BOXES 245: Berlin.

The Reichstag, the German parliamentary building in Berlin, had been vacant since the notorious fire in 1933; it was further damaged in WWII and not restored until after German reunification. The 19th-Century walls were retained, but the Dome was entirely new, designed by British architect Norman Foster. It provides--as my photo suggests--a 360-degree view of the city to strollers on the outside, while allowing those on the Dome floor to look down democratically on parliamentary sessions below. Anne and I visited the Reichstag in 2003, four years after it had opened to the public. We were on a trip that took us from Spain to Venice (see previous posts) and now to Berlin, the first visit for both of us.

Scanning my box of slides of this part of the trip--i.e., both digitizing and looking them over for the first time in years--I see that I didn't take many pictures of Berlin, a city of endless historical and cultural interest but to me not nearly as photogenic as, say, Paris, Rome or London (to say nothing of Venice, which we'd just left). I have many vivid memories of our stay but no pics to match them: for example, our arrival at the historic and unique-looking Tempelhof Airport (now closed as an airport); our seeing two operas, one in the former West Berlin, the other in the former East; a great Berlin Philharmonic concert in the amazing Philharmonie; eating a currywurst at a stand near our hotel; visiting some of the city's great museums. On the other hand, my slides show at least one scene I'd totally forgotten.

Our hotel was in East Berlin, in the district called Prenzlauer Berg, a long-ago working-class district that had become more bohemian/hippie/artsy (choose your adjective) even before reunification and was now becoming gentrified. In contrast to the fourth-floor walk-up we had on the Lido when we visited Venice, this hotel was a brand-new Holiday Inn on a main boulevard, the Prenzlauer Allee. We enjoyed our stay there enough for me to want to take a picture of it just before we left Berlin:

We liked walking around the nearby residential neighborhood: the buildings were nondescript except for an old brewery that had been turned into a hip disco, but the streets were lively and we had a great meal at one restaurant that trendily 're-interpreted' traditional Berlin cuisine.

Streetcar tracks ran along Prenzlauer Allee, and I might mention here that the only way we could tell there ever had been a division between East and West Berlin--besides some token segments of the Wall and the still-standing customs booth of Checkpoint Charlie--was that East Berlin had a streetcar network while West Berlin had electric buses (i.e., with their trolleys connected to the grid of wires overhead). We once took the streetcar north to the nearly rural end of its line, but mostly went south to Alexanderplatz: a very wide square, a bit sterile except for a lively fountain, but Anne and I were fans of the novel and TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz and so were curious to see it:

From there it's a modest walk to the Museuminsel (Museum Island), where we saw the spectacular antiquities of the Pergamon Museum:

The River Spree flows nearby, and as we walked toward its banks we were startled to see people in costumes of the era of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte:

This was the scene I'd totally forgotten until I scanned my Berlin slides. Of course, someone was making a movie or TV show, a fairly ambitious production considering that a horse-and-carriage and more costumed actors could be seen across the river embankment:

The name on the boat (not to mention the flags) shows that the setting was meant to be French:

From the Museuminsel the famous boulevard called Unter den Linden ('Under the Linden Trees') stretches westward to the Brandenburg Gate. We walked the whole length of it, passing (among many sights) the City Library with its extensive archives:

At one point we stopped for refreshments:

If you're wondering about the foamy pinkish beverage I'm drinking, it's a Berliner Weisse--a 'white'/wheat beer often served mit Schuss--'with a shot' of raspberry syrup. I'd read that this is the classic drink of cafes on Unter den Linden, and so wanted to try it--it was pretty refreshing on that hot afternoon. (The heatwave we'd felt in Venice continued all the way up to Berlin, which typically, we were told, had summers in the 60s, but it was closer to the low 90s during our stay. That made the un-airconditioned opera houses less than comfy.)

Here is the Brandenburg Gate:

In the distance far beyond the columns of the Gate you can see the 1873 Victory Column topped by its golden angel. Situated in the Tiergarden (zoo and park), it played a role in Wim Wenders' movie about Berlin, Wings of Desire. Below is another view of it from not quite so great a distance--from the Reichstag Dome. The other tower in the pic below is a carillon built in 1987. Incidentally, if you look closely at this pic you see a great number of cranes--we were struck by the enormous number of building projects going on in 2003.

While we're on the Reichstag Dome (though Anne and I visited it on a later day), here are the other photos I took there: two looking through the Dome down to the floor (one is through the sunscreen) and one from the floor:

My other Berlin slides are a miscellany, though featuring more brand-new buildings; I'll follow their order for the rest of this post. First is Potsdamer Platz, a former city center that was pretty much a wasteland until reunification. Now a row of office buildings had just gone up. The separate photo below is a Renzo Piano design for a corporate headquarters.

Next pic: Anne enjoying an ice cream drink:

In Wittenbergplatz in West Berlin we saw this "Ages of Man" fountain, in front of the famous KaDeWe department store where we had lunch in their food court:

Here's a slightly closer view:

Next is the 2001 Chancellery complex, near the Reichstag:

Back in West Berlin we strolled along the Kurfuerstendamm, the main shopping street:

And finally (except for my departing photo of our Holiday Inn), I took one photo of the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind (completed 2001). There's a great deal more to say about this historical museum than I can include in this post (the Wikipedia article is here), but I should mention that the stone columns in the foreground are one side of the highly symbolic Garden of Exile.

From Berlin we took a train to Munich, with an overnight stop in Nuremberg along the way and a side trip from Munich to Regensburg. I'll show pics from that part of the trip in my next post.