A Full Day, a Nap and Adnan

We started the day with a full breakfast at our hotel. It was wonderful but not included with our room so will try something simpler around the corner tomorrow.

And now we're finishing the day at Adnan sitting outside and trying to understand the menu that is only in German. (We're hoping this is a good sign.). We're good and hungry after a long nap-a rare occurrence but needed after a long day touring.

Alex picked us up at 10. He has an interesting background as his paternal grandfather was Jewish. He fled Germany only a couple of days before the Kristallnacht pogrom in November of 1938 and lived in Manchester until the war ended. Unlike other German Jews who left (about half), he didn't sell his property for little value but instead abandoned everything. When he returned after the war he was entitled to have it returned.

We spent some of the tour in the car and some of it on foot and started our first walking portion at the site of the current Parliament building (the Bundestag), formerly the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. The building was burned down by suspected Communists, an act used by Hitler to convince the ceremonial President, a hero of WWI, to suspend democracy and give full power to Hitler. Alex reminded me that at that time many were more worried about Germany becoming a Communist state than about fascism.

We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews which has no signs or explanations but is still powerful. (Photos to follow.) It was built after the fall of Communism in what was once East Berlin. We also visited portions of the former Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie. In the former East Berlin a large portion is preserved and at one point they have created a sandy beach along the river with bars and cafes. This comes after a wide boulevard originally named for Stalin and then renamed for Marx. There are huge apartment buildings and in a way I was reminded of Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, but without Bal Harbor or the Rascal House. I made that comparison to Alex, who thought I was crazy. He pointed out that balconies have now been added and that the housing is mainly used as public housing. A street in Moscow was used as the model.

We also walked around the historic Brandenburg Gate. ("Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate-Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.)

We had lunch across from the opera on an outside terrace. I had a smoked trout and it was a full fish but I managed to eat it without choking and thought it was excellent. Kim has Dutch herring. We passed on the delicious cakes.

There was a simple memorial to the book burning by Nazi students. There was a plaque that reproduced a quote from 1820 to the effect that a society that burns books eventually will burn people.

At Humboldt University there were memorial plaques in the sidewalk to Jewish students showing when they were deported and which camp they died in.

We visited the site of all the Nazi state's key buildings but there isn't much left. Now they are trying to have some exhibits that show what it was like around the 'Topography of Terror" which also includes the wall as a consequence of the war.

There is a general war memorial and it is controversial as both a soldier and a Holocaust victim are buried underground.

In East Berlin the Communists took down the Prussian monarch's castle and replaced it with the East German Parliament. Now the new state has taken that down and is rebuilding a replica of the castle!

We also saw a suspended 1940's airplane commemorating the airlift of 1947-1948 that kept West Berlin supplied given its location in the middle of what was East Germany.

So now I've ordered cold cucumber soup and pizza and Kim has ordered hot tomato soup and pasta with shrimp and chicken (with vegetables). I've also ordered a half liter of Chianti, their red house wine.

The place is in the Savignyplatz area and is hopping with locals. Whether what we think we ordered ends up being what arrives is another story! (The soups arrived so as of now we're good.)