Germany: Day III (Berlin)

Friday, June 17^th:

Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate):

            Before discussing the day’s events, I want to wish my sister, Jillian, a happy 27^th birthday! Today we went to some of the more historic buildings in the city. We began the day by eating a Nutella and banana crepe outside the train station and then taking a train straight to the Brandenburger Tor, or the Brandenburg Gate, the famous symbol of the city. This is the area with the most tourists in the city, by far, and rightfully so as many of the main sites in Berlin are within immediate walking distance from this central spot. The gate was built in the end of the 18^th century as one of fourteen in Prussian Berlin, but is the only one still remaining. Prussian armies used the gate as a symbol of victory, marching through it on their way home after successful campaigns. Ironically, the gate was last used for this purpose in 1945, as the Red Army victoriously paraded through the gate after defeating the Nazi forces. Along with the theme of victory is the Quadriga on top of the gate, a four-horse chariot driven by Nike, the goddess of victory.

The German Reichstag:

            While we were waiting for our 1pm entrance time to the Glass dome of the Reichstag building we walked down the road to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This interesting memorial is a collection of 2711 concrete slabs, loosely looking like sarcophagi. They are arranged at different heights on a very uneven surface, to create an unusual appearance of confusion. We walked around the memorial before realizing that there was more underground, but we decided to come back to it after going into the Reichstag. Before going into this building, which houses the current German Parliament, visitors must reserve their visit online beforehand (Thanks Annike!) and go through a security check. We were then brought inside and up an elevator to the bottom of the glass dome on the top of the building. We had an audioguide to give us bits of history as we walked up the ramp to the top of the dome, offering awesome views of Berlin on all sides. Astonishingly to me, I learned that due to an act of arson in 1933, Hitler never set foot inside the Reichstag building as the Parliament had to be moved. Jen and I walked around this building for a long time and admired the beautiful weather outside before we went back down.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe:

            We grabbed a soft salt pretzel and walked across the massive lawn in front of the Reichstag next to check out the Soviet War Memorial, a statue and memorial constructed to remember the 2,500 or so Russian soldiers who perished during their assault on Berlin in May of 1945. This was also the closest point we ever got to the Victory Column in center of Tiergarten. Tiergarten is the largest park in the city, at 650 acres, and the humongous golden column lies at its center. We continued walking back to the Memorial of the Murdered Jews in Europe and went inside the free underground museum. The place is astoundingly quiet as visitors read about the unfolding events of the Holocaust in a timeline before entering a room that displays letters and diaries of some of the people who were killed. Particularly disheartening to me, most of all, was a letter written by a twelve-year-old girl to her father, telling him that she will be killed and will never see him again, and that she did not understand why, but that she loved him. The room also displays the number of people killed per-country based on 1937 borders. The next room contains stories of families who were broken apart during the horrible time. The following two rooms discuss the locations of memorials and of the different concentration, work, and death camps that existed during the Third Reich. It is a very powerful site, and I was left thinking about it for a while after we left.

Checkpoint Charlie:

            We walked from the memorial towards the Checkpoint Charlie area and passed another outdoor exhibit called the Topography of Terror. This exhibit was built in the ruins of underground offices used by the Nazi secret police, and it lies immediately alongside a large remaining piece of the Berlin Wall. We walked from here down the street to Checkpoint Charlie, the site where the four corners of Post-War divided Berlin came together. Berlin was split up amongst the allied powers of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Russia. Checkpoint Charlie is at the entrance to the American sector, which lies at the corner of all four of the sectors. We hung out here for a bit and got a beer or two before walking back towards the train station. On our way we walked around the large Potsdamerplatz and got some Frohsinn Joghurt (Frozen Yogurt) to hold us off for a while.

Victory Column:

            When we got back to the hotel, we showered and changed into some nicer clothes to go to a ballet! Jen had noticed that the Berlin Staatsballett was performing Schneewittchen (Snow White) nearby. We took the train towards the theatre and almost missed the show because they moved the performance without telling us, but we made it inside. We both enjoyed the show very much, and my favorite scene was one when the seven dwarves performed a very cirque-du-soleil-esque scene, doing acrobatic stunts while dangling from wires. After dinner we went back to our hotel to eat at the famous Quadriga restaurant. Since I remembered the most about Germany in my Wines class this past semester at Cornell University, I was excited to tackle the massive German wine list that the restaurant had. I settled on a 1998 Auslese Riesling from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region of Germany. For dinner, I ate risotto with truffle oil while Jen had a Norwegian salmon soup with potatoes and carrots. Our dessert was particularly interesting: cloudberries from Finland and frozen yogurt. This dinner was one of the best we have had this whole trip, and it put us right to bed!