The city certainly isn't the prettiest to look at... WWII pretty much was the end of the amazing city that Berlin once was. Most of the beautiful old buildings were bombed during the war, so what is there now are the 1950's style buildings that were put up on a hurry once the war was over. Little of the war remains, but you still get the sense that this is a "new city", whereas other places, like Rome or Paris, just have this rich history that gets told just through the buildings... It was amazing to see "Checkpoint Charlie", which was where people from the East side of Berlin (ruled by Russia) once had to pass through to get to the West side of Berlin (which was ruled by the Allied Powers). Spooky to think about what it must have been like to live in a divided city with such different rights on either side. And to think... the wall just came down 20 years ago. Really hard to get my head around that one...
Some pictures from the trip:
Brandenburg Gate - which once was along the Berlin Wall, dividing the city into two halves
Christa and I with the Reichstag building, where the war & Hitler's power began
Memorial to the Jews that died in the Holocaust
Okay, this one was interesting... a guy cooking sausages... doesn't it get hot down there???
A chocolate version of the Reichstag at the biggest chocolate shop I've ever seen!
Elyse and I at Checkpoint Charlie
A piece of the Berlin Wall
Inside the Checkpoint Charlie Museum... an illustration of how people escaped from the East side to the West...
Saturday night was our night... we started off with an amazing dinner at a really nice restaurant. When I travel, I always like to eat local stuff, so I had really fancy goulash. :) Then... the fun began. Elyse and I were intrigued by a bar called "White Trash". Something about the name just made us really want to see what it was like. When we went in, I immediately felt like I was entering a McMenamin's in Portland... the decorations were very similar to what you would find there. And the people... ah, I was in hippy heaven. :) I really miss the hippies in Portland... now, while I was never a hippy (okay, I tried when I moved, but the guitar and flowy skirt thing just didn't suit me!), I really loved the chill ambiance that the hippies bring to a bar. It made Elyse and I both really homesick, and made Christa pretty sure she never wanted to live in Portland! :) One funny thing about this bar... there was a tattoo parlor inside of it... I think that in general, tattoo parlors and bars should not mix... too many bad decisions get made after a few shots! ;)
The ladies ready to head out!
Fun with the black lights
Sunday morning we knew we had only a few hours, so we headed out to the Jewish museum. We were kind of disappointed with it, to be honest. It was kind of like they tried too hard to make it cool... and they really didn't dedicate much space at all to the Holocaust, which seemed like a pretty big miss to me. The building was really "design-y", and, being an accountant, maybe I just didn't get it...
Exterior of the Jewish museum... it's supposed to have a broken Star of David on it - I can *almost* see it
After the Jewish museum, we really wanted to hit the road, because we knew it was going to be a long drive home. We stopped to see one more sight on our way out of town... the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church... it was amazing... it was bombed during the war, and, rather than restoring it like a lot of other historical buildings, it was re-built with a modern twist - the steeple was a blue glass modern art tower, and most of the ruins were left in ruins. A very powerful memorial.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
Old and New
Another great weekend with great friends! :)
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