Preface:

I will admit that we really didn’t do sufficient planning for a trip like this. Planning entailed looking up each of our major destinations in bed at night on my phone  – often looking at “off the beaten track” locations and taking screen shots of places I wanted to go. 

This morning we decided we were going to do a walking tour at 2pm so I pulled out my list of places to go and decided to go to Friedtichshain ~ a suburb described as a bohemian chic neighborhood similar to Height Ashbury. I had it starred as a must see on my list but no additional information. Howard had never heard of it but took a leap of faith and agreed to go. We grabbed breakfast and hopped on a train to our next destination. 

I love all of the kiosks in the train station! 

Immediately when we got off the train we were met with tons of ugly graffiti, litter everywhere and more homeless people than we could count. The confidence in my research dwindled quickly as we walked down the Main Street to see what we could find. Things never really improved. We walked through the heart of the neighborhood and we just saw lots more graffiti and homeless people. There were lots of restaurants but I wouldn’t call them chic. We did come across a cool antique shop that had a lot of cool war memorabilia. Due to our lack of free real estate in our packs, we opted to grab these cool former DDR pins as souvenirs.

The most eccentric thing that we came across was the statue of this bear.

After about a mile of walking, with my pride low, I conceited defeat and we left to try to catch our walking tour….

So the Walking tour was amazing. I learned more German history in a 3-hour walk than I learned in all of my years of school. (If Caitlyn retains 50% of the information she will be so far ahead of the game. Sadly I’m not sure she heard even 20%. 

The tour started at the Brandenburger Gate. The starting place was at Starbucks of all places! The square (Platz) was called “Paris Square” after  Napoleon stole the statue on top of the gate (Goddess of Peace), which was hidden in the Louvre during the war. Germany eventually beat France years later and took it back. Upon its return, they gave the Goddess of Peace a war staff and called it the Goddess of Victory and renamed the square “Paris Platz”. The French don’t seem to notice the irony, as they have their embassy located there, beside the Starbucks.

 Aside from the French embassy, the U.S. Embassy also looks onto the plaza. As does this hotel. Does anybody recognize it?

 How about now.

…poor Michael…

From there we walked to the Holocaust Memorial. It was a very somber experience and very well laid out. There were rows and rows of cement blocks of varying heights. The ground also varied so when you were inside of it there was an eerie silence and you often had blocks towering over you. That coupled with the fact that the blocks were close enough that you couldn’t walk next to somebody gave you a sense of being very alone. 

 We came across the “Mall of Berlin”.  One must wonder why they didn’t call it the “Berlin Mall”…that name just has a familiar ring to it.

Throughout the streets, there was an embedded line of bricks that showed where the Berlin Wall was built. It is just so hard to imagine how horrifying it would have been to wake up one morning and be unable to cross to the other side or to be able to see your friends and family anymore. 

 

Gendarmenmarkt was the next stop on the tour. In an effort to increase the population of tax paying residents in Berlin in the 1600’s the government opened the city up to any religion. 5,000 Frenchman (the Huguenot) came to town and the Noble Family built the church on the right as a thank you gift. The Germans were upset that they didn’t get a church as well so the noble family built one for them too (which was 4 inches taller but otherwise the same). 

Some other pics from the day:

In the plaza where the burning of the books happened. (Bebelplatz)

This room is a memorial to the books that were burned. A glass plate set into the cobblestone gives the viebookcases book cases that are large enough to hold the total of 20,000 burnt books.

While on the walking tour, our guide mentioned a long strip of the Berlin Wall that was still standing. It is called known as “The East Side Gallery” and people still continuously paint and graffiti it.  Bet you can’t guess where that was…yep you guessed it…Friedtichshain. (Dang it!!! Why didn’t I write better notes as to why it was a must see.) 

So H navigated us to a different train stop and got us to the wall. As we walked up we caught someone in the act of painting. 

Some other great art we saw along the wall…

We walked the distance of the wall and came to a crossroads…

I wanted to go left to catch the train we had come in on that morning. H wanted to go right to catch a train he thought looked closer. We went right. Guess what we found…..the chic neighborhood. It was really a great neighborhood of restaurants, bars and coffee shops and was really cute! But (always a but) we really wanted to eat German food for dinner and in this bohemian neighborhood there exhisted no German restaurant!  (Literally, we would have seen the Wall and this neighborhood if we would have turned right out of the train station this morning instead of turning left.) 

So we took the train back to the hotel and found a great German Restaurant and ordered wiener schnitzel which is breaded veal (not a hot dog on a stick), curryweirst which was a sausage covered in curry sauce and a venison dish H ordered. Of course we had Apple streusel for dessert! 

It was a full day with a lot squeezed into the 12 hours we were out. 

Looking forward to a few days of chilling out in Prague.