We arrived in Berlin on Monday morning after a great weekend with Adam's grandfather's family and Adam and I were excited to see some sites again. I had never been to Berlin and Adam was there years ago so we were looking forward to exploring. We really liked our bike tour in Paris and decided to do a Fat Tire Bike Tour of Berlin on Tuesday to see the big sites and learn a little bit more about the city.
We are really glad we hopped on this tour again. It started out a little rough since the tag-a-long bikes had only one tire (instead of 2 rear tires as in Paris) so Tea and I were quite wobbly when we started out. Once we got the hang of the bike it was smooth sailing for the rest of the day.
The tour really did take us to the major sites of Berlin and having a great guide that knew a lot about Berlin and Germany's history made our stay in the city much more educational and interesting. Our first major stop was at the location where the Berlin book burning took place. About 30,000 books were burned in a huge bonfire in an effort to destroy any books that were viewed as anti-Nazi. Books by Albert Einstein, Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Helen Keller, Karl Marx, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy are just some examples of what the Nazis deemed to be against the "German spirit." Today a memorial, a window in the ground to a "library without books," is on the ground in front of Humbolt University's Law School.
As we rode through Berlin it was incredible to see the amount of current construction projects going on. Berlin has the most new construction happening in the world after Dubai and Shanghai! While we biked past places that were originally built in the 18th and 19th Centuries it was important to remember that all of these buildings were reconstructions of the originals. Ninety percent of Berlin was decimated during World War II so the pieces of the demolished buildings were used to rebuild. Also, Hitler had the foresight to realize that the city was going to be bombed and damage was inevitable so he had many of the statues removed from the tops of buildings and dropped them into lakes and rivers for preservation and they were then retrieved after the reconstruction was complete and returned to their original locations.
One cool site were the churches pictured below in the old French Quarter of the city. Französischer Dom, or French Church was built in the early 1700's for the French Huguenot (Calvinist) population in the French Quarter of Berlin. (The Huguenots had come to Berlin seeking refuge from religious persecution in France for their Protestant beliefs). Well, apparently the German speaking Lutherans were jealous of this new church...so to appease them an identical church was built right across the square for their congregation and is known colloquially as the German Church. Below the picture on the left is the French Church and the right is the German Church.
We soon stopped at Checkpoint Charlie (I had no idea there were also Check Points Alpha and Bravo as well). The original Checkpoint was destroyed when the wall came down and then people realized that there was a tourism opportunity so they rebuilt the checkpoint for photo ops, tours and a museum. We later saw one of the remaining pieces of the wall and one of the few remaining guard towers in the city. It's hard to believe that the wall fell only about 25 years ago.
Other sites on our tour included the Tiergarten (where we passed some zoo animals in the Berlin Zoo), the Victory Column, the Reichstag (the current home of German Parliament) and the Brandenburg Gate. The Brandenburg Gate has a long history as it was built in the 1700's as one of eighteen gates around the city of Berlin when it was a walled city. Napoleon came through this gate after defeating the Prussians and for many years it was then only used by the royal family. During the Cold War it remained in no man's land between East and West Berlin and was the site of Reagan's speech where he implored Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!" It's also where David Hasselhoff famously, or infamously, sang his "Looking for Freedom" song. Today the area is a pedestrian zone and a gathering place for celebrations, protests, and other events.
We also stopped at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. This memorial is surrounded by controversy. First, the designer gave no interpretation of the design and has not revealed his inspiration for the monument of 2,711 columns, each of a different size. In addition, the monument was vandalized soon after opening to the public so a coating of a chemical to prevent paint from sticking was applied to each block. It was then later revealed that the company hired to do this work was involved in the Nazi persecution of the Jews, including manufacturing the gas used in the gas chambers to murder millions of people.
We stopped for lunch at a Beer Garden in the middle of the tour and I have to say I am enjoying the German food more than any other country thus far. They eat a lot of plain meat and potatoes. No fancy sauces, glazes, toppings, side dishes, or marinades. No fish. Just a lot of plain grilled meat so far. I love it!
On Wednesday I was really excited to meet up with two of my former students. Emily is studying law at Humbolt University and Abigail is studying math and neuroscience at Brandeis. Emily chose a fantastic steak house (yes, more grilled meat) and we had time to catch up about her studies and life in Germany. Abigail joined us after her German class and we were able to walk around the city some more. Emily took us past her school and we wanted to see the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate again. We walked along the river and ended at a great ice cream shop. It was really fun to have the chance to walk around with the ladies and my girls also had a lot of fun hanging out with them. They are always eager to spend time with people besides their parents and Abigail and Emily were great entertainers.
On Thursday we left for Munich. The next week and a half is going to involve a lot of driving around the southern part of Germany and we will pop in and out of a few different countries and are excited to check out many castles. We are renting a car for a week so we are done with trains for a little while. The girls are doing a great job and were excited that our Munich hotel has a pool! It's the little things in life!