could legally go between East and West Berlin. Berlin was divided into four sections, with the USSR controlling the East part of the city and all of East Germany, and the Allies (France, Britain, and the US) controlling the other three parts. Checkpoint Charlie is between the American part of West Berlin and the East, named because there were originally also other checkpoints (at least Alpha and Bravo) but this one became the most important.
We grabbed a coffee and a snack, then saw a few more sights and went to the Jewish museum, which is famous as much for its architecture as for its content. It's footprint is kind of an exploded star of David, and the whole thing is a very conceptual set of angles and lines. The content is pretty cool, too, and nice when it's dark outside and the wind is picking up.
Finally, we met Martin's cousin and his girlfriend in a younger neighborhood for dinner. They took us to an Indian food restaurant that was packed to the rafters and fantastic. After eating, we checked out a few bars and felt very local and cool.
We had amazing weather on Saturday morning, so we did some planning over breakfast and hit the streets. Our first stop was Kurfürstendamm, which is Berlin's answer to the Champs-Élysées. It's a wide, lovely boulevard lined with very fancy shops that was perfect for a morning stroll on the sunny side of the street. Window shopping is especially fun here because stores display the prices of the items in the window on little plaques--I fell in love with an Issa top that turned out to be over 250 Euros, and i didn't even have to go in the store to know it! It also makes walking by stores that sell 10,000 Euro handbags much more entertaining.
At the end of the street is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was bombed during WWII and has been left in its bombed-out state as a war memorial. It's under restoration right now (to keep it in its most bombed-out state, I guess), but partly-destroyed tower is still visible from the street and its very arresting. Finally, the jewel of this shopping area is the KaDeWe department store, which puts even the Herald Square Macy's to shame. It's enormous, multileveled, and sells the very fanciest version of everything you can think of. I bought a beautiful store-branded tin of my favorite tea that I plan to use for storing that type of tea forever.
The theme of Saturday was exploring all of the districts just outside the city center--Berlin has a kind of wagon wheel setup--so we took the subway to the the East side of town into a sort of hipster neighborhood. We got lunch (Thai!), then went to see the East Side Gallery, which uses pieces of the wall covered in modern street art and graffiti. After that we checked out Alexanderplatz, which was the most important plaza in East Berlin. We wandered around Friedrichshein, a neighborhood full of cafes, bars, and shopping, and I got an excellent down-lined wool coat for 50% off that I'm very excited about.
We had planned to go to the modern art museum in the old Hamburger Bahnhof, but when we got there it was closed--our guidebook lied to us about its opening hours! We'd just had a coffee and weren't hungry, so we went back to Friedrichshein for a little more exploration until the shops closed, then got a drink. We were hungry, so we split a currywurst, a Berlin specialty, and figured out dinner plans. We wanted to get a Döner Kebab--European late-night food made of meat, veggies, and yogurt sauce stuffed into a bread pocket and developed by Turkish immigrants even though it is very not Turkish--because they are supposed to be very good in Berlin, so we headed over to the neighborhood where we had gotten lunch.
As soon as our subway train arrived, we realized we had forgotten our shopping bag at the bar. We switched platforms and hopped back on the other direction and powerwalked to the bar where our bag was under the bar right where we had left it. This time we went to Kreutzberg, an immigrant-heavy but gentrifying neighborhood full of all the very cool bars and hipsters, and had excellent Döner Kebabs before checking out another bar. Even with the extra train trip, it was lots of fun.
Everything is closed on Sundays in Berlin just as it is in the rest of Europe, so your options are outdoor activities and food. Lucky for us, the dome of the Reistag, German congress, is also open. We'd made reservations to go see it, so we were there at precisely 10:00am ready to go. They put us through security, then we took the really lovely audio tour of the dome. The weather was perfect (February! On latitude with Amsterdam and 3 degrees of latitude north of Vancouver!), so we had amazing views of the whole city. The government buildings are all together, so we also got to check out the German version of the White House.
We had a long and excellent brunch (what luxury!), then met up with Martin's cousin and his girlfriend at the Mauerpark flea market. It's crazy, crowded, and enormous, and has a very similar air to People's Park in Berkeley--full of hippies and hipsters, but also normal young professionals and students and parents and everyone else. There were crazy street performers, very non-sober types, and a couple of design students trying to sell a chair for multiple hundreds of Euros. The market itself was so dense with people you could hardly walk and sold everything from handmade wool goods to furniture to drug paraphernalia. It was an entertaining way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Our last stop was a delicious Chinese restaurant in a new part of town. The restaurant felt like a lot of the places in San Francisco's Chinatown, and we had a great dinner with our hosts while it got dark outside. Our night train left at about 8pm, and we were home in Zurich by 8:30 Monday morning (relatively) well rested and ready to go to work.
We left on Thursday night after work on a night train, which was super-exciting for me. We leveled up from the super-cheap sitting cars to a sleeping car to make sure we were actually awake on Friday--someday we'll be able to upgrade to the James Bond-level private rooms. Our sleeping car had six bunked beds (berths? Are we cool enough to call it that?), just long enough for me and not quite long enough for Martin. The train left around 8:30 in the evening, so we packed a little snack and a bottle of wine and watched the world go by for a little while before reading ourselves to sleep with our guidebooks.
Night train! In our six-bunk room.
Our first stop in Berlin was Martin's cousin's place where we were staying. He and his girlfriend were really cool about us showing up at 8-something AM, and we had a quick breakfast and washed up a bit before hitting the city.
Day one (Friday) was all about the historical city center. It was raining, so we started at the Pergamon Museum where they have entire ancient monuments that were discovered, deconstructed, and transported to Berlin in the 1920s and 30s to be reconstructed in the museums. Berlin has a museum scene to rival New York or London, so we had to be a little selective. Of the museums on Museum Island--which I'm guessing the Allies didn't bomb too much during the counter-Blitzkrieg that destroyed most of the city--the Pergamon is the only one we spent any time in. My favorite part was the grand gates of Babylon.
Part of the gate to Babylon--it was seriously cool.
Also a giant altar, totally rebuilt in the museum.
The rain cleared up while we were in the museum, so we walked in towards the central part of the city along Unter den Linden, which is a grand boulevard lined with museums, opera houses, and churches. It's under construction at the moment, but it's got lots of impressive buildings. We poked our heads in a few places before stopping for lunch. The food scene in Berlin is like that in major American cities: diverse, delicious, and cheap! Thank goodness for all the walking, because we really enjoyed the opportunity to eat Thai, Chinese, modern German, Indian, and all kinds of other food.
After lunch, we hit a bunch of other landmarks including the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), which is very similar to Paris' Arc du Triomphe in spirit. It sits at the plaza ending Unter den Linden, and is a major landmark of the city. During the separation of Berlin, it was just beside the wall. Today, the plaza where it's located is home to lots of foreign embassies including that of the US.
Brandenburger Tor! The US embassy is just out of frame on the left.
Holocaust memorial.
Wall display at Potsdamer Platz.
Where the wall was.
Next up was Checkpoint Charlie, a gap in the wall that became the only point at which people could legally go between East and West Berlin. Berlin was divided into four sections, with the USSR controlling the East part of the city and all of East Germany, and the Allies (France, Britain, and the US) controlling the other three parts. Checkpoint Charlie is between the American part of West Berlin and the East, named because there were originally also other checkpoints (at least Alpha and Bravo) but this one became the most important.
Checkpoint Charlie from the USSR side.
After the wall went up, the USSR eventually allowed freedom of movement for West Berliners, which had been impossible when the city was entirely cut off and air drops of food and supplies were necessary by the Allies to keep West Berliners alive. This privilege didn't extend to East Berliners, so the USSR troops at the checkpoint allowed Westerners to pass but attempted to prevent the escape of East Berliners. At the outdoor museum there is a section devoted to successful and attempted escapes, which ranged from hiding in the trunk of a diplomat's car to dressing up in American uniforms to straight-up running for it. When times were tense, there was even a tank standoff between American and USSR at the checkpoint.
More Checkpoint Charlie.
We grabbed a coffee and a snack, then saw a few more sights and went to the Jewish museum, which is famous as much for its architecture as for its content. It's footprint is kind of an exploded star of David, and the whole thing is a very conceptual set of angles and lines. The content is pretty cool, too, and nice when it's dark outside and the wind is picking up.
Finally, we met Martin's cousin and his girlfriend in a younger neighborhood for dinner. They took us to an Indian food restaurant that was packed to the rafters and fantastic. After eating, we checked out a few bars and felt very local and cool.
We had amazing weather on Saturday morning, so we did some planning over breakfast and hit the streets. Our first stop was Kurfürstendamm, which is Berlin's answer to the Champs-Élysées. It's a wide, lovely boulevard lined with very fancy shops that was perfect for a morning stroll on the sunny side of the street. Window shopping is especially fun here because stores display the prices of the items in the window on little plaques--I fell in love with an Issa top that turned out to be over 250 Euros, and i didn't even have to go in the store to know it! It also makes walking by stores that sell 10,000 Euro handbags much more entertaining.
At the end of the street is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was bombed during WWII and has been left in its bombed-out state as a war memorial. It's under restoration right now (to keep it in its most bombed-out state, I guess), but partly-destroyed tower is still visible from the street and its very arresting. Finally, the jewel of this shopping area is the KaDeWe department store, which puts even the Herald Square Macy's to shame. It's enormous, multileveled, and sells the very fanciest version of everything you can think of. I bought a beautiful store-branded tin of my favorite tea that I plan to use for storing that type of tea forever.
The theme of Saturday was exploring all of the districts just outside the city center--Berlin has a kind of wagon wheel setup--so we took the subway to the the East side of town into a sort of hipster neighborhood. We got lunch (Thai!), then went to see the East Side Gallery, which uses pieces of the wall covered in modern street art and graffiti. After that we checked out Alexanderplatz, which was the most important plaza in East Berlin. We wandered around Friedrichshein, a neighborhood full of cafes, bars, and shopping, and I got an excellent down-lined wool coat for 50% off that I'm very excited about.
East Side Gallery.
As soon as our subway train arrived, we realized we had forgotten our shopping bag at the bar. We switched platforms and hopped back on the other direction and powerwalked to the bar where our bag was under the bar right where we had left it. This time we went to Kreutzberg, an immigrant-heavy but gentrifying neighborhood full of all the very cool bars and hipsters, and had excellent Döner Kebabs before checking out another bar. Even with the extra train trip, it was lots of fun.
Everything is closed on Sundays in Berlin just as it is in the rest of Europe, so your options are outdoor activities and food. Lucky for us, the dome of the Reistag, German congress, is also open. We'd made reservations to go see it, so we were there at precisely 10:00am ready to go. They put us through security, then we took the really lovely audio tour of the dome. The weather was perfect (February! On latitude with Amsterdam and 3 degrees of latitude north of Vancouver!), so we had amazing views of the whole city. The government buildings are all together, so we also got to check out the German version of the White House.
Inside the dome.
Outside the dome. Look at that weather!!
The Berlin main station.
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