The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

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03/31/2007:
After the previous marathon day of tourism and getting up early, we decided to treat ourselves to a chance to sleep in. This was, after all, a vacation! The previous night, we had decided our itinerary. We had read in at least one of our tourbooks (and Maria and Colin corroborated this), that state-run museums (including most of the museums on Museum Island) were free on Sundays, so this seemed like a good day to really burn ourselves out on museums.Mike, Mary and Kate were interested in the Anne Frank Zentrum. X and I were not too keen on going there for a few reasons, one being the cost and another being that it seems a bit odd to have an Anne Frank museum in a city where Anne Frank never actually set foot. Sort of disingenuous. Almost as though, since tourists come to Berlin to see WWII/Nazi/Holocaust history and Anne Frank is probably the most recognizable human face of the Holocaust, someone decided it would be smart (and perhaps profitable) to open an Anne Frank museum in Berlin. Also, after yesterday’s harrowing visit to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, we were in the mood for something less depressing.As it happens, the Museum Otto Weidt Workshop For The Blind is located in the same nondescript alleyway near Hackescher Markt. The guidebook’s description sounded promising and with no admission charge, the price was right. Our morning plan was to check out Hackescher Markt, the nearby Hackesche Höfe, and the respective museums. After lunch we would move on to Museum Island.

After breakfast and a pleasant ride to Hackescher Markt, we first tracked down an ATM. This fancy-pants ATM gave back money in multiple denominations which was nice to not have a fistful of C-notes. We then found our way to Hackesche Höfe; an eclectic and quaint chain of courtyards lined with trendy restaurants and boutiques and some artwork. Unfortunately with it being Sunday we found most of the stores to be closed. In hindsight, this was probably a good thing, as it prevented X from spending oodles of money

Next we tracked down the alley that plays the gatekeeper for both the Anne Frank Zentrum and Museum Otto Weidt, the entrance to which would be pretty much impossible to identify if someone from the Anne Frank museum happened to forget to put out the sign welcoming you to the museum.

The alley has a lot of interesting artwork in it. To wit:

This large metal sculpture.

This planter. I could be wrong, but I *think* this thing is actually an old-timey urinal. Yes, I did a bit of modification to this picture.

There was also oodles of graffiti, but none of it was all that memorable.

From here we split up for our respective destinations.

Museum Otto Weidt is really neat. For one thing, it’s mostly empty. OK there are some workbenches:

But otherwise there’s not much there. Why is this cool? Well because they decided not to collect a lot of interesting but not actually historically germaine artifacts and corral them. They could have packed this little place with all sorts of WWII memorabilia and multimedia. Instead they simply chose to tell the story of a lesser-known Oskar Schindler, and it’s a fascinating story. Like Schindler, Otto Weidt risked his life and freedom to save his employees who were not only Jewish, but blind. These folks were making brooms and brushes. For a long time Weidt helped them escape deportation first by getting this workshop listed as “vital to the war effort,” and then later by bribing and cajoling Nazi inspectors. When one of Weidt’s clerks, Alice Licht was deported to Auschwitz, Weidt went to the concentration camp under false pretenses and with the help of a Polish worker managed to plant a room, money and clothing in town. Alice Licht escaped Auschwitz and survived. Another survivor named Inge Deutschkron wrote a book about her experience called Outcast.

Weidt had kept Licht and her parents hidden in this small room behind a false wall in the workshop. They were caught after a Jewish informant told the Gestapo where they were hidden. Weidt saved Licht but her parents were never heard from again.

This is definitely worth checking out.

X and I finished shortly before the rest of the team and waited in the alley for the others to finish up.

When they came out, they seemed awfully jovial considering where they just had been!

We also saw some of the memorials that can be found throughout the city in front of buildings that were occupied by Jews.

The tiles set in the ground give the names of the occupants, when they were deported and where they were killed. The harrowing reminders can be seen literally all over the city if you are watching for them.

This picture will take you to the Otto Weidt album.

We then stopped for lunch at a little place under the S-Bahn tracks called Rocco’s. It was Italian-ish. Pretty decent for a quick lunchtime snack.

Off we went to Museum Island! Museum Island is an island in the river Spree that, as the name suggests, has a lot of islands on it, along with the Berliner Dom. As noted above, most of the museums are state-run (Stadtmuseen). As also noted above, the Stadtmuseen were said to be free on Sundays.

We thought the Pergamon sounded interesting. It’s full off antiquities and archeological wonders. It has a glass atrium in the front of it. In the April sun, the glass atrium was probably 100 degrees or more. Positively sweltering. We had to dump our coats and bags in lockers (which, BTW, you get your money back when you replace the key!) per museum policy, but we would have died if we hadn’t done so. When we finally get to the desk (I am pouring down sweat by now) we attempt to acquire a ticket only to learn that: NO! Die Museen sind nicht heute frei! The museums are NOT free today! Perhaps this was a fairly recent change, but it seems like now museums are free during the evenings on some weeknight.

We huddled together to decide what to do next. At this point I was so hot that I determined that I didn’t care what we did as long as the next course of action included leaving the sweltering glass atrium AND SCHNELL! The fastest way to accomplish this goal was clearly to go get our stuff out of the lockers and get outdoors. Who knew if the whole museum was like an oven!

Outside, we grouped and decided on our next course of action. Colin and Maria had told us about another museum near the island called the DDR Museum. Our eyes lit up upon hearing about an entire museum devoted to Dance Dance Revolution! Not so much…What we Anglophones call former East Germany, the German Democratic Republic or GDR is in German the Deutsche Demokratische Republik…DDR. The museum is about Communist East Germany. But they still described it as fun and cool. Not free, but obviously we were going to have to pay to go in one of these museums and the DDR Museum seemed more interesting than antiquities or art.

But first, outside the Pergamon we noticed an outdoor market stretching along the riverfront and decided to go check it out. It was evenly split between Flohmarkt type secondhand junk and people selling handcrafts and other new products. There was also some live music. There was not a whole lot to see here, but we did find a woman selling earthenware plates with line-drawings of animals on them that we thought were cute. We bought 3 little plates to adorn the wall of our dining room. The woman running the stand asked where we were from. Cautious of not being the “ugly American” who assumes that everyone knows where Philadelphia is, I first told her we were from the US and did not volunteer Philadelphia until she asked what city. I was tempted to tell her we were from King Of Prussia because I imagine that someone living in the part of Germany formerly known as Prussia might get a kick out of learning that somewhere in the US a city was named after an inn that was named after Old Fritz. But, I was concerned that due to lingustic differences she might not have a clue what I was talking about.

Then we went on our way to the DDR Museum. Maria and Colin had given us a general idea of where it was and getting there involved a pleasant jaunt across Museum Island where we saw:

The Altes Museum

The Berliner Dom

The Fernsehturm

And this lovely fountain. I am quite proud of myself for capturing the rainbow and even prouder of myself for managing to accentuate it in post-production.

Despite seeing all these lovely things (and other things) we had not found the DDR Museum. The hour was getting late. We were running out of time before we were to meet up with the others. We stopped in another museum both to see if we could get in for free (maybe it was just the Pergamon) and also to get directions to the DDR Museum. The person there told us it was near the Dom. After wandering around the Dom, we asked at the box office and got some odd directions about going around the side of the Dom and down some steps. It took some searching, but indeed the DDR Museum is located at the foot of one of the bridges crossing the Spree that is just behind the Dom! At last!

The DDR Museum is cute and somewhat campy. If nothing else it is a pleasant break from looking at art and antiquities and staring bleary-eyed at captions on placards (that might not even be in English). It takes you through aspects of life in the DDR, revealed by opening doors and cabinets. They have mockups of apartments, clothes people wore, diaries and all sorts of other neat things. One of the most fun things is the body of old Trabant. You can actually get in the car and “drive” it as you watch on a screen footage of what the old East Berlin looked like. Might be cooler if they made it actually interactive so that your steering actually had an impact on where the car went. Either way it’s a good photo op.

The DDR Museum was worth the ~10 Euro each that it cost. It’s also one of the few places in Berlin where you can actually use a credit card so it can save you a trip to the ole bankomat.

But now it was time to head out to the rendezvous point. While we go, you can check out the rest of the Museum Island pics here:

After picking up the rest of the group and sitting down for a little while to rest our legs, we boarded a bus in the general direction of where we thought we wanted to eat dinner. But we really didn’t know specifically WHERE we were going to eat. After digging through some of our guidebooks, X presented us with a few choices and we settled on Carib a Caribbean restaurant (but you knew that, right?) in the Schöneberg section of town.
We were greeted in English by a jovial guy who looked a lot like David Bowie. Was it THAT obvious that we were American? I feel like we all kept a fairly low profile but I guess you still stick out. In any case, he was really nice and a lot of fun. He was mixing up Shandies with fresh ginger at the bar (and a lot of other fruity drinks for the girls). When it came time to order, I went with the old standby jerk chicken (mainly because I wanted plantains!) and David Bowie Guy asked me how spicy I wanted it. Remembering Maria and Colin’s note on spicy foods in Germany (”At one restaurant they are given a choice of spiciness from 1 to 5 and people ask for ZERO!”) I said “Very spicy.” As if he could read my mind, Mr. Bowie said “The chef is not German; he is a Jamaican native…” That set me straight. “Medium, please!”

Food was great. We had a few more drinks. Kate convinced David Bowie to take a picture of us. This may be the only picture of the entire group. Maybe they took a pic with Mike’s camera, too. Either way, it’s not in my gallery (yet). I’ll add it when I get it.

It really wasn’t very late, but we were bushed. And a little bit buzzed. We made it a fairly early night. We had fairly big plans for the next day and we would need the rest.

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!

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03/30/2007:
After a busy day 1 and a fairly late night, we had no trouble sleeping and were able to get up fairly early in order to make breakfast and meet Maria and Colin to see a flohmarkt and taste some German street food. Buoyed by a tasty breakfast and some of strong coffee, we took the U-Bahn down to Maria and Colin’s apartment.

After relaxing for a few minutes, off we went to Rathaus Schöneberg for the flohmarkt. Flohmarkt is literally a flea market, and these are a big part of life in Berlin. All the refrigerators I saw in Berlin (of course I only saw 2 or 3) were quite small. I imagine most Berliners don’t keep much food in stock; they just get things fresh at the flohmarkt 2 or 3 days each week. The square was full of tables and stalls selling flowers, meats, strong cheeses, clothes, jewelry and pretty much anything else you could imagine. We wandered around awhile picking up some gifts for the homefront. X got a necklace in keeping with her tradition of buying unique jewelry whenever she travels. I would later learn that Rathaus Schöneberg was also the site of John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

As the day wore on and we got hungry, we decided to get some food. I love sausage so I got some sausage mit brotchen. Brotchen being a little roll (literal translation: small bread) that basically serves as a handle to hold the sausage that is probably a foot long. Most of us got the same thing, but Kate (being of Alsatian heritage) could not resist tasting the Flammkuchen, a very tasty treat that is akin to pizza. We also had some orange juice. On the plane I observed that SGG and his entourage were dropping OJ faster than an LA cop. At the flohmarkt we noticed a huge preponderance of folks squeezing fresh OJ. OJ is apparently VERY popular here. It smells heavenly being squeezed. Colin warned us that it was different from the OJ back home and it certainly is. It’s not nearly as sweet, but it is quite tasty.

After lunch we parted ways. Maria and Colin, who were not actually on vacation, had to actually go be real people for awhile. Colin showed us the way to the station and we then embarked on a long day of hardcore tourism in the heart of Berlin’s Unter Den Linden section.

First stop: The Reichstag. The Reichstag is the home of the German parliament and a turbulent history. You can read the history over at the Wikipedia so there’s no need to recount them here. As a tourist stop, the Reichstag sits on the end of a huge open space. After East and West Germany reunited, the building was renovated and capped with a huge modern glass dome. Tourists may go to the roof of the building and walk a ramp to the top of the dome. At certain times it is also possible to observe parliamentary proceedings. There was a line waiting to get in…it didn’t take long, although X lobbied to skip entering the building and just “check it off.” There were some buskers to entertain us while we waited.

X bought a bottle of water and was dismayed to find it was carbonated. In many parts of Europe, bottled water is carbonated by default. I guess after a long history of water that was not safe to drink, it still isn’t very popular. If you are a water drinker and are ever travelling in Germany, here is your mantra: Stilleswasser. This will score you normal water (or at least prevent you from getting fizzy water). In a restaurant you can also order Leitungswasser which is tap water (literally pipe-water). You may get funny looks. We stuck with Stilleswasser mainly because it’s a pretty much a cognate and so it’s easier to remember than Leitungswasser.

In any case, the line did not take long and it was well worth the wait.

The Reichstag Building

The dome

The dome presents both some beautiful views (and it was a nice day!) and the opportunity for some interesting abstract shots.

Here is a picture of the spectacular central rail station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof

And an abstraction from part of the dome.

This pic will take you to the Reichstag album.

At the base of the dome there is also a history of the Reichstag building and the German parliament (Bundestag).

Upon leaving the Reichstag, we scratched our heads at some nearby memorials before making off for one of Berlin’s most well-known icons, the Brandenburg Gate. It is a very cool and imposing structure, although it was thronged with tourists.

There is the gate. Note the crowd.

You also get a nice view of the Funkturm from here. The former East Berlin side is under massive construction and revitalization.

This pic will take you to the Brandenberg Gate album.

Our next stop was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

As you approach the memorial, the stone stelae do not appear to go more than about 6 feet high or stretch very far. What you do not realize is that pathways actually descend and the farthest stone you can see here is pretty much the midway point - the Memorial basically occupies a city block. If you view the satellite map of the area, you can get a feel for the magnitude of its size.

As you approach the center, the stelae quickly grow over your head. 303 of the stelae are over 4m high with the tallest being 4.7m. There are 2711 stelae. Despite what I’m sure you are wondering (and what I also wondered) there is no significance to the number. It was simply the number of .95m x 2.38m stelae they could fit in the space! In an interesting twist there was a controversy because the anti-graffiti paint used to treat the stelae was developed by a company that had participated in the holocaust. One of the company’s subsidiaries even produced Zyklon B.

After wandering the labyrinth of stelae to get yourself in the appropriately somber and contemplative mood, you will eventually find your way into the underground museum where there are artifacts, exhibits, and a reading of the names of all known victims. It is harrowing and fascinating.

This pic will take you to the rest of the album.

After finishing at the museum we stopped for a snack at the nearby Terrace Cafe. We next ventured to Bebelplatz, the site of a Nazi bookburning. There exists now a window in the ground that looks into a basement library, painted stark white, devoid of any books. It serves as a memorial to the unfortunate event. It was now beginning to get dark…we were getting tired but we still had one more stop in our itinerary, Checkpoint Charlie.

My honest opinion of the Checkpoint and the accompanying museum: Do a walkby. It’s a bit out of the way, the museum is a bit expensive, and the “checkpoint” building that stands there today is not even original (nor are the faux Soviet artifacts being peddled nearby, I’m sure). The museum does have some fascinating stories about the evolving technology of the wall and the ever more ingenious methods devised to get to the other side. The museum and the man behind it have a fascinating story, but the unfortunate part is that he was by no means a professional curator, and it shows - the museum is packed with artifacts and exhibits that seem to have no logical flow and are even duplicated in multiple places. It’s long and hard to follow. Perhaps it was hunger and fatigue that tainted my judgment a bit, but I don’t think so.

You’ve all seen the booth and the big sign; no point taking a pic of that, and no photography allowed inside the museum itself.

Upon leaving Checkpoint Charlie, we sought a place to eat somewhere not too far from there. We decided to check out the spectacular Sony Centre. We actually had a hard time finding our way into it (suprising because it’s huge). Once we did, we looked around at our choices and settled on the Hofbrauhaus which is sort of chain of breweries. The food is standard German food…schnitzels and the like. We were able to get beer in litre quantities which was fun. I had a dish with some very doughy dumplings and pork. It was good, although it was probably one of the least memorable meals of the trip. We also got cool pins for drinking mass quantities of beer.

At this point we were dead tired. We slogged to the U-Bahn station and finally made our way back to the apartment for a well-deserved rest. But not without incident - when we got into the station, we realized there was a train right at the platform! What good luck! We ran in and sat down on the train. The doors closed. The train did not move. After a few seconds someone noticed that we were the only people actually ON the train - everyone else was on the platform. But we were trapped on the train - pushing the “exit” button on the doors did nothing! The girls were beginning to panic, but Mike and I felt that we were perfectly safe - we were on a train in a well-lit station that was full of people. Sure, we could not leave the train, but aside from looking like complete idiots and providing the a good laugh for the folks on the platform, there did not seem to be any immediate danger. Eventually a conductor came by and let us out. Turns out the train was being taken out of service, so he locked all the cars down so that he could go through and empty them one-by-one to make sure no one stowed away to wherever the U-Bahn trains go when they are taken out of service.

THEN we finally made our way back to the apartment for that well-deserved rest.

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!