Berlin

This past week, Lori attended a conference in Berlin and I tagged along. I didn't see much of her until Friday afternoon. Her days were full of meetings and lectures, so I explored the city on my own but I was able to show Lori a few of the highlights on the weekend.

Berlin is a very cool city with a ton of history, but it's very different from other European cities. There is very little left of the original architecture because most of the city was destroyed during the second world war. Adding to it's uniqueness, is the fact that the city was divided into four sections after the war and occupied by the French, British, Americans and Soviets. Then starting in 1961 the city was physically divided into two sections by the Berlin Wall. These events have had a lasting effect on the city.

The first thing I noticed; there is construction everywhere. There are buildings going up and new subway lines going in all over the city, but the bulk of the construction is in the former East Berlin section. Berliners just celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the rebuilding is still going on.

I made it to most of the popular sights while I was touring around. The Brandenburg Gate,

Checkpoint Charlie is the most famous of the entry points into East Berlin.

There are sections of the wall still on display around the city and this is one of the longer sections.

Embedded in the ground are a double row of cobblestones to mark the former location of the wall. There are places that look like the wall went through buildings, but the buildings were built after the wall came down.

 

Here's a funny shot showing two iconic Berlin landmarks from very different times. The Berlin Cathedral was built in 1539 and behind it is the TV tower, called the Fernehturm, that was built in the 1960's by the socialist government of East Germany.

 We had some great meals while we were there. One of the leftover effects of the American occupation is the prevalence  of really good steak restaurants in the city. I ate at a couple of them. One of the restaurants had a Black Angus steak from Alberta on the menu, but they ran out so I settled for the Omaha T-Bone. It was pretty good, but I was a little taken aback when it came out and was already sliced for me.

 Lori did get out for some sightseeing during the week. She went on an architecture tour of Berlin. They did the tour in an unusual way though. They wound their way through the streets of Berlin in a convoy of Trabants.

These were cars built by an East German manufacturer and were essentially the only cars available to East Germans. They were horrible cars when they were built 30 or 40 years ago, so you can imagine how awful they are now. They are only used as tourist attractions now. This was the car Lori was in.

There are sobering sights to see as well. There are museums and monuments dedicated to the Berlin Wall and to the atrocities of the Second World War. This is the Holocaust Memorial and it consists of 2,711 concrete slabs. There has been some controversy around this memorial but I thought it was powerful.

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