The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

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04/01/2007:
Another Berlin morning. More big Berlin plans. And plans further afield! We had all heard many positive things about Prague. Prague is not exactly “right next door” to Berlin, but it’s certainly not that far by train. Our first stop of the day was to buy our train tickets, so we went to Bahnhof Zoo to figure out how. This also fit in with our next stop for the day since we needed to catch an S-Bahn train.

At the Deutsche Bahn store (which was running a temperature comparable to the Pergamon lobby) we scratched our heads at some timetables. Then we scratched our heads at some automated ticket kiosks. The kiosks had an English mode, but they still seemed a bit confusing. Mary decided that it would be a good idea to perhaps go talk to a live person and got into the longish line. Everyone waited in the store. I was beginning to black out and went to sit outside in the station. After a few minutes, X waved me in since I had our money and passports in case these were needed. When Mary got to the front of the line and spoke to the woman, it became apparent that speaking to her was a Very Good Idea. As it turns out, there is a 6-person group rate. There were only 5 people in our party, but it still ended up cheaper to split the group ticket 5 ways instead of buying 5 individual tickets. Mike fronted the money. Again. 4 days after paying him back for fronting the money for hotels and the apartment I was back in the hole!

Satisfied with our success and excited about visiting another country, we pocketed our tickets and found our way up to the S-Bahn platform. Next stop: Olympic Stadium!

The Olympic Stadium was built on the location of a race track. A stadium was built in the same site for the 1916 Olympics, but WWI prevented it from happening and the original stadium never saw Olympic competition. Towards the end of the 1920s, new plans were made to expand the complex. The Great Depression almost halted the plans, but Berlin was awarded the 1936 games. When Hitler rose to power, he didn’t want to just expand the old stadium, but build a new one. The stadium is one of the few examples of grandiose Nazi architecture, as most buildings built by the regime were demolished after WWII. Hitler wanted to use the Olympics as a chance to show the world German might. Anti-semitic laws were temporarily suspended and lots of pageantry was used to help show the world Nazism’s best face. Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals showing Hitler that perhaps his “master race” idea wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Today the stadium has been modernized and is still in use for soccer, football, concerts and other events.

Two columns with the Olympic rings suspended between them guards the approach to the stadium. Looking back from here provides a commanding view all the way back into the city.

Once you walk in, you get a commanding view across the stadium to the cauldron. The bell tower juts up from the parade grounds beyond the far end of the stadium.

Near this panoramic view stood a soccer-themed Berliner Bär. The emblem and mascot of Berlin is a bear so in keeping with current trend of having painted animals all over the city, Berlin has painted bears all over the city.

We began to walk around the side of the field. Kate and Mary wanted to take a closer look at the field, but when they went to walk around the edge, they found that there are some kind of plexiglas barriers between different sections. My only theory is that this is to minimize the impact of rioting soccer hooligans. The girls were, as you can see, not too happy about having to hike back up the stairs!

On the opposite side of the stadium stands the cauldron.

The Roll of Honor is on the wall near the cauldron. You can see the events won by Owens. Also in this area are plaques honoring many of the people involved with the construction of the stadium. People who were closely connected with the Nazi party have been removed.

Behind the stadium is the parade ground. The bell tower comes up from the middle. This part of the complex was being renovated.

Coincidentally, the original bell is no longer actually in the tower. In addition to time-honored symbols of Germany (an Eagle on one side, the Brandenberg Gate on the other), the bell also bore some Nazi symbols. A fire damaged the tower, the bell was used as a firing target, and when the bell was to be removed from the tower, it was simply dropped from it’s perch 200+ feet up! I probably should have taken a picture of it (duh) but it was interesting to see how the swastikas were obscured on the bell. This picture is expertly composed - you can see the bell tower behind us.

After exploring the stadium grounds awhile longer, we found that we were getting hungry. After a brief consultation, we concluded that the best course of action would be to eat at the stadium cafe rather than be starving by the time we got back into town and found a place to eat. This worked out well - the cafe’s food was both good and inexpensive. This was also my opportunity to sample one of the Berlin standards, currywurst. As the name suggests it’s a sausage that is topped with some sort of curry/ketchup combination. Very tasty.

It’s time to catch the S-Bahn back to town. You can see the rest of the stadium pics if you click this one.

Later, back at Bahnhof Zoo…

We split into teams again. Mike and Mary took off to see some cultural attractions such as some of the few remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall. Kate, X and I made for the Zoo.

X is a big fan of aquariums and zoos, so a trip to the Berlin Zoo (which everyone says is really nice) was probably already a priority goal, but the prospect of seeing Knut sealed the deal. Knut has been drawing record crowds to the zoo and there was a decent line to buy tickets. We managed to skirt this a little bit by finding that one ticket booth was being mostly ignored.

The first thing we did was take a picture of the map. Not my idea, unfortunately, but the girls theorized that if we got lost, we could look at the map on the camera’s display. It actually would work fairly well, except it’s very hard to orient yourself when everything is written in German. Sure, you can see that you’re standing next to some flamingos, but good luck finding this on the map! Can you find the polar bear area? I’ll give you a hint: In German they call polar bears “ice bears.”

We wandered the wonderful zoo where there are not so many walls and fences…many animals are isolated from the people by way of trenches and moats which makes it very easy to see the animals.

Along our travels we saw:

Baby elephants, baby goats, baby black bears…

Flamingos, giraffes, okapi…

Llamas, orangoutauns, and other monkeys…

Birds of all sorts…

Kangaroos, cheetahs, and other cats…

A charismatic seal, a cryptic sign on a goat enclosure that must SURELY mean “NO YODELING!”…

And one REALLY AWESOME male lion…

What are we missing? CUTE BABY POLAR BEARS! We finally consulted a map and tracked down the polar bear enclosure and made our way towards it. We found polar bears doing usual polar bear frolicking. None of them looked very much like cubs. None of the onlookers seemed particularly interested, either. What was going on? Wo wahr Knut?

Well, we couldn’t wander around forever - we had other places to go before meeting Mike and Mary for dinner. And so we decided to ask where the little rascal was. And thus we ran into a common problem with knowing just enough of a foreign language to get into trouble. I taught Kate and X how to ask “Where is Knut?” in German (see the title of this post). Except none of us had any idea how to actually process the answer. As they went to ask a zookeeper, I took some more pictures and suddenly heard behind me “AAAWWWWWWWWWWWW!” The zookeeper must have said something like “Knut ist schlaffen” (which I know now), and got blank stares from the girls so conveyed through a hand signal that KNUT WAS SLEEPING! We (ostensibly) travelled thousands of miles to see that “sleepy bastard” (as he came to be known)! They should have gone and woke him up!

Fail! But the zoo was still very cool and very nice, and at 11 Euro, not expensive.

You can see the rest of the zoo pics by clicking the bear.

After the zoo, we had a little bit of extra time before we had to be at dinner, so we wandered over to KaDeWe, a giant and famous department store, particularly known for its giant deli/grocery/food court on the 6th foor. It’s huge and you could spend a long time there sampling all kinds of good stuff from cheeses to meats to breads and pastries. We didn’t have a whole lot of time so we vowed to return on our last day (which we had planned as our shopping day).

Our dinner plans were at Storch (that link may no longer work, but it used to). The girls seemed certain that the restaurant was very close to KaDeWe so rather than find a U-Bahn stop or bus stop, we decided to walk there. Turns out…Storch was not so close at all. It was a long hike there, and we ended up getting there about 1/2 hour after our meeting time! Oops…

Storch is a cool place. It is Alsatian cooking so that Kate could continue keeping in touch with her heritage. You sit at long tables where, if you were in a smaller group, there would be a high potential that you would share your table with other guests. It is common for strangers to share even a smaller table in Germany if no tables are available, but the configuration at Storch makes it highly probable. Being a group of 5, this did not occur for us.

We were greeted at the door by a jovial man who also seemed to intuitively know that we were Americans and were the rest of the party that the other two Americans were waiting for. We sat down and found our menus. They were in German. And handwritten. In order to read these menus, we would need to negotiate both the language barrier and the somewhat illegible handwriting! Not wanting to be “ugly Americans,” we would have just done our best, but the happy host (who had already translated the menu once for Mike and Mary) took a seat beside us and happily translated the entire menu for us newcomers. What a guy! The menu was full of awesome-sounding dishes and beers. It was hard to decide!

We ended up with an appetizer consisting of some really tasty cold sausages and mustards. I had a dish that consisted of sauerkraut with pork knuckle, bacon and sausage. Christa had a sort of stew with beef and shallots. They were awesome. So good that this is the only meal that inspired me to actually write down what I ate! Everyone else seemed really happy with their food as well and Storch would end up being regarded by all as the best meal we had in Berlin!

After sticking around for a while having some drinks, we bade the jolly man goodnight and made our way back to the apartment. It was not very late, but we had a 6AM train to Prague and we were going to have to get up very early to get to the station.

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