Berlin & Copenhagen
April 2007
Part 2: Berlin
April 1st-4th (days 2-5): Berlin
We stayed in Berlin for four nights, giving us three full days to explore the city and its museums. The pictures are grouped thematically rather than chronologically, with the museums at the end.
Reichstag area
The
Brandenburger Tor was built in 1791 and was designed to look like the Propylaea (the entrance gate on the Acropolis of Athens). The wall painting shows how it ended up in the no-man's land inside the double Berlin Wall during the Cold War.
The
Reichstag was built in 1884-1894 to be the parliament building of the new German reich. It was famously set on fire in 1933, an event which the nazis used to ban the communist party and suspend civil liberties. After the reunification of Germany it became the parliament once again. A glass dome, designed by Norman Foster, was constructed on top. It has a walkway spiraling up to the roof which anyone can visit but the queues were too long so we didn't.
When the Reichstag became the parliament again a series of modern white government buildings was constructed next to it. It looks excellent, the new architecture complements the old very well. If only the European area in Brussels was designed like this.
Nearby are more new buildings.
On the last morning in Berlin, when I quickly visited everything I'd forgotten or hadn't had the chance for, I literally ran all through the Tiergarten from the Brandenburger Tor to the Siegessäule (Triumph pillar) and back, a nice run of some 3km. This pillar was erected in 1873 to commemorate recent Prussian victories against the Danish and the French. The figure on top is Victoria, the goddess of victory.
More neo-classicist monuments
Most of Berlin's old monumental buildings are in the classicist style. We've already seen the Reichstag and the Brandenburger Tor, and there are many more - more than in any other city probably. Monuments in this style are a dime a dozen in Europe, but Berlin has the nicest collection and I was very impressed by some, especially those with baroque elements mixed in.
The
Berliner Dom was built 1894-1905. The top of its dome is an impressive 116m high. I didn't get to check the interior and probably missed something.
The prettiest place in Berlin is the
Gendarmenmarkt, which is flanked by two identical churches, the Französischer (French) Dom and the Deutscher (German) Dom.
Almost equally pretty is the nearby Bebelplatz, with the catholic
St. Hedwigs cathedral.
Potsdamer Platz
After the reunification of Berlin, the Potsdamer Platz famously became one big construction site, and I expected to see a collection of impressive modern architecture here, but instead they just erected a bunch of ugly office buildings. One nice feature though, despite being named after an evil company, is the roof of the Sony Center: a round steel and glass construction that rests on a group of buildings and covers the big area between them.
To make room for the new buildings they've had to move an old hotel or something, the interior of which is now being displayed behind glass. The combination of mirrors and glass allowed us to make some nice self-pics.
While walking from the Potzdamer Platz to Checkpoint Charlie we passed this rare example of a modernist building that isn't ugly. The various shades of red used for the sun screens are a pretty sight, and I made some fancy pictures where I used them as a background to the silhouettes of the trees.
War memories
Though it's rather obvious, I didn't realise it until I was there: Berlin was the most important city of the 20th century, having been at the center of both World War II and the Cold War. A lot of places still refer to those times.
The
Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche was built in 1891 by emperor Wilhelm II to commemorate his father Wilhelm I. It got ruined during WW2, but the ruined tower was left standing as a war monument. Unfortunately it was later decided to put a hideous modern octagonal tower right next to it, spoiling both the view and the effect. There's also a big octagonal hall which is less of an eye sore.
On the site of the former Gestapo HQ, where there is also a section of Berlin Wall left, there is an open-air photo exhibition called "Topographie des Terrors". I love this one picture - the nazis did excel at imagery.
The
Neue Synagoge was built in 1866 in Morish style, put on fire during Crystal Night, ruined further during the war and later rebuilt. It looks great, I wish I could have gone inside. It is now a jewish cultural center and seems to have permanent police protection.
The Wall
After the reunification of Berlin the Wall was quickly dismantled. I think the Berlin government realised its touristic and historic value much too late. Now there are projects to show where the Wall used to run with different stones in the pavements, but much cooler things could have been done with the actual walls. Anyway, some parts are left, and tourists flock to them. My lucky sister happened to be in East Berlin the very day the Wall fell btw (on a student trip), what an experience!
Checkpoint Charlie, the famous border crossing between East and West, was dismantled, but all the shops and restaurants around it are called "Checkpoint Charlie" and a fake cabin has been put up with someone posing as a US soldier. It's an accident waiting to happen since it's in the middle of the street and cars are rushing past between the tourists. In any case, what an opportunity wasted to do something interesting with this famous spot!
The only significant section of Wall left standing is in an unattractive area outside the city center. It is called the
East Side Gallery because of the graffitti, but it has been painted over many times since the reunification so even here there is little authenticity. Again, what an opportunity wasted; the original grafitti on the Wall had cool slogans and paintings which would have made for an impressive historical monument. Apparently the German authorities thought that things without Corinthian capitals aren't worth preserving.
Kreuzberg
On to merrier places: Berlin has some very pretty areas where the living is good and probably very expensive. We made a walk through Kreuzberg, which lies south of the center.
Charlottenburg
Another pretty area is Charlottenburg, named after Schloss Charlottenburg, a palace built for the Prussian queen Sophie Charlotte in 1695. Nowadays the palace garden is a big public park.
Tourists
Here are some more pictures of us made around Berlin...
Lotte was going to present pictures of her paintings in some Berlin art galleries on day 3. While she was mapping them out in a Thai restaurant I made these pictures...
We stayed in the Alcatraz backpacker hostel which was a nice place.
Jüdisches Museum
The
Jewish Museum is housed in a hideous but interestingly weird zig-zag
building designed by Daniel Libeskind. Its windows, seemingly random lines on the façades, were designed by drawing lines between the houses of prominent Jews on a pre-war map of Berlin.
The museum tells the history of the Jews in Germany from Roman times (the first Jews who came to Germany were traders accompanying the Roman legions) to the present. Like the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem, it tells a tragic story - this one of centuries of discrimination, lies, prosecution and massacres - in an involved but serene way. The following pictures give a good idea of both the exhibition and the interior of the building.
Pergamonmuseum
This museum had been on the very top of my list of things to see in Berlin, but I still managed to completely forget about it during our three days in Berlin. On the morning of the fourth day we spent a few extra hours in Berlin so I could still go there. I rushed through it in 1h15, not nearly enough but still very much worth it.
The Pergamonmuseum is one of five museums on the Museuminsel (Museum island), an island in the river Spree. This collection of museums is a UN World Heritage Site.
The museum is named after its showpiece: the altar of the ancient Greek city of
Pergamon, which has been reconstructed here from the original pieces. I've visited Pergamon (on day 1 of my Middle East trip, report
here) which made this extra interesting. Still, I wasn't impressed, it just looks grotesque inside a hall. The museum has more reconstructions of parts of Greek and Roman buildings, and there is also a big collection of Greek and Roman statues.
I thought the Pergamonmuseum only had Greek and Roman exhibits, but it turned out there was much more. The most impressive exhibit by far is the partly reconstructed
Ishtar gate of ancient Babylon, one of the most famous monuments in world history, originally constructed in the 6th century BC.
The exterior of the Ishtar Gate was covered with blue glazed tiles and decorated with reliefs of dragons and cows. Through it ran the Processional Way, the walls of which were decorated with reliefs of lions. The smaller inner gate and part of the procsessional way have been reconstructed in the museum.
In
part 3 I'll show more and better pictures of animal reliefs from the Ishtar gate, from a museum in Copenhagen.
The Pergamonmuseum also has a collection of
Assyrian artefacts, which was a pleasant surprise. I've been wanting to see some of those for a long time but a visit to Iraq isn't about to happen. The Assyrians put up reliefs of winged creatures on palace walls for protection against evil.
The following relief is from the palace of the Persian king Darius in
Susa. It shows a procession of royal bodyguards and is made of glazed bricks in Babylonian fashion.
Then there is a big collection of
early islamic artefacts. The showpiece here is the fortress wall of the desert palace of Mshatta, built in the 8th century near Amman.
These two Islamic reliefs from the 9th century were found in Samarra (in present-day Iraq).
I also visited the
Neue Nationalgalerie, supposedly a leading museum of modern art, but I thought the collection there was crap so no pictures. On to Copenhagen then!
