Berlin, June 26 - July 5

Upon our arrival at the Berlin HBH (central station) we were very much aware that Italy was well behind us. The sprawling station was light and airy, very modern and clean... a welcome change as we navigated smoothly to our apartment in Prenzlauer Berg.
Located just near Bernauer Strasse, the apartment was our most comfortable since Albi in Southern France. Our neighbourhood was very much like a combination of Elwood and Fitzroy, with cool shopping strips, leafy streets and yummy mummies escorting pampered kids from playground to playground.
Walking around there did feel very much like home.



In the surrounding streets there were fantastic food, craft and junk markets as well as many quirky cafes. The above photo is of one of our favourites, they made excellent coffee and the seating area felt like you were in someone's homely living room.
You may notice a little elephant on the table...
It is a Luigi Colani design, a part of a range made for the Dresdner Bank in the 1960s. As a long-time admirer of the moustachioed designer, I was thrilled to see his elephants for sale at a second-hand store near our place. After a bit of haggling, the little green one joined us on our travels :)



On our first excursion into the city centre, we found ourselves jostling amongst the crowds that had emerged to watch televised coverage of Germany's soccer team in the Euro Cup finals.
The Brandenberg Gate area had been sealed off, filled beyond capacity with 400,000+ fans. It was a spectacle, even more so several days later during the final match. Every public space had a screen hooked up. We watched a bit with a crowd at a container bar at the end of our street where the match was projected onto the surrounding walls.
There were crowds of people spilling out onto the streets, wherever a screen had been erected. The photo below shows the Hotel Marriot delivery entrance. People were gathered on the median strip in the middle of the road to watch, dressed in their patriotic finery.


Berlin offers so much to the visitor, we had to manage our time carefully in order to take in and enjoy as much as possible. Galleries and museums number in the many hundreds, so choosing between them was quite a task.
We visited the Bauhaus Archive as a treat for me on my birthday, and also went in search of vintage prints at the Kupferstichkabinett (museum of prints and drawings) at the Kulturforum complex.
Much to my delight, Naomi immersed herself in Ancient Egypt at the Altes Museum, where we came face to face with the 3,300 year old bust of Nefertiti.



Renovations to the Pergamon and much of Museum Island meant that other treasures will have to be enjoyed next time we are in town.
On our exploration of the area we noticed a real festive atmosphere as parents enjoyed the vast public spaces with their children. Stunning modern architecture blends with historical classics, many parks boasting broad green areas and monumental fountains.


It was cute to see that someone had tied a balloon to this figure's finger, completely transforming the scene.
Another view of the same fountain...


Perhaps what struck us most as we walked through the streets and suburbs of Berlin, was the way in which they are remembering their recent history. Museums and galleries... Berlin does these very well. More notable to us were the way the city has gone beyond traditional methods of acknowledgment and recognition. The memorials and efforts to live with the past - without hiding from the more nasty elements - really had an impression on us.

The route of the Berlin wall is marked by a double row of cobblestones, all throughout the city. In this photo Naomi walks across a marker at the end of our street. In many neighbourhoods, new apartments are being built in the Death Strip that the wall once occupied.
Plaques set into the pavement inform passers-by that they are freely walking across an area that, only a short time ago, would have seen their presence responded to with deadly force.

Outdoor galleries are scattered along the route of the wall, at locations of historical significance.
The information boards are considered and informative. We found them a valuable insight and they also helped soften the blow after the Checkpoint Charlie museum pushed our budget a little too far.


The East Side Gallery is the largest remaining section of The Wall. Our visit was wet, and the overall impression was that it did seem a shame that many of the creative murals have been defaced by graffiti in over the years. A bit of a twist - that the original graffiti has been ruined by graffiti...



Naomi may have been troubled by the dark history represented on these info boards at Potsdamer Platz, or then again perhaps she had had enough of being photographed.




The other event that is remembered with sensitivity in Berlin is, of course, the Nazi era and the happenings of WW2. We have more text than images to cover this, so please bear with us.

Sights and memorials are scattered throughout the city. The open air display called the Topography of Terror was fascinating for us, and we spent several hours reading in depth while loads of tourists filed past us.
The gallery is located where the headquarters of the Gestapo and SS once stood, in amongst the excavated ruins of the buildings' basement. A huge amount of information is presented that documents what happened on the site and how it impacted the industry of repression during the Nazi era. It was here, in offices at this location, that the plans for terror and murder were organised beyond anything previously conceived in human history.

We also visited the Memorial to the German Resistance. This was a fascinating site. Formerly the Army headquarters, it is where Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators both planned an assassination attempt on Hitler and were then executed after it failed. A moving statue of a naked man stands in the courtyard where they were met their end.
Much of the exhibit is in German, and the English audioguide was patchy. We did manage to learn enough about how close the assassination attempt came to success in 1944, and also about how difficult it was for Germans to form a resistance movement against the Nazis. The displays detail the history of all individuals and groups who opposed the Nazi regime, while acknowledging the fact that the majority of Germans did support Hitler. The question of how or why resistance was not able to succeed is asked and analysed from many different angles.


The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe also had a significant impact on us. The vista of an entire city block, and the thoughtful information centre below, were engaging and well worth devoting time to digest and explore.
As you approach, you are met by a gently undulating sea of concrete blocks. To some they represent graves, to others the enormity and faceless scale of the horror of the holocaust. You get a different experience depending on which direction you enter the site from. At the edges, the blocks are low to the ground, some even level with the paving stones. As you wander between them, the ground level rises and falls until at times they tower 5 metres overhead, dwarfing the human scale to the limits of vision in all directions.



Beneath all this lies the Information Centre. A very thorough audioguide walked us through the exhibit, which tries to place a more intimate face on the enormity and sheer weight of numbers that usually features in Holocaust memorials. In one section, figures do appear and they trigger the familiar shock and dismay. The overall focus, however, is on a dozen or so individual accounts in an attempt to represent how each one of the millions of victims had their own version of events no less chilling and awful than the rest.
The point is made clearly. Every victim suffered terribly, and every survivor remembers how many fell around them.
An attempt is made to make sense of the spread of the genocide across Europe, as facts and stories give balance to the more abstract nature of the memorial above.
There is a space dedicated to the major sites of the persucution and destruction of lives, particularly the seven largest death camps. In another area, information about other historical and memorial sites throughout Germany and Europe allows you to see other ways of remembering.

One of the final rooms and perhaps the most moving in the Information Centre, is a darkened space where names are read out loud by survivors, while the victim's name, date of birth and death are projected onto each of the four walls. It is an attempt yet again to bring a human scale to the overwhelming numbers of millions and to remove the anonymity of The Victim.



One of the successes of the outdoor memorial, we felt, was that it is a space that the public truly engage with. Not only in somber reflection, the shapes and forms at times invite a playful response. People sit on, climb over, jump across... seeing it being used like this showed another way in which a memorial can be embraced. The feeling of being uplifted in a place of remembrance was an unexpected experience.




While we were in Berlin, I celebrated my birthday. As a special treat for me on the day, our sightseeing included a visit to the Bauhaus Archiv and a picnic in the Tiergarten. It was great to be at the source (even though it is not the original building) of the Bauhaus school, and to see first hand the work of design industry pioneers that I had admired from afar for all of these years. The Gropius models, the Van Der Rohe, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy production prototypes... the archive does a good job of presenting what went on in the school before it was dismantled in 1933. Sorry, no photos allowed.

Naomi went to significant efforts for our little picnic. We found a shaded spot in the gardens, and
there she hung streamers on the bushes, surrounding a picnic rug filled with birthday treats. We had iced coffee, juice, tasty sandwiches with my favourite fillings, and even a birthday cake with candles!

It was a lovely way to share the celebration together and her efforts were very much appreciated.

The sunshine in the gardens was perfect, and we both enjoyed the time spent quietly contemplating after the busy schedule that our sightseeing interests had demanded.


We did our best to explore different neighbourhoods, for Berlin has much to offer and the diversity is exceptional.
In East Kreuzberg, quirky fashion designers sell their original clothing while working on new and even more dubious looking creations at their sewing machines in the back of the store.
Delicious kebab and felafel nearby was a welcome discovery. After Italy, it was nice to be back in an environment that is distinctly multicultural.

We fell in love with Ampelmann, the delightful East German traffic signal figure. Still flashing at many former East Berlin traffic lights, he has been turned into a cult item by an enterprising Industrial Designer. It was amusing to browse through the Ampelmann store and see the growing range of trinkets he has been applied to.


The streets of Berlin are also dotted with some very impressive street art.
There is a strong culture of personal expression, the result of which is a colourful and vibrant society.
Naomi was struck by how the diversity and edginess exists all across the city without being pretentious. It is simply a part of life here.



Our time in Berlin was stimulating and challenging for both of us, and we really enjoyed our visit. Of all of the places we have been, walking the streets felt very much like home yet there was enough difference to keep us on our toes.


The openness, sensitivity and thorough exposure given to the darker elements of Germany's recent history was admirable and we found the experience valuable from a tourist perspective.
Hopefully the local population will continue to engage with remembering the past in this way.