{"id":292,"date":"2016-06-15T17:42:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T21:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/?p=292"},"modified":"2016-08-07T01:59:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T05:59:12","slug":"june-15-historic-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/2016\/06\/15\/june-15-historic-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"June 15: Historic Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

To avoid the rain, we spent the morning in the\u00a0DDR Museum, an interactive museum in a bunker below our hotel on the River Spree. The museum brings alive what it was like to live in East Germany between the years 1949 and 1990, particularly after 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built. \u00a0DDR stands for \u201cDeutsche Demokratische Republik\u201d, also known as the German Democratic Republic\u00a0(or GDR).<\/p>\n

\"DDR
DDR Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We heard while I was growing up about the deprivations and shortages that people under Communist rule experienced, but to see and touch the really inferior goods that East Germans lived with\u00a0was really interesting. To experience the museum, you pull out drawers and open cabinets, and play games, and interact with audios and touch screens. One of the most popular\u00a0objects\u00a0is a real Trabant, a truly inferior automobile that East Germans scrimped and saved to buy. Altogether, it was a fascinating morning.<\/p>\n

I agree with Arjan that this city is very open about its past, but I would like to qualify it slightly. The\u00a0Germans\u00a0are very open about what happened to the people, both during the second World War and the years before German reunification. But there is almost no reference to Nazism, and you hear absolutely nothing about Hitler. The only East German soldiers you hear about in regards to the Berlin Wall are those that defected. But the Germans can be very proud of the rapid recovery from a very troubled history.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, after the sun came out for a while, we took a long bus ride to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the old West German city center at Kurf\u00fcrstendamm. Due to intense afternoon traffic, we spent over an hour driving past a lot of the same places from the land side we saw on our river cruise\u00a0the day we arrived\u2014mostly government sites built since German reunification after the Berlin Wall came down.<\/p>\n

\"Siegess\u00e4ule
Siegess\u00e4ule (Victory Column)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the monuments we passed was the Siegess\u00e4ule (Victory Column), built to commemorate the Prussian victories in the Danish-Prussian War\u00a0(1864),\u00a0the Austro-Prussian War\u00a0(1866), and the Franco-Prussian War\u00a0(1870). \u00a0It has a striking gold statue of winged Victory at the top.<\/p>\n

\"Kaiser
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our ultimate destination was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. \u00a0The church consists of a bombed out ruin of the original church and two rather ugly appendages, a new chapel and a bell tower. \u00a0The original church, one of the most ornate Protestant churches anywhere, was built by Kaiser Wilhelm II in honor\u00a0of his forefathers.<\/p>\n

\"Damaged
Damaged Gilt Ceiling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The church was destroyed by an allied bombing raid in 1943, making a wreck of a formerly glorious piece of architecture. The steeple was broken off, there are mortar holes on the exterior, cracks are visible in the entry hall ceiling, the rose window is a gaping hole, and most of the church is gone forever. Even the statue of Christ from the altar was damaged, a loving, welcoming\u00a0arm\u00a0broken off near the shoulder.<\/p>\n

\"Damaged
Damaged Statue of Christ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rather than tear the church down, the hull of the entrance hall has been left in the center of the complex as a memorial and a reminder of the cost\u00a0of war.<\/p>\n

We went inside the new church, which has a strikingly blue stained-glass interior and were lucky enough to hear the organist practicing on the new organ, but the tragedy of the loss of the original church left\u00a0a most powerful impression.<\/p>\n

The efficient S-Bahn transit train whisked us back to\u00a0our hotel in half the time it took us to get there by bus. \u00a0I love the metro system\u00a0here. The\u00a0cars\u00a0ride more\u00a0smoothly than any transit system I have experienced anywhere else I\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n

\"Hackescher
Hackescher Markt Station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A huge downpour arrived just at dinnertime, so we ate at HEat, the trendy restaurant in our hotel. It was good, but not outstanding, and Arjan said the wine was way over-priced. The weather tomorrow is predicted to be glorious.<\/p>\n

Photographs \u00a9 2016 P.J. Gardner<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To avoid the rain, we spent the morning in the\u00a0DDR Museum, an interactive museum in a bunker below our hotel on the River Spree. The museum brings alive what it was like to live in East Germany between the years 1949 and 1990, particularly after 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built. \u00a0DDR stands for … Continue reading “June 15: Historic Berlin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}