Munich to Berlin, 24 Oct 2019
Our last inter-city train ride began the last week of our trip. We arrived in Berlin and had some time to walk around the city a bit.
In order to have some time in the day to do something order than ride the train for four and a half hours, we got up a bit early to catch breakfast near when it opened. After we did final packing and checked out, we walked the couple blocks to the train station, picked up something for lunch, and found our train track.
Because our train was going to split in Leipzig, we made sure to wait on the part of the platform where our part of the train was supposed to be. It pulled in a few minutes later, but we ended up having to go down a car or two but had our choice of seats since they all seemed to be not reserved.
There was quite a bit of haze and fog, tee we still got to watch the nearby landscape go by. The splitting of the train seemed to go smoothly in Leipzig, and we continued to Berlin, although the train was moving in the opposite direction.
Upon arriving in the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, we went about procuring week-long passes, since we would be able to use them for just a few hours shy of the seven days. We also got passed that let us travel in the central area, figuring the couple times we may go outside that zone we could purchase extension tickets so we wouldn’t need to party full fare for those trips.
An S-Bahn and a U-Bahn trip got us to the hostel. We were there a bit before check-in time, but the guy behind the desk didn’t blink an eye. He was extremely laid-back and quite accommodating. After we did some unpacking, we were off to do a quick walking tour. Sort of.
Reichstag
The first stop on the walking tour was the Reichstag, where the Bundestag (similar to the US House of Representatives) meets. It has been since the Hohenzollern family ruled over a kingdom. It nearly burned down soon after Hitler took power, ending up being barely used. It was heavily bombed during the war, and Soviet troops raised the hammer-and-sickle on its roof.
After Berlin was divided, the wall ran right behind the Reichstag. The building fell into disuse, and Bonn became the capital of West Germany.
The Reichstag was renovated after the wall fell and it reopened just before the turn of the century. The dinner is not made of glass and has mirrors inside which reflect light into the legislative chamber below. Visitors can climb the ramps to the top of the dome, and we had made reservations to do so. We got the timing right since after we looked at the building from the outside, it was about time for us to go in.
Being an operating government building (especially considering you go directly above and can see into legislative chambers) there is quite a bit odd security. Passports are checked to make sure you are the people on the reservation, bags and metal detectors need to be passed through, and you are escorted in groups from the security checkpoint to the building. There are two sets of doors, so you all crowd past the first set, wait until they close, then the inner set opens. You then crowd into an elevator which takes you to the roof.
We picked up audio guides that automatically play segments as you walk up, which worked fine but were a bit hard to hear. It gives you an idea of what you are looking at.
As you wander on the roof, you get a good look at the dome as a whole. It’s 80 feet high, 130 across. Not small. As you enter, you see the spiral ramps and the huge column of mirrors. More subtle is a big sub screen that moves during the day to prevent too much light and heat going into the building.
The view is commanding. Not being familiar with Berlin, it took me a while to make sense of what I was seeing (we had gone up towers in Cologne, Salzburg, and Munich after having gotten a feel for the city).
After we were done, we rode the elevator down and continued with the walking tour.
Walking tour
First up were a few memorials. One was for politicians who opposed Hitler, who were persecuted and murdered. There are vertical slang, each with names, political parties, and the date and location of death.
Another memorial is for people who were killed trying to cross from East to West Berlin. There are crosses commemorating some of the 136 victims.
Inside the Tiergarten was a monument to the murdered Sinti and Roma (colloquially often called “Gypsies”) of Europe.
Because a lot of the area was closed off for what seemed to be a large upcoming event, we weren’t able to get to the Soviet War Memorial, honoring Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin.
In the street leading away from the Reichstag is a strip of memorial bricks to indicate where the West side of the Berlin Wall used to be.
We had gotten good looks at the Brandenburg Gate early, but now was the time to look at it up close. This odd the last of what were 14 original gates of the Berlin city wall, this one leading to (no surprise) Brandenburg. The statute of a four-horse chair on the top was taken to the Louvre when Napoleon conquered Prussia, returning when the Prussians defeated Napoleon less than a decade later. At that time, the former Goddess of Peace was renamed Goddess off Victory. The gate used to stand in the no-man’s land between East and West Berlin.
Brandenburg Gate leads into Pariser Platz, name after the Prussians defeated Napoleon. The embassies of the US, France, and Great Britain are on it near it.
Next to the US Embassy (itself right next to the gate) is a building designed by Frank Gehry (is Disney Hall and Experience Magic Project fame) as a convention center. It fits in with the rest odd Pariser Platz but you can step inside and immediately know it was designed by Gehry.
The next building over was Hotel Adlon which was the setting for Grand Hotel with Greta Garbo. It’s also where Michael Jackson held his band over the balcony railing.
The sun was starting to go down, but we still had enough light to look at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It takes up a whole block with over 2,500 blocks of differing heights in a grid. Nearby was a memorial for homosexuals who were persecuted under the National Socialist regime.
One of the last stops on the walking tour was the site of Hitler's bunker, where he stayed for two months as Berlin was leveled by bombing by the Allies. It is also where he and Eva Braun died by suicide. All that's left of the bunker is a sign describing it.
The last leg of the tour was Wilhelmstraße, which used to be the traditional center of German power. We went by the British Embassy, which was there until WWII. The British closed the embassy, which then got leveled in the bombings. It then moved to Bonn but returned to Berlin when it once again became the capital of the reunited Germany.
It had been a long day, so we decided to find a place closer to our hostel to eat. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant where we had great tacos (one set of carne asada, another of sweet potato). Then it was back to our room where we didn't last too long before calling it a night.
