We woke up early from a very restful night courtesy of Roland and Susi and met up with Doris and Hedda to make our way to the main train station in Hamburg for our train to Berlin. Doris got us advance tickets on the ICE – Germany’s high speed rail although the corridor between Hamburg in Berlin is too short for the trains to really get up to top speed. Still, they were a very comfortable ride and they look cool. The northern German countryside looks a lot like the Midwest of the US – lots of agriculture plus big windfarms.
Upon arrival to the Hauptbahnhof of Berlin we caught the subway/elevated train over to the east side where we were staying in a hostel boat docked on the Spree River just on the other side of one of the longest remaining stretches of the wall in the city which is now used as a canvas for graffiti style art. Ingrid was waiting there for us when we arrived and waited for us to throw our bags in our rooms and get checked in.
From there the six of us retraced our steps back to the local station and retraced our tracks back to the center of town. We decided on a nice little pizza place in the Hackeser Markt area which was pretty good and quite affordable. I tried the local specialty drink of mixing the typical north German pilsner beer with sprite or some similar fruit soda. We all agreed that initially it was quite tasty but after awhile it seemed to just take away from the beer flavor. We got caught a couple more times with the beer – sprite mixture before we figured out what to avoid. I’m glad that we tried it though because we had heard about it from others.
Freshly fueled we finally made our way out into Berlin which was an amazing and modern city. Because of bomb damage during the war and then cultural damage during the communist days there has been quite a lot of development since the fall of the wall. The result is quite pleasant with very old buildings sitting next door to restored buildings that had been partially damaged sitting next to brand new buildings that architecturally sympathetic to their surroundings but still have an identity of their own. Our first stop as we crossed the Spree onto what the Berliners call Museum Island was the giant Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral). We had just missed the tour so we didn’t get a chance to go in but the outside was amazing and vastly different than the grand churches we’ve seen in Paris and London. Mainly because of the enormous dome on top and the fact that the German churches seem to be more square shaped than following the cruciform plan of the traditional catholic churches.
Crossing back over the Spree we followed the main street through Berlin which has several names but goes by Unter den Linden for this, its most famous stretch. The roadbed dates back to the mid 1600s and gets its name for the Linden trees that are planted along the road and the promenade down the middle. Walking down this street takes you past several important buildings in Berlin as well as Humboldt University which we found out later was the alma mater of Marx, Lenin, the brothers Grimm, and Einstein.
Unter den Linden ends at the Brandenburg Gate made famous to Americans by JFK and his famous speech, Reagan and his famous speech, and several videos on MTV by the Scorpions and Jesus Jones. I was actually surprised at its size, for such an important landmark in European and even world history the gate is quite diminutive. Size notwithstanding it was awe inspiring to be standing in the shadow of something that had witnessed so much history in so many lifetimes.
So that was pretty cool.
Crossing through the gate we stepped over a cobblestone line in the sidewalk which marked the former site of the wall. For those keeping track for historical purposes, we were now leaving East Berlin and going into the west. In front of us was the Tiegarten, which is Berlin’s central park as well as the Reichstag which is now the center of German government after witnessing quite a bit of history itself. We decided the line to get in was a bit too long for our liking so we decided to return tomorrow morning so more about the Reichstag tomorrow.
Don’t look at me that way, there’s other crazy stuff ahead!
Like fer’instance we decided to walk through the Tiegarten to the other side where there was a lake and a little café that Ingrid either remembered or had heard about and as we were walking through the park a completely naked man walked out of the trees and laid down in the grass. See, that’s pretty crazy right? Continuing further into the park there were many more naked man encounters. It seems that naked sunbathing is something to do in the parks in Berlin. The park itself was very leafy and wild, no sign of formal gardens or paved paths. There were a few footbridges and we did discover a couple playgrounds but for the most part, the park was entirely wooded with a few meadows interspersed for pick up games of soccer or naked sunbathing.
After our little coffee and beer break at the café by the lake we walked out of the park and onto Kurfurstendamm which was the main drag for West Berlin when the city was divided. Now it’s mostly a typical commercial artery with a lot of tourist schlock. We did stop by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial which was the bombed out ruins of a church with another modern church nearby entirely composed of small blue stained glass windows. It would have been a very cool little memorial but the all the vendors crowding around the outside spoiled the mood.
From here we returned to our little hostel boat and freshened up for dinner. Ingrid had made us reservations at a Turkish place called Deneb which was across the river from our hostel in the area called Kreuzberg. It was a fairly lengthy walk but we got to see a lot of different facets of Berlin and the bridge we walked across to get to the other bank of the Spree was very cool and Baroque. The dinner was superb and we got to eat outside right on the sidewalk so we could watch the people going by and the river flowing past.
Later when we returned to the boat, Kirsten, Kendra, Hedda, and I all went up to the top deck bar for a nightcap and a lot of laughs. It was a solid first day in Berlin and we had a great time!
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