Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Beleaguered Berlin

We had decided to go to Berlin after we started our European tour. I had been to Berlin 13 years ago and loved it. It seemed a dynamic and quirky city with a rich history. Bob had never been to Berlin and with his interest in history we decided to add this city to our BLIB tour.

The city seemed quite different from my memory of it in 2004. In 2004 I had stayed near Kurfurstendam, the pretty tree-lined boulevard full of up market shops that stretches 3.5 km from Charlottenburg to the zoo. This time we stayed in East Berlin (the consequence of last minute planning), not far from the old GDR’s Stasi (State Security Service) headquarters. So instead of being surrounded by 19^th Century buildings, fancy shops and pleasant cafes visited by tourist and fashionably dressed locals, we were surrounded by graffiti covered, concrete Stalinist blocks and heavily tattooed and pierced youth carrying beer bottles at any time of day. There are definitely many facets to Berlin.

On our first day we went to Brandenburg Gate, of course, and had booked tickets to go up to the dome of Reichstag Building. Admission is free but to control the crowds, one must book several days in advance for admission. The security and access were much tighter than in 2004.

Bob at the Brandenburg Gate

The River Spree looking east

Russian graffiti from WWII

The lawn in front of the Reichstag - it was open to the public in 2004

We then walked to the nearby Holocaust Memorial. This was still being built in 2004. I found it a strange memorial of bare, gray concrete blocks, many of which are already cracking and needing support. Having just come from Auschwitz, I felt the memorial did not do justice to the victims or survivors.

The Holocaust Memorial with the Reichstag and US Embassy in the background

After wandering around the Tiergarten, looking a bit more rundown than I remembered it, we made our way to East Gate, the longest section of the Berlin Wall still remaining. It has been made into a wall of street art, but is still marred, like almost every building in Berlin, by ever present graffiti.

The East Gate of the remaining Berlin Wall

Close up of some of the art work

The next day we took a hop on – hop off bus around the city and it was refreshing to see the bits of Berlin that I remembered. We ended up on Museum Island along the Spree River and decided on the German History Museum which was excellent, not only for its overview of German history but also putting all of European history in context. We finished the day with a lovely dinner on Under den Linden, its beauty slightly marred by all the construction and road works.

Berlin Dom

A medieval hood to protect from the Black Death

Medieval devil figure made of bronze

On our last day we decided to visit the nearby Stasi Museum. It never ceases to puzzle me how humans can be so vile to each other.

Stasi Headquarters, now a museum

After the Stasi Museum we felt we needed some prettiness back into our visit so went to Kurfurstendam. Bob was eager to see if he could see some of the street scenes from Michael Caines 1960’s movie, Funeral in Berlin. In many ways the street looks very similar to in the movie.

We checked out Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, once a beautiful building left in it’s bombed out state as a reminder of the war.