Berlin Part I

Since das Wetter ist scheisse in Germany this weekend, I'm going to start updating my blog to fill you all in on my weekend in Berlin. Considering the amount of pictures and places I visited in two very long days I will probably be breaking this up into two blog posts.
First of all Berlin was wonderful! I really wish that I had had another day there to explore more, but with limited vacation days here in Germany I'm trying to squeeze in as much as possible. In true European fashion I traveled to Berlin by train.  It took about four and a half hours, maybe a little more because we temporarily broke down in Goettingen.  A little aside here...When I was traveling in the Netherlands by train several years ago, the announcements were always given in their entirety in four different languages, Dutch, German, English, and French.  The announcements on the Deutsche Bahn are extremely detailed in German.  They provide information on the next station name, the numbers of the connecting trains, and the track number where each can be found.  The announcement in English goes something like this, "Hello. Welcome to Deutsche Bahn. This is the train to Berlin. Uh...Thank you for traveling with Deutsche Bahn. Good-Bye."  The uh is always in there, as if the announcer takes a second to decide whether to translate the whole message for us and just decides, "oh, screw it," and we get the extremely truncated message.  Fortunately for me, I knew the words for train, der Zug, and broke, kaput, and was able to figure out from the conversations around me why we seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time in the Goettingen train station.  The good news was that it was only about a half hour delay and then we were back on track to Berlin.

Berlin is connected by a fantastic train system, which is relatively easy to figure out once you hunt down the appropriate map for your line. My hotel was very nice, as you can see from the picture below.

As one might expect from Europe, the room is small and not bubbling over with amentities, but it was clean and comfortable. Also, I have discovered that they do not use sheets in Germany.  You have a fitted sheet and a comfortable.  At first I thought this was just an oddity of one or two hotels and my apartment, but having now stayed in four different hotels, I have come to the conclusion that they like it sheetless in Germany.

After dumping everything in my hotel room, I dashed out to begin sightseeing.  First stop was the Reichstag, Germany's parliament.  You can see it here on the right with the giant dome on top.  The river in front is the Spree.  And below is a picture from inside that dome.  It's like something out of 2001.  While you move along the walkway up to the top, you listen to an audio guide that gives you an introduction to Berlin, pointing out the major buildings around the East Berlin area. Fantastic first stop.

 After the walk around the dome of the Reichstag, I headed over to Brandenburg Tuer, which is modeled on the Propylaeum of the Parthenon.

Brandenburg Tuer



This is a memorial to murdered members of the government.
These men opposed Hitler's rise to power and were some of
the first to die. On each slate is one of their names.

This is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. As you can see from the photos, it strongly resembles a graveyard or series of crypts. In some areas, like here, they are quite short, but as you walk through the ground slopes and the stone tomb-like structures are close to ten feet tall. Underneath this is the museum to the murdered Jews.  As one would expect, it's a very sobering museum, describing the increasing ferocity with which the Nazi regime persecuted the Jews and Roma of Europe. Perhaps the most interesting part of this museum was the conversation that a group of us struck up.  At the very first picture where the caption explains about the initial policy of harrassment, a woman from the US jabbed her finger at the picture saying, "This! This is how it starts!"  She was from Arizona and had become disgusted with the constant harrassment of anyone Latino by the police.  It is essentially a goverment sponsered discrimination and harrassment policy and from her perspective looked alarmingly close to the pictures we were all looking at in the museum.  This in turn led to a discussion of Sarkozy expelling the Roma and the Islamophobia that has become increasingly prelevant through Europe and even the US.  It was all a rather poignant reminder that these things can happen all too easily happen again.  

That was my last stop of the day before dinner and heading back to my hotel.  I will pick up my second day in Berlin in the next post.