Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church & the East Side Gallery

Berlin is one of those modern cities that have such a good job incorporating old architecture and buildings into its modern cityscape. One of the sites I wanted to see was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It's just west of the Tiergarten at the beginning of Kurfürstendamm (or Ku'Damm), the bustling main shopping Avenue of old West Berlin. A neat area, I suppose, but I'd rather live in East Berlin or Mitte before settling down here.

See the church in the background? It's right under the arches. I didn't see it the first time either because it is currently being restored and in doing so workers erected scaffolding that looks like the outside of a building. Before the war, the church was a prominent feature on Ku'Damm, but it was heavily bombed out and left in ruins after the war. I had to get some of these photos from inside the lobby of the old church where they have displays, but you can also see how ornate the old church was.

After the war, it was decided to leave the bombed out building as a memorial and build a new one in the same location. Though it kind of looks blocky and grey, but the walls of both the church and the belltower are cement blocks inlaid with large pieces of colored glass - mostly blue - which was handcrafted and made in France and given to the Germans as a post-war offer of reconciliation. When it is lit up from either the inside or outside, it's beautiful.

And, of course, the organ is also very cool in that it's not your typical cathedral pipe organ, but has more of a modern look, encased in geometric wood paneling. And the sound is also beautiful:

I accidentally took the video vertically and haven't been able to figure out how to rotate it yet. Any help there? Anyway, I was very glad I stopped in while the organ was being played. It is a nice little harbor of calm amidst a very busy shopping center!

Then, last night, on the way back to Berlin from Golm, I decided I'd stay on the train to the Ostbahnhof, East Berlin's main train station before reunification, and check out the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall left in place. It stretches a mile or a kilometer (or something like that) between Ostbahnhof and the Warschauer Straße S-Bahn stops. The wall is divided into multiple murals which artists are invited to come and paint once the space is whitewashed every now and again. I took a lot of photos, but will only put a few up here.

And by a few, I mean a lot. It was really eerie walking the length of the wall at night imagining what it would be like to be living in East Berlin, being so close to freedom, but not being able to get there. Pretty dismal, actually. You can even tell by the buildings and the seeming depravity in the general area that East Berlin was very utilitarian: no frills whatsoever. Interestingly, this area is now home to the largest Turkish population outside Turkey and a lot of younger, hipster-type people, and students live out this way, giving a unique identity for the city. One thing I learned about the wall's construction is that it used to be topped with barbed wire. The wire was replaced after too many E. Berliners were able to grab a hold of it and use it to hoist themselves over the wall. It was replaces with a round cement tube which fit on top of the wall. The tube is too round, smooth, and wide to hold on to, making it much more difficult for people to climb over.

Unfortunately, I think my Berlin sightseeing is all done! There is still so much to see and learn! For instance, next time I'm here I want to get out to the Berlin Olympic Stadium, the Tempelhof City Park, Charlottenberg Palace, Palace Sanssouci in Potsdam, and the Germany National History Museum and really get a chance to check out the neighborhoods and the character they offer.

Tomorrow I get on the train and take it down to Nürnberg where I'll meet up with my sister for the weekend. Not entirely sure what will be open down there this time of year, but I'm sure we'll be able to keep ourselves amused!

Here is the entire photo set from my trip:

Berliner Dom & the Tiergarten

Okay, time to finish up my weekend with my sister! (And it only took until Wednesday to do this...)

Musueminsel in Berlin has tons of fantastic architecture, much of which was damaged during the War but signs of which were left untouched as bullet holes in the stone reflects the city's history.

Also on Museuminsel is Berlin's largest church, the Berliner Dom. Lizzie says they don't even bother trying to clean it because it would just get dirty again so quickly. I'm not entirely sure why it makes sense to mention that here....oh well. The more you know, right?

This was another place the Gypsies like to heckle tourists. While we were sitting there one came up and asked her usual, "Speak English?" We were prepared for her this time and I said, "Nein." Thinking she would go away, I wasn't prepared for her next question, "Sprechen sie Deutche?" To which I replied, "Nein." Haha. Lizzie laughed at that. While we walked around the platz, another Gypsy asked an unsuspecting tourist and his girlfriend if they spoke English. Before he realized who asked, he said, "Yes," but then when they realized it was a Gypsy who asked, both of them turned on their heels and literally ran away! Lizzie and I got a good laugh out of that one, too!

Back to the Berliner Dom. It's gorgeous inside! There is a very different feeling one has when walking into any large European church, but it seems like most of them are large Catholic cathedrals. Berliner Dom is not a Catholic house of worship, so although it is ornately decorated inside, I didn't think it seemed to have the symbolism and mysticism of a catholic cathedral. There is no overly fanciful altar or scent of incense or even stained-glass windows. That's not to say it there isn't beautiful craftsmanship or artistry, though.

Last time Lizzie was in Berlin, she got to hear the organ play. Last time I was in Germany, we followed my mom around Trier, in the West, as she got to play the organ at numerous churches, cathedrals, and basilicas. I can only imagine if she had been with us...well, she wouldn't have been with us - she would have, by this time, already found someone from whom to get permission to play the darned thing!!

We also were able to get great views of Berlin from above, and though it was cold (yep...another day below freezing), the views were fantastic!

We descended from on high and found a little restaurant just off of Alexanderplatz, the large square seen behind us in the photo above. We shared a HUGE weiner schnitzel, lentil soup with sausage, and a side of veggies. So delicious!

The day was getting late and we had one more thing we wanted to see, but we had to get Lizzie's things from my apartment, so we headed back there. Right down the street from the Oranienburger Straße S-Bahn stop is the Neues Synagogue, which has undergone extensive repair and restoration since WWII.

I haven't been in there yet and am not sure if I will get the chance. Interesting sidenote: since the war, German police officials are stationed outside of many Jewish sites around town, including the Neues Synagogue (door in the lower right hand corner). There are still some factions in East Germany who believe Jews are lesser peoples and so the police hold their posts to ward off any potential protesters or neo-Nazi activists. The Huffington Post had an interesting feature on a Berlin woman who is doing her part to combat this.

We got Lizzie's things and had a little over an hour before she needed to be back at the Hauptbahnhof for her train back to Bielefeld. We took the S-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz, the "Times Square" of Berlin. Nothing really to write home about. We walked about a block and then crossed the street into Berlin's Tiergarten (Animal Park). It's pretty much like Central Park and though she bet otherwise, there were no wolves running around.

Smack dab in the middle of the Tiergarten is a large round-about circling a large stone pedestal called the Siegessäule, or Victory Column, or the "Chick on a Stick" (according to Rick Steves, local Berliners call her this. They don't). She was build to commemorate numerous Prussian victories and was to be a focal-point of Hitler's new Berlin Layout. Remember how I thought the statue on top of the Brandenburger Tor was backwards? Well, I think CoaS is also backwards. She faces away from the city, but I would think she should be facing the city so those within the walls could see Victory's shining face. And boy was she shining! Apparently, she had just been cleaned and polished, hence the scaffolding!

As the sun set over Berlin, shining on the Brandenburger Tor and the Soviet War Memorial, we caught a U-Bahn over to the Hbf and got Lizzie on her train.

See you next weekend, Lizzie!

Here is the entire photo set from my trip:

Pergamon & Neues Museums

I feel like my daily blog-post density has been growing since the weekend! Oh well. Shorter posts are better than one really really long post, right?

Lizzie and I got up super-early on Sunday morning and made our way from the Friedrichstraße Bahnhof to Museuminsel (or Museum Island), where we had been told to check out the Pergamon Museum. Listen up: THIS MUSEUM IS NOT TO BE MISSED!!! We got to the museum about 10 minutes before it opened and were already in a line. Luckily we found somewhere to get breakfast, which is apparently not an easy task on a Sunday morning in Germany. This is the first thing you see when you walk in:

All of what you see is original stonework of the Altar from the sacrificial temple at Pergamon, now located in western Turkey. The German archaeologist, Carl Humman, excavated and literally lifted (or stole) all of the altar and brought it back to Germany in a real-life Carmen San Diego story! If any part of it is missing or not original, it is because the piece could either not be found or the museum has the original in storage!

You walk up the steps of the Altar and in what would have been the sacrificial altar is now a room with bas relief sculptures telling the story of Telephos. He unknowingly married his mother, in what I'm sure is a store-brand, lesser-graphic version of Oedipus Rex. (Telephos figured it out before things went too far!).

In the next room over are façades from other Grecian Temples, tile mosaics, and marketplaces, each fully reconstructed from original building materials.

Carmen can now check "Grecian Temples" off her checklist. Next up? Oh, hey Miletus of Turkey. Nice marketplace you have there. Mind if I...take it?

Yup. Just like the Pergamon Altar, the museum also holds the original Turkish entryway to its seaside town of Miletus, all brought back and reconstructed in the Museum. Amazingly, not much of the museum's collection was damaged during WWII! The walls of the museum are 3m thick, I think, and designed to keep flying shrapnel from damaging the collections. The Gates of the Marketplace at Miletus did experience some water damage from a leaking roof during the war, though.

"Turkish Marketplace Gates"....check! Next on the list. How does Babylon sound this time of year? Done and done. The museum also houses the Ishtar Gates which beautifully decorated and lined the streets of ancient Babylon on the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. The tiled lions were designed to spark fear in all of those who passed by. (I just realized I don't have any photos of the lions, though. It's okay because I'm going back on Thursday!).

Oh, by the way. Wikipedia says that the gate you can see in the museum is the smaller of two gates at either end of the processional-way of ancient Babylon. The other, larger gate, was too big to fit into the museum space, so it is just hanging out in storage.

Another cool exhibit they had was ancient statuary from Tell Halaf, a site in what is now northeast Syria.

The cool thing about this exhibit is that during WWII, the museum in West Berlin at which these statues had been on display was bombed and a fire set the building ablaze. The flames got so hot that all of the limestone and marble statuary pretty much melted and was completely destroyed and the statues made of basaltic volcanic rocks just blasted into thousands of chunks. Curators though these would never be pieced together again, but many of the statues have since been completely organized and jigsawed back together again!

I found out the museum has free admission on Thursday night, which is good because Lizzie and I apparently missed an entire wing of the building that has some more pretty spectacular stolen goods!

Our Kombicartes (multiple-museum passes) also got us into the Neues Museum next door, which is also fantastic, but our stomachs were grumbling by this point and all I really wanted to see was the bust of Egypt's Queen Nefertiti which is exclusively on display there. This is the extremely recognizable Sun Queen, married to the Pharaoh, Akhenaten.

(photo from arthistoryspot.com)

Photos were not allowed in the Nefertiti room and we really just rushed through the rest of the museum. Again, we were hungry and just didn't have time to wade through the hundreds of small antiquities dating from the Ice Age to the Roman Empire. Would be cool to go back and check out sometime else.

I thought I'd get all the way through our Sunday together in this post, but I got lost in the details again. Sorry! More to come tomorrow!

Here is the entire photo set from my trip: