Day 44 - Friday, July 26, 2024 - Berlin Germany - A very long day

 

To say we had an early day is an understatement.  To say the day was long is also an understatement.

The train ride from our port of Warnemunde on the coast of Germany to the city of Berlin started at 6:30 am in the marine terminal with a half mile walk to the train station.  Let me say, Viking chartered a whole train with 10 cars to take about 700 of the 930 guests to Berlin.  The logistics are amazing. All of us had to get to the train, and then in Berlin, having buses for 700 people all line up waiting at the busiest train stations in the world.  And the same, at the end stop, at 4:15 pm, buses to take us all back to a totally different station.  Amazing work on the part of Viking.

We all knew it would be a long day as we weren't getting back to the ship until 7:45 pm, but this little stroll to the train was the harbinger of things to come today.

The train was about a 2 1/2 hour ride into Berlin.  That was the relaxing part.  All along the way we were escorted, on the train and then at the train platform. We were met by our guide on the platform in Berlin who walked us to our bus.  There we were given a one hour tour of the city of Berlin and given instructions on where we were to meet at 4:15 in the afternoon for pick up back to the train.

Our departing train station 

Views from the train 

Arrival at the central Berlin train station, the Berlin Hauptbahnhof 

An office building next to the train station.  It's called The Crystal and houses office space for rent by the day, week or longer

Views from the bus ride 

Mexico's embassy 

At that point, about 11 am, we were set loose to discover Berlin on our own 

A glimpse of the East/West Berlin wall

To get to the Brandenburg Gate our guide gave us a shortcut through an office building.  This statute was buried in sand by Hitler when the end was imminent. In rebuilding a new building on-site, it was discovered.

  

My first look at the Brandenburg Gate 

Remember Michael Jackson hanging the baby out of the window, this is the building, directly across from the Brandenburg Gate.  Click on the picture to enlarge.  On the third floor, center, there's a window with no curtains. That's the room.  If it's occupied, the curtains are closed.

A look at the dome of the Reichstag from the Brandenburg Gate 

The American embassy here in Berlin.  This is Buddy Bear.    Buddy Bears are vibrant, life-sized sculptures that have become an iconic part of Berlin's cityscape and an unofficial symbol of the city.

Some more pictures before we struck out on our own.

Berlin TV tower, next to our drop off location.  It is a 368m-tall tower, opened in 1969, with a viewing gallery at 203m and revolving restaurant

I had mapped out several places I wanted to see and while the bus and guide did a great drive by experience, I wanted to see them up close in my own.

Wayne and I caught a taxi to Checkpoint Charlie, our first stop.  

Checkpoint Charlie. Years back you could have your passport stamped there. No longer.

Afterwards, we walked down the street about 10 minutes to the remains of the wall between East and West Berlin. There we saw long stretches of the remaining wall after it was torn down.  This section we visited had a very good display in the exposed below grade area with signage starting with Hitlers rise, his prison sentence and eventually his dictatorship and annliation of the 6 million Jews, gypsies and disabled people.  

I couldn't bring myself to take pictures of the signage with Hitler's face.  My pictures of a the few signs were those regarding the Olympics and Jesse Owens and a few other stories.

Piece of the Berlin Wall 

Demolished and abandoned piers from the main driveway to Gestapo headquarters, which were left after the clearing of the site (1957-63), with remnants of the metal fittings.  All the transports of prisoners to the Gestapo "house prison" passed through this "east-gate."

The museum, Topography of Terror 

Above the site on ground level is a museum called Topography of Terror.  It is an outdoor and indoor history museum located on the site of buildings, which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 was the SS Reich Security Main Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo.

After leaving this area, Wayne and I had a little lunch at kind of a hot dog stand, owned, I think by a Russian, with crazy music playing in the background.  It was all really funny.  He didn't understand my not wanting spicy sauce on my hot dog nor ketchup.  We definitely had a language barrier.  A real hoot.

I left Wayne at that point. He took a taxi back to the meeting spot even though it was early. His knee had it.

I went off alone, with map in hand, to see Berlin.  

When Berlin was flattered by the US and Allied forced and Russia also moved in, there wasn't much left of the city.  Frankly, in my opinion, it's not a pretty city.   My pictures don't really show how ugly a city it is as I took pictures of the more interesting, older buildings that managed not to be bombed.  But since most of Berlin was rebuilt by the US in the 50'and 60's, it's all block style buildings, very utilitarian, ugly buildings.  Berlin appears to be the graffiti capital of the world as well.  I thought Athens Greece was buried in graffiti.  That's nothing compared to Berlin.  And it's not wall art, it's ghetto graffiti.

The city is safe and I wasn't concerned about where I was going, it's just not an attractive place. 

I walked to the Memorial to the Murdered Jewish People of Europe.   It is a sobering place, just to walk by, and even more so, underground in the museum they have. 

Down in the museum portion, I took this picture. These were all in the floor.  Over 50 of these stories light up and you would walk around and read asany as your heart could handle.

I should state here that all the museums about the history of Germany are free. Residents are encouraged to visit. Not just tourists.  

In speaking with our escort on the train, a young lady approximately 25, she said that their school curriculum includes the history of Germany and attempt to teach students of the attorcitieses of the past so that today's Germans do not forget. Let's hope so.

This museum is also known as the Holocaust Memorial and is a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It consists of 2,711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum as well as stories and interviews with some.

The monument is situated on the former location of the Berlin Wall, where the "death strip" once divided the city.

From there I walked to the Brandenburg Gate. The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was erected on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to Brandenburg.

After World War II and during the Cold War, until its fall in 1989, the gateway was obstructed by the Berlin Wall, and was for almost three decades a marker of the city's division. We had stopped here in the guided tour but I wanted to visit it again slower and personally. Our guide had often pointed out as we stood and walked, where we were, in East Berlin or West Berlin or in "No Man's Land".  

The gate survived World War II and was one of the damaged structures still standing in the Pariser Platz ruins in 1945

After Germany's surrender at the end of the war, the Brandenburg Gate was located in the Soviet occupation zone, directly next to the border to the zone occupied by the British, which later became the border between East and West Berlin which is why the area was known as No Man's Land.

It's such an important part of our history it's hard to realize that I have been here.

My last stop for the day was at The Reichstag, a historic legislative government building and is the seat of the German Bundestag. It is also the meetings place where the President of Germany is elected. It was built in 1871.

The Reichstag.  You can just barely glimpse the dome in the center of the picture.

There the dome is hiding again.  You can't walk any closer and construction doesn't allow you to walk around the back of the building.

In 1933, there was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Despite the firefighters' efforts, most of the building was gutted.

When the Cold War emerged, the building was physically within West Berlin, but in ruins.

The official German reunification ceremony on 3 October 1990 was held at the Reichstag

The cupola of the original building, which had also been heavily damaged in the war, was dismantled. In 1988 the large glass dome at the very top of the Reichstag was built and has a 360° view of Berlin.

At this point, I had enough walking. I started looking for a taxi but some streets around the Reichstag were closed for an upcoming event. There were taxi stands but no taxis.   

I wound up hoofing it back to Checkpoint Charlie before I found a taxi. Round trip I walked about 4.5 miles in Berlin. Extremely happy, I grabbed a taxi and headed back to our meeting point for the bus to the train and the train ride back to the ship.

We arrived at 7:45 pm and were greeted outside the ship with champagne and about 100 crew members all cheering and dancing to welcome us back. I think most of the 700 guests who made the trip to Berlin were uplifted at this sight. And I certainly needed it.  

A quick dinner and then bed!   Off to Bornhilm Denmark tomorrow and the port of Ronne. An easy day expected with a bus ride around this small island.