Berlin

We’ve walked our feet off here in Berlin, making great progress in our long list of museum visits.  We’ve had very nice weather, usually a bit cool, excellent for walking.  The public transportation here, like in Paris, is excellent, and although the city is enormous, it is very easy to get to anywhere, even if it is 15 kilometers from the city center.  To see “German” architecture one must go to the parts of the city that are a bit further away from the center, which were not so badly damaged by the air raids of WWII.  In these areas the buildings still retain their 19th century character and charm.  In the center, everything is new and rather massive, more like La Defense in Paris.  

The contrast between east and west is still visible.  In the eastern zone, most buildings have been renovated and decorative bits of color have been added to remove the severity and plainness of Soviet-style architecture.  But what I have noticed, even 23 years after the collapse of the Berlin wall, is the difference in the number of shops on the ground floors.  In the west, the atmosphere is quite festive – trees, sidewalk cafes, restaurants, boutiques, signs, color, etc.  On the east side, you can go for blocks on the bus without seeing anything except the front doors of 5-storey cement block buildings.  It is still obvious on the east side that there was a real dearth of consumer goods and a strong disincentive to the establishment of small businesses.

We’ve also been eating typical German food and drinking German beer, although so far, Gary has been a bit disappointed by the beer, and I have as well!  I have eaten roasted pig knuckle, which is sold in France as “jarret” and is a Berlin specialty.  Some restaurants boil it, others roast it.  The one I had was roasted in the oven, and was delicious.  The size is a bit intimidating when it arrives in front of you in the restaurant, but after you dig into it, you see that although there is plenty of meat, much of the dish is bone and gristle, which one does not have to eat! I adore German-style red cabbage, and am finding many opportunities to eat that as well. 

Peg

 

 

This is a slide show of my visit to the Topography of Terror, an excellent museum in Berlin about the Nazi war of terror.

http://youtu.be/aeI6Ue8ViSM

 

 

The Stasi museum is housed in its former headquarters in what was East Berlin.  It’s stark modern construction holds the archives (961 bags of still torn up documents included), offices, spy equipment and stories of repression only its mute walls can probably tell in full.  It houses the remaining controversy about openness and acknowledgement that remain from The Fall in 1989.  (see video link below).

Among the capacities contained here was the ability to open and reseal 90,000 envelopes a day.  Someone had to check those letters and did, more often than not, for they had 90,000 employess and 180,000 IM’s- people spying on their friends, neighbors, co-workers.

The Stasi came early in the morning without warning.  Some were even nabbed while in the western zone.  The Stasi readily obtained the warrants they needed.  It was a mere formality.  They were never refused.  They interrogated and isolated, so isolated that many looked forward to their interrogation.  It was the only human contact they had.

[nggallery id=1]

Best viewed with PicLens- you can see the captions.

 

After they were done with the interrogations, most often ending in a signed confession, you sometimes served prison terms, sometimes were turned into an IM, while some were sold to the West German government for about $50,000, a major revenue source for the cash starved GDR (German ‘Democratic’ Government).  Hundreds of thousands were thus treated.  They did not want ‘hardened hostile negative people’ as they called them, just walking about anywhere they pleased.

A few were executed.  This was done by a shot to the back of a head, without warning.

Today former prisoners complain that high level Stasi employees, and other high level personnel, were never tried, and receive still a government pension.  The people they destroyed, whose careers and family lives were wrecked, whose health was damaged, receive much less and if they never worked, they get nothing.  Stasi employees are often still working as policeman and in other government jobs.  German law says they committed no crime if the action was legal in the East, so they went on as if nothing happened.  And that’s what many say to this day.  Nothing happened.  But those little strips tell us otherwise.

Here are a couple of good documentaries

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha1jM9HAs6c&feature=related

 

 

We arrived here on September 1.  We rented a flat for the month to explore this city of some 3.4 million people, filled with wonderful museums, and the epicenter of Germany’s turbulent past, where beer is king, not wine.  Foie gras and escargot give way to meaty sausages and pigs’ knuckles.  Still some mighty good food but not as refined as the French cuisine we have so enjoyed for the past 14 months in Paris.

The architecture also does not compare, not surprising given the near total devastation this city experienced just 6 decades ago.  Its turn of the century beauty turned to rubble and up came many ugly boxes in their place.  It would be foolish to have expected other wise.

Nonetheless there is a festiveness here, judging by the busyness of the cafes and bars.  That it is still warm out no doubt helps convey the feeling of togetherness friends must feel sitting in front of one of the many fine brews they serve endlessly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited the Reichstag (German Parliament).  It was one fine older building they restored and modernized inside.  On the steps the brass band played for the visitors on a sunny Sunday.

http://youtu.be/gqO_vdrn5AE

And along the way we stumbed upon this smaller brass band on the street:

http://youtu.be/09_sUwRRhPw

 

Because Berlin is not generally a pretty town – you come here mostly for the museums and some historical sites- you’d stay here longer only if it were one of those cities where living there is really more interesting than visiting.  This it may be.

There is an extensive music and dance scene here, an attitude of openness and experimentation, so we’ve read, that makes one feel not only welcome and at home but stimulated.  For us, it might be the international folk dance scene that would keep us involved; there are several groups.

More soon I hope!