He's the Godfather of Soul, but more importantly, the stepbrother of David Hasselhoff.
It’s a coincidence that the first two major cities we’ve visited while living in Europe are London and Berlin—the two WWII capitals. It’s hard for me to get past the idea of Berlin as the place where bad people did bad things. Flipping through the TV channels, I will always stop and watch for a while when I see grainy images of Nazi soldiers or the burning city of 1945. Berlin will always be the city of Hitler and his bunker and the burning books and Kristallnacht.
I wanted Louis to have some sense of the dastardly things that had happened in Berlin, so from time to time, when we’d be standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change, I’d be describing some event like the Reichstag fire, and how it allowed the Nazis to consolidate power. One time I looked up and saw somebody giving me the eye and realize that it might be considered less than tactful to be describing these things out in the open without so much as lowering my voice. But then I wondered if maybe on some level I didn’t actually hope to evoke some resentment, to stir the embers enough to find some vestige of the former attitude.
Of course, I realize how idiotic it is of me to arrive on the scene 64 years after the fact looking for a scrap. And tactless. The city and its residents aren’t trying to hide or deny their past. But nor are they defined or preoccupied by them.
We stayed at a rather drab hotel off of the Kurfürstendamm, the glitzy shopping street of the former West Berlin. We took the train downtown the first morning and got off at Unter den Linden, the western end of which is the Brandenburg Gate. Here’s a side shot of the gate showing its proximity to the new US embassy. Odd that we would build our embassy so close to their great national symbol—imagine if some country wanted to build a huge embassy to overshadow the Lincoln Memorial.
Turn around to face the other way and you’re looking at the recently completed Holocaust Memorial:
Somewhere in the immediate vicinity—under a parking lot—is the site of Hitler’s bunker. They don’t disclose the exact site because they don’t want to provide any shrines for neo Nazis. Fair enough.
We walked around the immense Reichstag and then up Unter den Linden past the Russian (formerly Soviet) embassy:
Aaahhhh. Just like being in Moscow, eh comrade?
Here’s Louis in front of some sort of shopping plaza further up the boulevard:
On the second day we visited a terrific art museum and then ventured north into the trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood for some döner (kebab) and walking about.
It was cold the whole time we were in Berlin (never rising above freezing) but this was the one time when the weak sun seemed to warm us a bit.
Our final full day (Sunday) we went looking for the wall. Here’s the first piece we found:
The biggest intact piece of the wall sits above a permanent exhibit called the ‘Topography of Terror,’ which is itself built into the subterranean remnants of the SS and Gestapo headquarters buildings (they were neighbors!).
According to our guide books, they'll never build on this site again.
That evening we walked from downtown back to our hotel, past the bombed-out remains of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (church), left as a memorial:
The view in this picture is foregrounded by one of the city's Christmas markets. There are blue towers on either side of the church, and I think they are carillons to supplement or replace the sound of the church’s bells. They make a lot of noise, which we found very enjoyable—were it not so cold we might have stood there and basked in it for quite a while.
We had our most German meal that evening, marred only by the fact that the sound system was playing the same two-minute loop of “Too Young to Go Steady” over and over and over again. More beer, please!
The final morning we had a few hours to kill before our train so we did some more walking and shopping—we found one shop that had little hand-made wooden ornaments from south Germany. We also walked by the New Synagogue:
Not so new, as it turns out. It dates from 1866. I’m not quite sure how it’s survived the 20th century in one piece. Meanwhile, there were armed guards in front, as there were in front of a Jewish restaurant we’d passed the day before. It was Jonetta who made the connection between these guards and the ongoing events in Gaza. Seemed plausible.
