Berlin 1

We pulled into Warnemunde, Germany about dawn.  A ship this size gets a lot of attention – we saw people out walking their dog taking pictures and the ferry had to wait until we passed to get to the other side of the harbor. 

Our trip to Berlin took 3 hours by bus.  We pulled into a rest stop that had a McDonalds.  Unlike at home, you can get your hamburger with beer!  The drive up was called McDrive.  (Our friends who have been touring Germany for several weeks, said this is at the top of the rest stops.  You have simple pullouts, then you have pull outs with porta potties, then you have rest stops with full WCs, or, like ours, a gas station and a restaurant.)  Right after the rest stop we noticed large birds in the fields.  They looked like sand hill cranes – a little research later, we discovered that they were Eurasian cranes.  Unfortunately no pictures of them… but they were all over some of the fields. 

Our first stop in Berlin was the Olympic Stadium built for the 1936 games, where Jesse Owens foiled Hitler’s plan for an Olympics to show the world how superior the Germans were.  The stadium never got bombed during the Second World War because it was a good landmark west of the city… the bombers could line up on it and track right on into the center of Berlin. 

Our second stop was at a church dedicated to Kaiser Wilhelm that was heavily damaged by Allied bombing.  The locals decided not to rebuild it, but to let it stand as a monument.  After the war, they built a church next to it that has all 4 walls covered in blue stained glass from Chartres, France.  The building was designed so you can only see it from within during the day, but at night it reverses and can be seen outside the building.   The Christmas market here was the site of the terrorist attack last year, so there is a small memorial outside the church.  

This is the Victory Column – or as some call it the “chick on a stick” – to commemorate the Prussian victory over Denmark, Austria and France.  It is in Tiergarten Park. 

At the edge of the park is the Reichstag and the Chancellery, where the parliament meets and Angela Merkel works.  (One interesting difference, is that she doesn’t live in a public building like our White House; she has an apartment near the Spree River and Museum Island.  We walked right past it, and the only noticeable thing were a couple of policemen on the sidewalk.)

Reichstag

We got off the bus and crossed a street where there were a series of bricks in the asphalt.  This was where the wall once ran.    

We went to the Brandenburg Gate, the only remaining gate to the city – and probably the most famous.  It sits at the west end of a boulevard that rivals Paris’ Champs Elysees – a favorite site for Nazi parades that went down “Unter de Linden” (under the linden trees) to the island where they held big rallies.

We stopped at the parking lot that is where Hitler’s bunker was.  The Nazis had tried to burn Hitler’s body but used gasoline which doesn’t have a high enough burning point.  The Russians finally had all remains cremated and scattered in a river so there would not be a tomb where people could go.  They had tried to blow up the bunker but it was built so strong that it finally took drilling holes in the ceiling until it collapsed.  There wasn’t even a marker on the lot until a few years ago.  Berlin is a city that wants to remember its past, but doesn’t at the same time.

the site of the Hitler Bunker