Berlin Wall Part 2 and the Philharmonic

Waving to Family at Christmas over the Wall
The Wall, how it separated Berlin
Berlin is really about two major things. WWII and reparations, and the Cold war as it affected Berlin.

On this note we stop on Bernauer Strasse at the Nordbahnhof station
Where the Wall was as it closed a street
to take in another section of the Berlin Wall accompanied by an interpretive centre. It is very worthwhile. While the eastside gallery has the funny quirky graffiti to it, this deals more with the loss of life, the ridiculous attempts the GDR made to try and stop people from escaping east Germany. This location highlights where the wall was, and some of the photos and stories are very interesting. Definitely a must see.










Remains of the Wall

















It was called Stalin's Bed, a nail landing pad hidden on the other side of the first wall.
From there we continue into the city to Potsdamer platz,


Potsdamer Platz
the Times square of Berlin. It is very interesting architecturally and we spend time wandering the different shops close by.
Legoland

















Then on to the Berlin Philharmonic where an afternoon concert is taking place we want to hear. Yannick Van De Velde plays 3 pieces, our favorite a piece by Lintz, along with a 1000 other guests. It lasts an hour, we get great seats, and it is free. Afterwards we take in the Memorial to Euthanasia victims of the war, yes even Germans were victims of Hitler’s madman ideas. We first became aware of this practice by watching “X company”, a CBC TV show. What it amounts to is that impaired Germans, should they be Downs syndrome, TB patients, or mentally delayed, he had a squad that murdered them in similar fashion to the Jews. Many families lost love ones at the same time they fought for Germany. Definitely another full day in Berlin, and while we still have not seen everything we were wanting to we’ve run out of time.

Since we had to relocate hotels we decided to try the DBahn rail system in Berlin. An all day pass was E7.60 and allowed us to come in from about 20 kms outside the centre of Berlin, then catch any of the S Bahn or U Bahn rail system, any buses, etc. for the whole day, and return. It is great value and with a free app to plan your routes it is a breeze.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hope for the Best, plan for the worst!

Image
 Hope for the Best, plan for the worst! Ready to Ship This year we re-committed ourselves to travelling back through parts of Europe on our bike. Westjet's BikeAir program was not well founded at the beginning but in June seemed to have found it's feet. We found reasonably priced premium Economy seats, chose Rome as the destination as Barcelona/Spain doesn't honour the EU temporary permit for moto's for leisure purposes. We wanted to avoid as much of the high tourist season and high heat temperatures.  Plan for the Worst We knew that Westjet would fly the bike from Vancouver as well as Calgary with a small surcharge but since we had family to visit we decided to truck the bike to Calgary and visit family in advance. That worked great and a benefit was my son-in-law came to the cargo drop-off and I got a picture with the bike after the customs clearance was given for it. Next day, was flight day, our premium economy seats came with priority boarding passes and we were th
Read more

Switzerland - Sept. 21-23 - Lukmanier Pass and Disentis

Image
   Lukmanier Pass and Disentis Our last morning in Menaggio and we wake up to threatening skies. We knew they were forecast but we hoped we'd luck out like the rest of our trip and have great weather. It was not to be. After our final breakfast at the Hotel Merloni we load the bike and head towards Lugano, Switzerland.  This is a memorable highway for us that dates back to mid May 2006 when we rode from Colmar, France to Menaggio on a day that got colder and colder and began to snow on the Gotthard Pass. So much so, that we were turned back and had to take the Oberpal pass to Disentis and the Lukmanier Pass to Lugano.  I always characterized that ride which turned to pouring rain once you got over the Alps, "as driving inside a firehose" . We've been in contact with Heiko as he wanted to ride the pass and meet us 1/2 way and take us to his friends place in Disentis, CH. His last report was everything was cloudy but not raining there, and with it still dry when we prep
Read more

Ostia Antica and Ostia Lido

Image
 Ostia Antica and Ostia Lido After a nice hot humid afternoon getting repacked after recovering our riding gear from panniers etc. we enjoyed a nice pizza at our B&B suite hotel. They run an extremely successful B&B, pizzeria near Ostia Antica, which was the birthplace of Rome before Rome. We had been here passing through in 2006 and stayed in 2014 while visiting the ruins of Ostia Antica itself. Our neighbor Jeff who has a degree in Archeology remarked about how impressed he was with OA and it is impressive. Our 2014 Ostia experience is here .  This morning, Sunday, we reset and were just going to go for a walk when I suggested we head close to the Lido and then take our walk there. It was a good plan. Neptune and Friend to the left The Lido was busy when we got there around 10:30 am as it was super sunny, 33C humid and real beach weather. As we walked the Lido we got to see Neptune with a guy fishing beside him, and jam packed beaches. Beaches crowded The architecture there i
Read more