Berlin, Germany - June 17 part 1

 

Today was a very hard day.  We chose to take a “hop on/ hop off” bus today.  What they are is a fleet of buses that take a route that includes most of the popular tourist attractions and gives you a guided tour in your language via earphones.  You can get off and then on the next bus as often as you want.  So, we rode the bus for the entire route, 2 1/2 hours, to see everything first and decide what we wanted to visit on our own. 

We chose to see the Jewish Museum.  We figured we had about 2 hours, then we could hop on a bus and go back to the starting point, right across from our hotel.  We knew that the bus tour was over at 6pm.

We travelled with a caravan of busses.  Everyone wants to see the same things.

    sometimes as many as 5 in a row.

 

We saw a sculpture depicting the 4 parts of Berlin, intertwined but broken, during the cold war.

Berlin is a very interesting city.  It has been thru a lot.  After world war II, Germany was divided into 4 parts.  The Russian, the US, the British and the French sectors.  Berlin was in the Russian sector and was itself divided into the same 4 sectors.  As you know, Russia built a wall between their sector and all the other sectors in Berlin.  They also built walls between their sector and other sectors throughout Germany to keep the German citizens from leaving the communist zone.  In 1990 the walls came down and in 1991 Germany was unified. 

Berlin was decimated by allied bombing during the war.   The 3 sectors controlled by the west were rebuilt right after the war.  The Russian sector was not.  When Arleen was there in 1968,  she passed through checkpoint Charlie and went into east Berlin.  It was full of vacant lots covered in rubble.  People were waiting on long lines at the bakery, just to buy bread. 

Not a lot of Berlin buildings were left after the war.  West Berlin was rebuilt, while east Berlin remained mostly untouched.  Now those untouched remaining buildings in the old east Berlin have become historic sites.  The government has taken over fixing up these buildings, along with the communist built troop housing buildings, and are using them for the public good, schools, homes for the elderly and museums.

     Checkpoint Charlie has been left as a reminder of the era along with the sign

                                                                            saying “You are leaving the American Sector” in 4 languages.  Right next door is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.  We didn’t go there.

Notice a couple of things.  First, there is no wall running in both directions from the checkpoint.  Second, there is no distinction between east and west.  Thirdly, Mc Donalds is right there…..

The Brandenburg Gate was also flanked by the wall.  The huge crowd of people going through the gate are heading for a mass viewing  of the soccer game of Germany against Denmark.  The entire city watched that game.  Even in our room we knew when Germany scored and boy did we know when they won.  Fireworks exploded, cars were blowing their horns and people were cheering loud enough to be heard in hotel rooms.

   Our bus had to wait for this mass of bike riders, who had left their cars elsewhere, and were using their bikes to get to the viewing.

There are still parts of the wall left in place as memorials.  Here are pictures of some.  There is even a small piece in the courtyard of our hotel.

   

As you can see, large pieces of the wall have been taken by “woodpeckers”, that is what they call the scavengers who took souvenirs. 

A long section of the wall was open to renowned painters of the world to use as a canvas.  Here are just some of the results.