Berlin, Germany
We arrived in Berlin after a pleasant, but long, Lufthansa flight from LAX to Frankfurt, and then a shorter flight to Berlin. Our hotel, Hecker's, was conveniently located near all the methods of transportation we'd need to get around the city: S-Bahn, U-Bahn, buses and trams. Carol and Rae were already at the hotel, so after we checked in, we all set off for a little exploration.
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We ate dinner at a rooftop restaurant, Humboldt Terrassen, with an amazing view overlooking the Berlin Cathedral. We had one of Berlin’s iconic dishes: currywurst!
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After breakfast the next morning we met Jamie of Insider Tours for a walking tour of both East and West Berlin.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church; built in the 1890s and badly damaged in a 1943 bombing raid, remains as a memorial to peace and reconciliation.
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Inside the octagonal nave of the adjacent new church, built in 1961 and flanking the ruined tower, thousands of colored glass blocks produce an intense blue light.
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We visited several sites that were somber reminders of Berlin's WWII and Cold War history.
Completed in 2005, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial, consists of 2,711 gravestone-like pillars arranged in a grid pattern.
(Left to right, above): The Berlin Wall Victims Memorial, commemorating some of the East Berliners who died trying to cross the Wall; The Memorial to Politicians Who Opposed Hitler, each slab representing one of the Reichstag's 96 members who were murdered for disagreeing with Hitler's politics; statue, "Mother with Her Dead Son", by Käthe Kollwitz, symbolizing the suffering of civilians during World War II, and marking the tombs of Germany’s unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim; a marker indicating where the Berlin Wall once stood.
Humboldt University, once the State Library, and the scene of the Nazi book burning in 1933. Among the authors whose books were burned was poet Heinrich Heine who had written in 1820: "Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people."
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Checkpoint Charlie, the best known border crossing during the Cold War. The sign, which became a symbol of the division of Cold War Berlin read like a dire warning to those about to venture beyond the Wall: "You are leaving the American Sector".
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The Detlev Rohwedder Building has been the seat of the German Finance Ministry since 1999. The huge mural by Max Lingner featured the communist ideal: industrial laborers, farm workers, women and children, happily singing a patriotic song. In contrast and set into the ground nearby is a huge photograph of 1953 protesters shortly before their gathering was suppressed.
The next day we visited the Brandenburg Gate, strolled along Unter den Linden, wandered in a few shops, and enjoyed lunch in yet another great bakery! In the afternoon we toured the Jewish Museum.
The Jewish Museum, which opened to the public in 2001, contains exhibits on the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, with a large section devoted to the Holocaust. After entering the museum, the visitor descends by stairway through the dramatic Entry Void, into the underground. The descent leads to three underground routes, each of which tells a different story. The first leads to a dead end, the windowless Holocaust Tower. The second leads out of the building and into the Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who were forced to leave Berlin. The third and longest, traces a path leading to the Stair of Continuity, then up to the exhibition spaces of the museum. Architect Daniel Libeskind designed the innovative and conceptual structures.
On our last day in Berlin, we returned to the Brandenburg Gate, one of Berlin's most famous landmarks. A symbol of Berlin and German division during the Cold War, the Brandenburg Gate is now a national symbol of peace and unity. The Gate stood between East and West Germany, becoming part of the impenetrable Berlin Wall. In 1989, a peaceful revolution ended the Cold War, the Berlin Wall fell, and East and West Germany were reunited when the Brandenburg Gate opened, becoming the symbol of a new Germany.
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The Berlin Wall enclosed West Berlin from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989, cutting a line through the entire city center.
The Berlin Wall Memorial, located on Bernauer Strasse, includes a 200 ft. section of the former border, a Window of Remembrance, commemorating the deaths that occurred at the Wall and displaying the names and photographs of the victims, and a Visitor Center with two films about the history of the Wall and how it fell.
In the afternoon, we left Berlin on a short airBaltic flight and arrived in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.