February 20th, 2020 Germany part II

Hiya...

Germany part II - Berlin

Everyone we talked to about Germany said to spend as much time possible in Berlin, so we budgeted 6 days.  Well not everyone...one guy said his dream German trip was to spend all of it in some rural German village of 500 people and just get to know the local baker and soak up the quiet.  As that would be a form of torture for yours truly, we went with the week in Berlin.

Arrived the evening of the 26th, and as that is a day that has many shops closed we were lucky to find an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood that was open.  12 Apostoli was not only one of the two best meals we had the entire trip (both Italian), we loved it so much that we went back again and all ordered the exact same thing.  Betty and the Boy are carnivores and found something they loved.  After eating it they had the look of big cats on the plains of Africa after devouring a tender young gazelle.  Not only did they Lion King that carcass, we all loved the back story provided on the menu about the life of their prized pig.

"Costoletta di maiale della nonna Tomahawk from the Bentheimer Active Pig · min. 500 g animal friendly pig husbandry with play facilities in the stables, plenty of space and a roaming area, transparent value chain served with mashed potatoes with fermented garlic and sautéed spinach with pine nuts, dried tomatoes and artichokes" 

As is our custom, we took a 1/2 day walking tour and about halfway through it, we all sorta looked at each other and said that this guy was the best one of these types we have ever had the pleasure of meeting.  He was a British guy living 30 years in town and knew his stuff, but that was not what made him so good.  It was that he was a vibrant storyteller and made all of the sights and history surrounding them come alive.  There was some heavy stuff in here too and he conveyed all of that with the proper respect and honesty that they deserved.  The kids are not huge history junkies and they don't absorb all of the stuff typically, but they were rapt by this guy and could recite everything later.  Here is a link to the tour provider and our guides name was Jake.  This is a popular tour and when we met, the group split up with 4 different guides, so I say again, look for Jake.

The area we covered wasn't large but was packed with history a casual person would know.  We walked around Museum Island, which is a cluster of said museums.  We would return to go inside another day, but Jake pointed out that on the pillars and walls of the museums, the bullet holes for the fight for Berlin were left as a testament.  It was also on the steps of one of the museums (Altes) where Hitler stood in front of a couple of the most famous rallies.

Other things that one probably knows are the Reichstag and Brandenburg gates.  We planned to go back to the Reichstag cause it had an impressive rooftop dome that has a commanding view of the city and to see the walls inside where graffiti left by the Soviets remains, but you need to book well in advance and with the holidays, we could not get in.  Note to future travelers, go online and get your passes early, and have your passport # handy when you do.  The Brandeburg Gate is the iconic backdrop to much of Berlin's history...Napoleon marched his troops through it and Reagan demanded that the wall in front of it be torn down.  Jake pointed out that the face of the Goddess that drives the chariot on top of it is looking towards the French embassy cause historically the Germans have had to keep an eye on the French.  Am sure they feel similarly.

The US embassy is also in that square right next to the gate and the locals were pissed that they built it a skosh higher than the gate itself.  Also in that same square we were shown the balcony of the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his newborn out of the window.  Now that is history I can use baby.

We walked by the square (Bebelplatz) where in 1933 they burned 20,000 books.  The memorial is subtle and powerful, and has this inscription.

That was a prelude only, there

where you burn books, you end up burning people, too.

— Heinrich Heine 1820

Another gut punch monument nearby is the Holocaust Memorial with 2711 boxes.  The designer never said what they meant and left the meaning of the differently shaped boxes up to the viewers mind.

We saw the nondescript car park that is the site of Hitler's bunker, which they don't memorialize to avoid it becoming a site to honor, and there is a building nearby that we were told had the apartment that Katarina Witt was provided for winning all those medals. 

Checkpoint Charlie and a section of the Berlin Wall were other highlights.

A site we passed by was the New Synagogue, which was one of the few spared on Kristallnacht and Jake told us the story of the police officer, Otto Bellgardt, who single handedly stopped the arsonists from destroying it.  If you don't know the term or what it's about, you really should.  Kristallnacht was on November 9th, the same day as the Berlin Wall fell.

A couple of the quirky things that were pointed out to us this day were the old traffic light walk/don't walk men that were only found in East Germany.  Called Ampelmann, would say these are the mascots of the city and there is a chain of stores devoted to selling anything you can want devoted to their images.

Fridge magnets were immediately purchased.

The East Germans also built a giant TV tower on their side of the wall and when the sun hits it, a cross shines bright.  The Communist government of the day was decidedly anti-religious so this unexpected feature was a source of mixed feelings for all concerned.  It was overcast for the most part but did see it on a sunny day.

One last thing from Jake...he stopped us about 2/3 of the way through our tour and asked our group of 30, "what is one thing you see in most major cities that you don't see in Berlin?"  The Boy swears he was thinking it but no one said the answer...CCTV's.  Germans, especially the eastern types, are very sensitive to the police state and so they have made the conscious decision to not follow the lead of everywhere else.

German is rich in opportunities for the immature to make fun of the words cause they have so many that sound genital related.  Our tour ended at the hilariously named metro stop Kochstrasse.

As far as other stuff to see, do, smell goes...the first thing to say about Berlin is that it has an extensive subway/metro system (U-Bahn) that is relatively cheap.  We got 6-day passes and went everywhere on the trains, nothing was more than 30 minutes away and it was really great. 

A couple of comments about the trains.  As they run everywhere, one is constantly going across the old East/West German borders and by the appearance of the stations and lines, there was no way the system was begun after WWII and wondered how it all worked when the city was divided.  This entry tells the tale. Most lines basically stopped at the borders with one passing through two stops in E. Germany, but the train didn't stop and there were machine gun nests in those stops in case the West thought of using them to invade the East.  Another thing is that there is a lot of drinking on them as we saw men and women drinking giant beers on every train.  And not just at night but a ton of day drinking too.

A must is to visit Museum Island.  You can get your groove on to whatever tickles you as they have a ton of varying collections.  Visiting any place that has a Monet I haven't seen is a must for me.  The kids ran off to look at a collection of coins, and Betty and I visited the place that had the famous bust of Nefertiti, which you can't photograph, but they have impressions and recreations galore.

What is absolutely essential to see while in Berlin, and would almost say is something any devotee of history should seek out in their lifetime, is the Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum.  I had no idea about it previously but a guy whose podcast I listen to regularly threw it out as an aside during a show the week before we left.  I've seen Babylonian relics before, but it takes a lot of imagination to picture what it was like, and as the Boy once said of them, 'they look like some ancient person's garbage'.  There was no imagination needed in looking at this wonderous piece of art.

They had a bunch of other stuff that was cool, but that gate is a show stopper.  We did all get a hashtag chuckle out of the ancient legal code concerning women.

Some things remain true no matter the epoch.

We tooled around Alexanderplatz for something to do one morning, probably cause it is where Jason Bourne met Nikki on the tram during a protest in one of those films.  It had the Tower, which no one wanted to go up on, and some fine churches and government buildings.

Some great patchy skies this day

But as this was the heart of old East Berlin, I had my heart on seeing the Marx and Engles statue.

Another day found us along the East Side Gallery, which is a section of the wall where graffiti artizens were allowed to create some memorable displays.  This is totally worthwhile to spend an hour or so.

 You can tell from the mass of people that this is an iconic slab depicting the real life kiss between Leonid Brezhnev and E. German Chancellor Honecker.  The work is titled My God, Help Me Survive This Deadly Kiss.

As we're walking from the Gallery to the metro, I see this advertisement and stop to laugh and admire the German openness towards sex.

I call it out to the Boy who looks and says Dil Doking.  Dude...it's Didlo King, but he found a new nickname for the rest of the day.

Since we had time to burn in town, we started looking for off the tour book things to do and the morning we walked by the above stuff, we went to an early morning Sunday Market, which is just the local term for swap meet, but is a valued weekend activity for Berliners.  Fun looking at their crap and managed to resist buying anything, but I was tempted by a couple of things.

If I had a cassette player, that Hasselhoff beauty woulda been mine.  They truly dig him there.

Another area that is worth your time is called RAW Galande.  It wasn't on our radar but we stumbled on it one night as a Thai restaurant we were tipped to is in there.  RAW is an abbreviation for a railroad repair station that was abandoned and then transformed into an area for artists, clubs and all manner of sub-culture.  We're following google maps to the restaurant and think something is wrong cause the place looks like a set from a dystopian horror movie at night.  We found our Thai joint (named Khwan, very good) and loved strolling around so much that we came back when we were in the neighborhood during the day.  If I was younger and/or liked the nasty ass music they played at their clubs, I woulda been all over this place.  There was a huge line of people waiting in the cold to go in on a Tuesday night.

The guy that told about the Thai place was from an outfit called German Food Tours.  We booked him for our last night in town to take us on a tour of places that sold German food and he suggested by email a bunch of places that we might like to try before we saw him.  We also went to a place on his list called Zur letzen instanz, which is the oldest restaurant in Berlin having operated since 1621.  Napoleon ate there.  It was good and the meat lovers in our crew enjoyed it the most.

I kick myself still for not demanding we stop and eat here, but ran across this place and did not have the opportunity to go back.  The hottest chicken on the menu is the So So Angry style.  I love it when a place leans into the stereotype.

So it was time for our German food tour.  This was the only one of its kind (that was operating during holiday week).  German food has a bad reputation and since we are an adventurous clan with regards to trying the local stuff, thought we would open our hearts and mouths and give them a chance to impress us.

Spoiler alert...they did not.  Full disclosure, I am not a fan of pickles/sauerkraut and one or the other is literally on every plate, so that's a strike.  They love meat like pork knuckles and feel like they serve their meat dishes with a heavy hand.  It is not delicate food and did not get the impression their is a ton of nuance.  I am sure they would disagree and that many non-Germans love it, but I was not a fan going in and came away less impressed overall.

I had high hopes going into our German food tour cause the guy volunteered a bunch of places and we really liked the two we went to, so thought he may be able to unlock they mystery.  The first place was sandwiches that none of us liked and cannot remember anything about them.  The second place was some sort of dumplings that we were legitimately looking forward to trying, but we got there and it was closed (the restaurant screwed our guide who had made a reservation, but bad mojo on his part), and the third stop was a sausage house where the gimmick was they cooked the meat over a wood fire.  I love sausages and we had a lot of good ones over the two weeks, but these were mediocre at best.  I will note that this was the only time I drank a beer on the trip and was the first one I've had in memory.  That I don't enjoy beer and it being the drink of choice there probably didn't help my perspective on the whole cuisine thing.  We replaced the closed restaurant by going to a fancy joint for dessert (Borchardt).  As we passed by it earlier, Dirk said it is where Angela Merkel and other luminaries ate.  Once inside, I asked Dirk if there were any famous people there and when he said no, told him to feel free to make some up cause we would have no idea.  He was not capable of that level of humor but fortunately for all of us I looked around and saw a couple.  Pretty sure that I made eye contact with Boris Becker when walking through the bar, and the portly guy at the table next to us was definitely Bernhard Langer...he'd really let himself go.  The desserts were good.

I would almost not have even mentioned we did this tour if it wasn't for our guide named Dirk.  He was raised in a small West German town and told us he came to West Berlin in his early 20's shortly before the Wall fell.  I was expecting a story about how he fell in love that night with an East German girl climbing over the wall or something, but he only mentioned realizing what happened when he started seeing East German cars driving around.  It was about 10 minutes into our first eatery when he said the restaurant we were in was new, but previously was a longstanding bar that recently closed.  He said that the bar owners barred a very right wing politician of the AFD party from having a drink and that is when they started to go under.  My spidey senses went up immediately and asked if that was a good thing or bad thing, and he gave me a look I have seen before.

For the rest of our time together, he peppered his tour narration with little dog whistle comments that made it clear what side of the political divide he stood.  Our brood didn't break it down till the next day at breakfast when I looked at the kids and asked 'Was Dirk a neo-Nazi?".  'Absolutely' was the response and we spent the next few minutes recounting all the little anecdotes that he said.  We landed on the term Commie-Nazi cause he waxed poetic about the lost way of life in East Germany (one he never lived in by the way).  See if you can find the theme in his world view...

- It is hard to find any authentic German restaurants as most of the places are Vietnamese or serve shwarma..  I refrained from pointing out that there would be more German restaurants if German food was good, which is empirically true.

- When you go to many restaurants, the waiters barely speak German.

- There are schools in some neighborhoods that are failing because most of the kids don't speak German and the German speaking ones are suffering while they teach the Arab kids how to speak Deutsch.

- Relatedly, there are a bunch of neighborhoods one can't even go because they are all Arab where the main avenues are filled with Maserati driving Middle Easterners.

- The prison system is messed up as one guy who killed another accidentally while texting didn't serve any prison time.  I'll let you guess the race of the driver.

- When asking what we should eat when we get to our next destination (Hamburg), he tepidly recommended a shrimp roll, but to keep in mind that while they catch the shrimp locally, it is sent to Morocco to be shelled, and then returned.

- When we were talking about Dresden and how we missed the Green Vault as it was closed due to a recent robbery, he related a story about a million dollar coin that was stolen from a museum in Berlin a couple of years previously.  Then he leans over putting his hand up to his mouth so others can't hear and whispers loudly "by the Arabs".  This move became a go to gag for us whenever we said any nationality going forward.  To be fair to Dirk, it was a Lebanese crime family that pulled the caper, but it was the whisper of the culprits nationality that gave away the game.

- My favorite one was when he told us that an ongoing scam the Arabs are running is that they are stealing tucks of baby formula and shipping it to China whose upper classes have a thirst for it as their locally produced variety contains lead.

We so loved Dirk and he immediately entered our Mount Rushmore of nutty tour guides that now includes Dirk, Francesco, the American theatre loving American hater from Amalfi, Stuart, the woman hating Betty shusher of Edinburgh, and Daniela, the self-esteem deficient desperate for a husband and always 20 minutes late lady in Naples. 

It was at this point that I started to worry about Germany.  We didn't see a ton of it on the streets, but the right wing parties are gaining real ground.  Since we returned from the trip, the AFD party won a majority in a former East German state and last weekend had a huge rally in Dresden commemorating the fire bombing of Dresden, blaming the west for war crimes.  Angela Merkel (who Dirk pointed out was East German) is stepping down this year after 16 years as head of state and there seems to be no one in her party that is seen as a worthy successor.  Merkel has been holding down the fort of liberal democracies during a lot of her tenure, especially in the last 3 years, and if there isn't a strong person to keep that tradition alive, I not only fear for Germany, but all of us quite frankly.  Really hope I am wrong about that.

We planned to travel to our last stop on New Year's Day and spend NYE in Berlin.  Read that a million people pack the streets so thought it would be a lively thing to do.  The New Year party that Edinburgh threw us last year was epic and don't think it possible to have a better experience in the street celebration genre, but the kids and I ventured out to see what goes on here (Betty was still feeling the crud and bowed out)  We get down there and there are mobs of folks milling about.  The fireworks are supposed to blast off above the Brandeberg Gate, but there is a three block cordon from getting close to that.  Not only that, but there was a perimitter around it that we never could find the end to and could not get around to the other side, so just meandered around people watching.  The police and army were out in force making sure no one broke the line, and no one could get their vehicles close, but totally get why as they had a series of terrorist car attacks on Christmas markets a couple years back.

That was the only picture I took on the night cause there just wasn't any pizzazz.   Am sure it was because last year was a magical time, but this was boring.  No crazy drunks puking/kissing/hugging on/with strangers or amongst their own groups.  Just polite calm drinking and every firework in the country.  Fireworks are illegal except for New Year's and they go for it in a way that was impressive and frightening.  Not that we were scared, just frightening in seeing the gusto they had letting off a year's worth of pent up whatever being unleashed.  The amount of spent firework garbage in the streets for the next several days is hard to describe in a way that explains the volume in every corner of the country.

We left the next morning for Hamburg and will save that for part III.  Until then my friends...stay hydrated.