This morning is our Panoramic Berlin tour - 4 hours dashing around Berlin. Before the bus got underway, Benne popped onto the bus and announced she was saying goodbye! Obviously a move to avoid a bunch of emotional separations (she knew we'd all become rather attached to her and somehow expected to just take her home with us), in an instant she was gone! Quite devastating!
At least this morning's tour guide's English is colloquial, as in - he didn't sound like he was reciting a memorized speech, and the phrases he used were natural and clear.
Head's up about Berlin - there's a ton of very large, very impressive looking buildings here. Some of them are churches. Some of them were churches at some point. Many of them used to be palaces. Most of them have been totally rebuilt since WWII. As clear and thorough as our guide was, I simply could not absorb all the info without taking written notes.
Here are a few photos, not in any particular order (because I don't remember the order):
The Holocaust memorial:
This is about 2 blocks down the street from the location of Hitler's bunker (now paved over as a parking lot for two huge apartment buildings), and not far at all from the Reichstag (German parliament building). Peter Eisenman, an American Jewish artist, designed the memorial. It's 2,711 granite blocks that are very close to the ground by the street, but as you walk through the stones they gradually increase in height until the blocks are 12' tall. The artist stated that he wanted each person to come to his/her own conclusion as to the meaning of the memorial. I know I have mine. What do you think?
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| Holocaust Memorial |
Berlin Wall:
We saw the wall several times. The first time was this piece that has been painted with "graffiti" - it's called graffiti, but it looks much more like a deliberate work of art:
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| Decorated piece of the Berlin Wall |
The real Berlin Wall: this is a part of the wall that was left the way it looked in November, 1989:
And of course, Check Point Charlie, which is in fact totally fake. Facing us is the photo of the last American to stand guard at Check Point Charlie; on the other side is the photo of the last East German solider to stand guard.
Our guide told us he remembered when the wall went up when he was a little boy. He also remembered seeing President John F Kennedy drive down the street where he lived in an open car motorcade.
One more fun fact - I know that I've heard all these years that when JFK made his impassioned speech supporting the West Berliners by saying: "Ich bin ein Berliner!" that he was actually saying "I'm a jelly doughnut". But our guide said this was nonsense - that everybody he knows and he himself would say exactly the same thing to say: "I am a Berliner". Well, put that myth to rest!
And of course, the Brandenburg gate:
It was a great bus tour, even though it was Everything-I-Ever-Wanted-To-Know-About-Berlin-While-Standing-On-One-Foot.
After the tour, we talked to the hotel concierge about getting into the Reichstag to walk up the dome. We had already asked him once already, and he had said it was completely booked. But this time, we wanted to know about making a reservation at the restaurant in the dome. The concierge, who had already made it obvious that being helpful was not on his list of things he does, insisted that the Reichstag was completely booked up, including the restaurant. There were no slots available until next Sunday. That sounded weird, but the concierge had already spent way too much time answering our silly questions and had moved on.
Then we walked around the corner to a segway tour company and reserved a segway tour for Sunday morning at 10:00 p.m.
By this time it was already going on 3:00 p.m. - too late to go anywhere or do anything, because our "Berlin at night" tour was scheduled to leave at 7:00 p.m. So we had a chunk of time to kill in the afternoon, which wasn't a terrible thing.
The tour guide for the "Berlin At Night" tour reverted to the exact kind of guide that was now getting on my last nerve - her English sounded like she was translating everything from German into English in her head as she was speaking, always a good way to sound stiff and awkward. She pointed out some "moh - say - icks" (mosaics), and my brain got stuck on that word until I could figure it out. By then we had long since moved on from moh-say-icks. Would we like to "make some photos"?
All the while in her artificially cheery sing-song voice that just sounded like nails on a chalk board to my ears.
The tour included dinner, which was at a micro brewery. Guess what the main course - pork shnitzel! If Benne were here, this never would have happened. Our food preferences would be already known! Our alternative was beef goulash. I'm so looking forward to non-German food.
The meal was mediocre, at best. So much for being a micro-brewery, the people who asked for beer all received the same standard-issue beer. No selection necessary, we've picked it out for you.
After dinner, it was dark enough to start seeing some of the buildings lit up:
Here's the Brandenburg Gate again:
At the end of the tour back at the hotel, we handed in the electronic headsets we'd been schlepping around for a week. Other than our transfer to the airport on Tuesday, we were officially back on our own.
Tomorrow: Segway and some museum that we haven't figured out yet.
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