Berlin

It's been a long time between blogs because I'm having fun. Cathy and I took the train to Berlin last Thursday and we have been discovering Berlin ever since.

We have come to truly appreciate our modest little hotel, Intermezzo Hotel for Women. It's biggest asset is location, location, location, but second runner up is price. We have one of the rooms with ensuite toilet and shower, so quite nice for us.

We are definitely in what used to be East Berlin. On the next block across the street is the parking lot that was once Hitler's bunker-where he and Eva offed themselves. It is marked by a simple sign and unless you knew or read the sign you would never know that it is anything other than a parking lot.

Walking one more block on the same street will get you to the Holacaust Memorial. We like it. Will get the photos on the blog someday. Next block is the US Embassy, and if you walk around that you get to the Brandenberg Gate. Through the gate one way gets you to Under der Linden, the Champs Eylesse of Berlin, and the other way will get you to the Tiergarden, and another way will get you to the Reichtag. Not a bad neighborhood!

We have taken the Ho Ho Bus and Boot (boat) to get our bearings, but by far the highlight of the trip has been the 4 hour Segway ride. Tony from Kildaire Ireland was our guide and we loved hearing his English. There were four of us on the trip around the big oval that is most of Berlin. I suspect the two guys with us were gay, but couldn't be sure. Half the fun was riding the Segways and the other half was learning about Berlin's history.

At first we couldn't tell if we were in former East Berlin or West Berlin, but now we are getting pretty good at it. Most of the places we want to go are actually in the East. The Russians got most of the really important buildings-nevermind that they were still smoldering when they got them. The wall is really sobering, and it is rather delightful to walk or ride over it many times in the day.

One of the reasons that it's hard to tell which side you are on is that the Solviets built the choicest buildings nearest the West. The building that we are staying in was once an apartment building for high ranking people. Some enterprising woman/women apparently bought the ground floor and turned it into a women only hotel-smart move. Another reason is that big corps like Sony have moved in and build big fabulous buildings. Hence, a Segway guide like Tony is very valuable in pointing out interesting things that one would never know otherwise-like the traffic light and clock combo that has just been refurbished in Potsdamer Platz. It was the first traffic signal in Europe.

So, we have our bearings mostly. Neither Cathy nor I are the persons handed the map when in a group of our peers, but we manage as I usually do by going some of the wrong way before turning around or Cathy's way by asking people where things are. Neither method is stunningly successful, but as I say, we manage.

Today we tried to focus on the museums that will be closed tomorrow, so that ment art. As Tony pointed out, most things are unimagenatively named. We went to two New Museums today and tomorrow we will go to the Old Museum and the Pergamon.

At the first New Museum in the Potsdamer Platz neighborhood near Matthew's Church where Bonhoffer was ordained, we saw mostly German art of the 1930's and 40's. Max Beckman was my favorite, and since this museum allows photos, I'll eventually show you some of the ones I liked.

The Bonhoffer church was Lutheran plain inside, but a choir or octet was practicing a very modern piece that required three of the vocalists to cover one ear and use a tuning pitch to stay focused on their note. There was a harp and a piano as well. I don't often think of the harp as an instrument for very modern music, but this one was doing the job.

I truly enjoyed our lunch at an outdoor cafe near the collection of museums whose names I cannot spell from memory. I got a schnitzel, which I have had quite a few of recently, and three veggie salads all of which were imaginative and quite good. Beer seems to come in larger and larger here, so I just had a large. Large is about three times the size of beer in France. Larger is .5 liter and it's what we were looking forward to after the Segway ride.

I tried to do a bit of the other new museum on museum island, but I was just too whupped. It was a full day yesterday and we got to bed later than usual last night, so I came home and had a little nap. We'll head out for a German restaurant in our neighborhood for dinner. One other thing I have learned is that spetzel is a southern German-possibly Bavarian thing. We get potatoes. That can work well for me tonight as a stuffed baked potato will be just right for my dinner.

KG