Potsdam and Farewell Berlin (Germany Part 13)

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Our plan for the day was to ride to Potsdam with Hans-- Ingrid and Bill decided that they would like to go along.  We started with a hunt for rental bicycles and found them without much difficulty.  Ten euros for the day and we could have them until 8 p.m.  John and I put ourselves in the hands of the Berlin experts and it was decided that we would ride first to the East Side Gallery.

The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 kilometer section of the Berlin Wall that was spared from destruction and turned into a memorial with paintings by artists from all over the world.

The area is crowded with people and we walked our bicycles along the length of the memorial-- then rode back in the direction we had come to get to a train station.  

Trains in Germany (except the fast ICE trains) permit bicycles and there is a bicycle logo on the outside of the carriages with bicycle space.  There were many more than the five of us crowded into this space and I stressed a little about bike damage, whether they would tip over, etc. but all went well and we soon arrived in Potsdam.  

Potsdam is the capital of the German state of Brandenburg and it is about 15 miles from the center of Berlin.  It is the location of a series of parks, lakes and palaces and was the site of the famous Potsdam Conference. Held in July and August 1945 at the end of WWII brought Stalin, Churchill (replaced mid-conference  by Clement Atlee) and Harry Truman together to work out  post war arrangements.  

Hans had prepared an itinerary for our day complete with historical information printed from the internet.  We made a brief stop at Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate but quickly moved on to our primary destination-- Sanssouci.  

Sanssouci was built between 1745 and 1747 for Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.  It was a "summer palace"-- little more than a large single story villa.  Other far grander buildings, intended for visitors and guests, were built elsewhere on the grounds.  

It was hot and unshaded but not unpleasant as we walked up the terraces to the modest palace at the top of the hill.  The terraces are used to grow grapes and figs.  

The grapes were more robust at other places on the terraces but this photo clearly shows the doors that are closed in winter to protect the fig trees.  

 

We picnicked on the grounds but did not get into the very long line to tour the palace-- we were planning to bicycle around the extensive grounds and much of the way back to Berlin.  These two, seemingly identical palaces are on the grounds of Sanssouci.  They are connected by a long arcade that partially shows in the bottom photo.

Yet another of the palaces on the grounds of Sanssouci.  

Alexandrovka:  In 1812 the Prussian Army captured 1000 Russian troops.  From this group King Friederich Wilhelm III decided to form a Russian choir.  When Russia and Prussian later joined sides, the choir stayed in Potsdam living in 13 wooden houses built "in the Russian Style".  The houses came fully furnished and with a "large garden and a cow".  These colony has now been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site.  There are lots of good pictures of the houses here:  http://judy-volker.com/Hometowns/Potsdam/Alexandrovka.html

We stopped at one of the houses, serving as a cafe, and sampled Russian beer.  At the bottom right of the photo you can see John's "ice coffee" which is not iced coffee as we know it but coffee with ice cream and whipped cream.  

Hans' itinerary then took us to the Glienicke Bridge, the Cold War "spy bridge".  The bridge was at an isolated point where U.S. occupied West Berlin met Soviet occupied Potsdam.  "Deals" could be made here without involving the other allies and the bridge was four times used to exchange prisoners, most famously Francis Gary Powers in 1962 and human rights activist Anatoly Sharansky in 1986.  

We rode across the bridge and turned immediately left  and rode many kilometers alongside the lake-- the weather was idyllic and no ride could have been nicer.  

Our last stop was the site of the Wannsee Conference, a beautifully proportioned villa overlooking the lake. 

The beauty of the spot stands in hideous contrast to the horror of the meeting that was held there.  Reinhard Heydrich, an important leader of the SS and a man Hitler called "the man with the iron heart", organized the conference which was held in January 1942.  There were 15 attendees, including Adolf Eichmann, and the conference was brief, lasting only about 90 minutes.  The purpose of the conference was to discuss logistical and practical aspects of implementing the Final Solution.  Heydrich spoke for the first hour then took questions.  Eichmann later wrote that Heydrich was pleased with the outcome of the meeting.  He had expected more resistance and was pleased to have complete cooperation.  Thirty copies of the minutes of the meeting, known as the "Wannsee Protocol"  were produced and all but one were destroyed as the war came to an end and the Nazis sought to cover their tracks.  

On January 20th 1992, the fiftieth anniversary of the conference, the building was opened as a memorial museum.  What can I say... a beautiful place, a beautiful day, a beautiful bicycle ride and the importance of remembering the evil that took place not so long ago.  

We rode on subdued and weary, ready for our short train ride back to Alexanderplatz.  Leaving the train for the last time we wheeled out into heavy Berlin traffic, joining the scores of commuters heading into the suburbs along the Prenzlauer Allee.  We returned the bicycles, had a lovely farewell dinner of Persian food, and walked back through the warm evening to our hotel room and preparations for departure.  

Another day in Berlin (Germany Part 12)

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John's great wish in Berlin was to see the famous Ishtar Gate-- one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  And here he is, looking the complete tourist.  The Ishtar Gate is one of the two great attractions of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin-- the other being the Pergamon Altar.  The Pergamon Altar is such a monumental construction, even in its modified form in the museum, that I hesitated to photograph it.  Better to read about it and see some pictures here;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Altar.  

Political correctness leads one to question why these two beautiful wonders of the past are in Berlin rather than in their places of origin.  In the case of the Pergamon, German archeologists discovered it in Turkey

where the altar was being used as a quarry and some of the marble was being burned for lime.  They were able to save thousands of fragments of the altar and the famous frieze that surrounded it.  

The Ishtar Gate was constructed about 575 BC.  It was the eighth gate to the city of Babylon.  I could go on and on about this wonderful thing but as above, better to read about it here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar_gate.  The original double gate led to the Processional Way along which were 120 lions.  Only a few of these lions are in Berlin-- the rest are in other museums around the world.  

There is something wonderful about this photo-- albeit blurry, the woman's walk seems to echo that of the lion.  

The next part of the day was far less successful.  We decided to go to the German History Museum-- not my first choice but.... As it turned out it was a perfect inducer of museum fatigue.  It was expensive so it seemed that one needed to spend a good amount of time there.  It was huge, massive and totally overwhelming so all I wanted to do was get out.  It was all about wars and princes and armor and politics with nothing about peasants and farmers and family life.  Too bad!  

Our next adventure had better results.  We decided to try to find the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, one of Berlin's most famous landmarks.  Gathering our courage we went by bus.  We quickly learned that it had been a mistake to go up to the top as it was unbearably hot and we did not know exactly where to get off but that problem was solved when we reached the end of the line and had no choice.  From there we  found our way without much blundering about.  The Kaiser Wilhelm church was badly damaged by bombs in 1943 and has been neither restored or removed.  The surviving west tower is now being stabilized and was so covered with an opaque scaffolding that no picture was possible.  The main floor is open, however, and provided a far more moving experience than the DHM.  Bits of the original decoration can be seen as well as a ghostly spiral staircase clinging to a wall.  The photographs and documents in the memorial hall provided a moving history of the church and its destruction-- caused as a sign in the exhibit bluntly stated "by insane politics".  

Continue to Part 13

First Day in Berlin (Germany Part 11)

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The Fernsehturn - Berlin

This TV tower was built by the East Germans between 1965 and 1969.  Near the Alexanderplatz, it is the tallest structure in Germany and the iconic symbol of Berlin.  Berlin is an amazing city.  It suffered 363 air raids during the War and was a wasteland of rubble and ash at the end.  One amazing statistic-- 600,000 apartments in the city were destroyed.  

I am not a "city person" as the saying goes and I was mildly regretting that we had three full days in Berlin before heading home.  By the time we left for the airport, I was in love and determined to go back.  Under constant restoration, renovation and innovation, Berlin is something of a mess.  Construction is everywhere.  Cranes, cement mixers and scaffolding are everywhere.   Very old buildings have been rebuilt to look like the originals.  Old buildings have creative modern bits like the glass dome on the Reichstag.  Communist era buildings that are just as shoddy and ugly as they are reputed to be are already crumbling.  A new subway under the Unter den Linden will take ten years to finish.  I caught myself thinking that I would love to go back when it is all finished, but immediately knew that it will never be finished or I will be long gone when it is.

Berlin:  A Work in Progress

For our first day, John and I along with Rick and Liz,  decided to take a Fat Tire tour. The FT tours get rave reviews on Trip Advisor and we found it a great experience.  We met at their headquarters on Alexanderplatz, right under the  TV Tower and were surprised to find that there were scores of people waiting, most much younger than the four of us.  The FT guides appeared to be all native English speakers, mostly Americans.  The young leader jumped up onto a wall and gave a brief and humorous but articulate history of Berlin since the year 800.  We were then divided into groups of about 25-- I think there were four or five groups.  We grabbed bikes-- all comfy city clunkers but very rideable.  All helmetless we headed out.  On our U.S. rides we have been repeatedly warned never to ride without a helmet-- "you must wear a helmet even if simply riding around a parking lot!".  Now here we were, riding off into heavy traffic with nary a thought for our poor fragile skulls.  And what fun it was!  We were advised to obey traffic signals and that at unlighted intersections the vehicle coming from the right had the right of way.  This seemed to work very well and I never felt insecure breezing along.  More than that, the bikes liberated us.  We weren't just tourists dragging about like a flock of sheep-- we had energy, we were part of the flow.

This is Alex, our tour guide, giving a "chalk talk" about how Germany and Berlin were divided at the end of WWII.

We were taken to many of the classic Berlin tourist sights:   the site of the book burning in May 1933, Checkpoint Charlie, the Victory Column, the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag, the site of Hitler's underground bunker, the Brandenburg Gate and others.   For me the most beautiful and most moving was the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe".

No picture can show the beauty and strength of this astonishing place.  The memorial occupies 4.7 acres of undulating ground and consists of 2711 slabs or "stalae" of concrete. There is nothing written on the memorial.  An underground museum adjacent to the site contains the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.

The concrete of the memorial  has been specially treated to deter graffiti-- omnipresent throughout Berlin and other German cities.  What looks like a problem to us, however, doesn't seem of much concern to Germans.  One person to whom I spoke seemed mystified when I called it a problem and said that unless it was swastikas or neo nazi propaganda, it was just part of city life.

The Reichstag

It was the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 that enabled Hitler and the Nazi Party to take control in Germany.  The burned building has been rebuilt and the German parliament meets in the building.  The new and very modern German government buildings are to the left of this picture. The modern glass dome has two spiraling staircases to the top.  It provides a 360 degree view of the city and is open to the public.  Sadly, reservations must be made two days in advance and we did not have the time.  This is one of the primary reasons I would like to go back.  

A biking friend from our southern coast to coast ride lives in Berlin.  I had contacted him with information about our stay.  Sitting in the lobby of the Ibis waiting to gather for dinner, I was talking about Hans to our friends.  I decided to google him and found some pictures.  Just as I was showing a picture to Liz and saying "this is what he looks like", I looked up and saw the actual person standing  near us!  He was on his way to an appointment in the area and had decided to stop in an say hello.  What a nice coincidence.  We were able to make a plan to have dinner and to take a long bicycle ride together.  

Dereka with John and Hans  at Sans Souci Potsdam

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Schwerin to Berlin (Germany Part 10)

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The next morning we walked through the busy city of Schwerin, only to find that the castle is closed on Mondays.   This picture, less lovely than the view from the other side across the water, is typical of nearly every historical building we saw in Germany-- perpetually under restoration.  We were disappointed but not devastated-- we had trailed through many rooms of old portraits, old clocks and tiled stoves, old canopy beds and gilded woodwork and we were content to spend time wandering the gardens.

There we had the lovely experience of seeing a swan family with seven cygnets.  They really are gawky and homely babies-- the proverbial "ugly ducklings".

We found a very nice "portrait" of John by the shore of the lake.

Ingrid and Bill

We caught the noon train to Berlin and arrived a few hours later, disgorged into the frenzied environs of Alexanderplatz-- all of us hot, tired and dazed.  Tagging behind Ingrid and Bill we walked to our Ibis hotel-- a walk that seemed endless to me as I dodged pedestrians and more bicyclists than  I have ever seen anywhere.  We did the same walk several times in the next few days and I realized it was only about 10 minutes.  

Our hotel was an Ibis-- a chain with hotels across Europe-- we stayed at an Ibis in Budapest.  Relatively inexpensive, clean, comfortable, attractive and with air conditioning!  It was the perfect place for our Berlin stay.  Breakfast was 10 euros extra but it was simply superb-- a buffet of croissants, breads, meats, cheeses, fruits, cereals, juices, eggs, and all manner of coffee and drinks.  Our breakfasts were always great but this one topped the list.  

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Ludwigslust to Schwerin (Germany Part 9)

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Lugwigslust is a relatively young town and has an interesting history.  A Prince Ludwig built a hunting lodge near the small hamlet of Klenow, then established himself there and renamed the town "Ludwig's Joy".  The hunting lodge developed into the schloss you see in the picture, surrounded by acres and acres of gardens, paths, bridges, fountains and all the elements of beauty that can be afforded by self-indulgent aristocrats living off the sweat of their peasants.

What we did not learn from our guidebooks or from tourist information about Ludwigslust is that it was the location of a small concentration camp called Wobbelin.  The camp was only built in 1944 and it was originally intended to house U.S. prisoners of war.  In 1945 the SS enlarged the camp as a destination for  prisoners who were being transferred to prevent their liberation by the Allies as the war came to a close.  On May 2 1945 American military units discovered the camp with the bodies of 1000 starved prisoners and 4000, still alive but in deplorable conditions.  The Americans forced the citizens of Ludswiglust  to tour the camp and assist in the burial of the dead.   There is a local memorial that we were not told of and did not see.

 

On the grounds of Ludwigslust Schloss.  

An Insect Hotel

This is one of the peculiarly German things that I had seen before but didn't photograph until I saw it again on the last day.  Tidy gardens, lawns and lack of dead wood mean less habitat for bees, spiders and ladybugs and these structures are designed to provide a home for various beneficial insets and pollinators.   While I say German, the internet tells me that they have spread across Europe and are now beginning to be created in the U.S. as well.

This was our our last lunch-- not a very picturesque location but the most vivacious waitress ever and as always good beer and good food.  

  

Not long before we reached Schwerin we passed through the very nice village of Mirow.  This was of particular interest because John's paternal grandmother was a Mirow and Mirows and Langhans had intermarried for many years in the villages around Rotzeburg.  While I have never found a direct connection to a Mirow from Mirow, I know that place names predate surnames and it is reasonable to assume that the first Mirows may have come from this village.  

Schwerin Schloss

Our first look at the Schwerin Schloss came from across the water as we rode on a busy lakeside trail toward the city.  Very Cinderella's castle!  We all took many pictures and looked forward to seeing more the next day.  In the meantime, we pushed on to our last hotel, the Hotel am Hauptbahnhof.

The hotel was right across from the train station-- very convenient for our trip to Berlin the next day but very noisy as well.  Train stations have associated bus and trolley lines as well as many people coming and going and our rooms were on the street but the bustle was not unpleasant.  The hotel was not nearly as upscale as some we had stayed at and the owners were much enamored of a red and yellow color scheme that went far beyond the obvious.  The dishes, napkins, flower pots, flowers, pitchers, bedspreads, lamp shades, etc.  Everything was either red and yellow and to my eyes it was a bit lurid but someone must have loved it.  Our window is the wide open one just to the left of the balcony.

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Vielank to Lugwigslust (Germany Part 8)

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Leaving Vielank the next morning our route took us through Ruterberg, a village that had a unique situation during the Iron Curtain years.  Situated on the east bank of the Elbe, the village was occupied by the British at the end of the War.  The bridge that had been there was obliterated in battle, the East Germans fenced off the village and it was thus completely isolated from both East and West.  There is a local museum but it was closed on the day we rode through-- there is nothing I can find on the internet.  It is hard to imagine how the inhabitants got through the years of division.  I am thinking the reason I can't find anything is that I don't know how to make the umlaut?

Our next stop was Domitz, site of a very well preserved lowland fortress.  We spent some time exploring the ramparts and the museum there.  Aside from the fortress Domitz is an example of an East German town that feels a long way from vibrant.  Looking for lunch we found a place that appeared open.  An elegant old man appeared and told us that we could get only drinks-- "his womenfolk were away."  He told us that there were two cafes in either direction but everything we found was closed.  Finally in an old department store that has become a galleria of sorts we were able to get wurst and while I had been avoiding meat for most of the trip, I had little option but to eat it or go hungry.  

Part of our ride on this day took us past some beautiful sand dunes.  The idea of sand dunes in Germany is disconcerting but this was not the only time we had encountered them.  These were the most photogenic, however.
  

This is another picture in the same area and it shows the sandy track along which we were riding.  Our bikes handled this stuff pretty well but it was slow going and one did become mired in sand every so often.

This picture, taken 39 minutes later, shows the great variety of riding we did, throughout the trip and in a single day.  

This is one of the kookier things we saw that day.  A man and his wife pulling their camper with their tractor.  She had a comfy seat up behind her husband and although it cannot be seen in the photo, there was a small stuffed bear sitting beside her.  They stopped us to ask for directions to a campground!  

A note regarding my handlebars.  All of our bikes had these "butterfly" handlebars and I had high hopes for the configuration, very common in Europe but almost unseen in the U.S.  My "Achilles Heel" is (are?) my hands which get numb and sore, and I am always looking for a solution.  Sadly, pretty as this purple and black tape was, my hands hurt at all points on the handlebars.  I was much happier with the upright bars on Ingrid's "comfort" bicycle and on the bicycles we rented later in Berlin.  

.

Also a note regarding the type of beds we found in every hotel but the Ibis in Berlin.  The pillows were large, square and very squishy.  The comforters and mattresses were individual and in almost every instance pure white.  Sadly it was uncharacteristically hot while we were there and the comforter not what we needed.  I tended to roll it up like a body pillow and sleep next to it rather than under it.  The little brown bits on the pillows are chocolate but sometimes we got small packages of gummy bears.  

Our hotel for the night was in Ludwigslust (Ludwig's Pleasure) and it was definitely the swankiest of the tour.  Called the Erbprinz Hotel, it was all gleaming glass and chrome and we were able to pay for internet after several days without.  

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Gulstorf to Vielank (Germany Part 7)

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As we rode along the bike path in a rural area we saw a sign for a trailside cafe.  It was a very informal arrangement-- we stopped, took a table and the proprietress said she had wurst and potato salad.  We all had her homemade "apfel schorle"-- basically apple juice with a bit of fizzy water.  She was friendly and chatty and offered to take a picture of the group.  At the end she said that she had no set prices and that we should pay her what we thought it was worth-- this caused some hemming and hawing and she then told us that the potatoes cost her so much and the wursts were expensive because she had to go over the river in the ferry to get them, etc.  So we began forking over euros and hoped she was pleased.  Bill figured out that she was unlicensed and by not posting or charging specific prices she could stay on the right side of the authorities.

As we ended the day we had one of our very few extended periods of road riding-- it was not hair raising but the cars in Germany go very fast and there was no riding double.  We passed two of these grisly reminders of possible consequences-- one of them had a sign that said "This Could be You!".  Reminiscent of the ghost bikes we have seen in the United States.

This is a ghost bike that we saw in Idaho on our ride from Oregon to New Hampshire.  The first ghost bikes were established in Missouri but the ghost bike web site says there are now over 500 world wide.

Church in Tripkau

The half timbered church in Tripkau "is worth a trip" as they say in their brochure (in English and German).  It is beautifully situated in a large open space and beautifully proportioned.  Inside it is a shock.  

The interior of the church is unique with this cross motif that completely covers the ceiling and walls.  A much nicer professional picture is here http://www.flickr.com/photos/pe_ha45/430587678/

Our home for the evening was Vielank, location of a destination brewery, restaurant and hotel.  They had lots of good beer, several flavors of delicious soda and excellent food.  I was slightly grumpy because our rooms were in a building separate from the restaurant facility-- we had to ride our bikes over, walk back, schlep our luggage, walk back for dinner, walk, schlep, walk, ride, etc.  but goodness knows I had little enough to complain about on this trip-- I had to find something!

Crates at the Vielanker Brauhaus

Liz got a healthful salad at the Brauhaus

Continue to Part 8