Travelogue: Berlin

One of the many bears of Berlin--this guy guarded the entrance to our hotel.

Last stop on our spring Mother/Daughter trip was Berlin. The most surprising thing about Berlin was how clean it was for a big city--granted, we stayed in a really nice part of the city, but the streets were clean as was the air. The traffic was also pretty light for such a large metropolis. Germany has been going green for quite awhile now and biking to work or taking public transportation seems to be the norm. Anyway, the sun was shining, the air was fresh and clean, and the flowers were out in abundance.

I loved walking in the Tiergarten in central Berlin where little gardens like this just popped up.

To finish up our WWII historical theme for this trip, Emily and I visited the Topography of Terror, which is a documentation museum covering the Gestapo and the SS and SA during the Nazi regime. Outside of the museum we walked along a portion of the Berlin Wall that has been preserved as a monument. We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Euope and Checkpoint Charlie.

Afterwards we agreed we needed to lighten the mood and do a few things just for fun. We visited the Museum of Natural History--we're big fans of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science as well as the Museum of Natural History in NYC, so it seemed like a good choice and it was a fun afternoon. Besides the requisite main hall being filled with dinosaur skeletons, this museum displayed animals differently from what I am used to--no dioramas but each stuffed animal in its own case. The weirdest exhibit by far was the huge room of jars filled with liquid and the remains of all sorts of creatures. 

The stuff that nightmares are made of!

For the final day of our trip, we walked across the street from our hotel and spent the day at the Berlin Zoo. It happened to be Father's Day in Germany (on a Thursday!), and so there were lots of families joining us. The zoo is absolutely beautiful, with interesting buildings/decor, large and natural-feeling enclosures for the animals, stunning gardens, and plentiful refreshment stands and cafes. And, they have pandas!!!!! I have never seen a panda other than pictures so that was pretty cool.

It was challenging to get a good photo as the pandas are behind glass and not getting me in the reflection was tricky.

Final image from Berlin is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It was bombed and almost completely destoryed in WWII. Instead of it being demolished, it was preserved and made structurally safe so that you can go inside and have a look around. Here's a bit more about it--I took tons of pictures of it and was fascinated by it.

Travelogue: Berchtesgaden and the Eagle’s Nest

 

Emily enjoying the scenery when the rain finally stopped and the sun came out.

From Munich we rented a car (Europcar) and drove two hours south to Berchtesgaden in the German Alps. It is right on the Austrian border, 30 minutes from Salzburg. 

Tip: at the rental car place, the clerk asked if we were leaving Germany and I said no. I didn’t realize that the highway would take us into and then out of Austria (maybe 10-15 minutes total). When we exited the highway (still in Austria), we and a few other cars were flagged to pull over and we were slapped with a 120 Euro fine for driving in Austria without a sticker in the windshield. I asked where to get a sticker and was told any gas station for 10 Euros I could get a 10-day sticker. We got one for the return drive!

Berchtesgaden was a mixed bag—my daughter really wanted to visit Hilter’s mountaintop house and so I rearranged the trip and took out a visit to Heidelberg so we could go here. The house is one of the only remaining structures that was a personal possession of the Nazi high command, and it was called Kehlsteinhaus at the time. It is located at the top of the mountain, Obersalzberg. In the picture below, you can see it perched on top of the mountain. It basically has a cafe and a hall with about a dozen images with descriptions. So, I booked a tour that was highly recommended as providing more info than we would get just visiting on our own.

Sunday, just before we left Munich, I got an email saying that there was going to be a train/bus strike starting Sunday night that would impact tours on Monday (our day) and Tuesday because the only way to visit is to take a bus to the elevator that you then ride to the top. Since we had reservations in Berlin on Wednesday, we said we couldn’t rebook and decided to visit as soon as we arrived in Berchtesgaden on Sunday while the buses were still running. We did just that and visited the site in the cold rain and couldn’t see any of the views from the top because we were in a cloud.

A map of Obersalzburg showing the Eagle’s Nest perched at the top.

What it looks like not covered in clouds.

The cafe in the former dining hall.

The following day we visited the Berchtesgaden National Park, including Konigsee (Kings Lake), which is like an inland fjord, and in the afternoon the sun finally came out and we enjoyed some wonderful mountain scenery. 

Konigsee

Requisite photo of flowers near the Berchtesgaden parking lot. 

We are glad we visited and saw the historical site and especially glad we got to enjoy some refreshing mountain air after all our time spent in cities.

Speaking of cities…next stop is Berlin.

Travelogue: Munich

We were hoping to leave the rain behind in Paris, but it followed us to Munich and made the first two days fairly soggy. It’s tough to learn a new city from under an umbrella and just about impossible to take pictures, but we made the best of it.  Despite the rain, I loved seeing the spring flowers and the fruit/veg stands loaded with delicious goodies. I bought two packets of strawberries that were so good!

I’m not a big fan of German food in general, but I fell in love with their chunky, white asparagus (spargel). This salmon with asparagus was out of this world!

We stayed near the train station and just a block from the old town area where most of what we wanted to do was within walking distance so both ended up getting 15-20k steps per day.

Yes, we did. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Berlin. It was definitely fun!

We started by visiting the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, which is a museum that documents the rise of the Nazi party in Munich. The museum was excellent, free, and again full of high school age kids.

Next we visited the Dachau concentration camp, which was incredibly moving. It’s one thing to read about these places, but visiting them enables you to get a deeper understanding and respect for what people endured and how they suffered. I ended up not feeling like taking any photos but just walked around, listened to the audio guide, and read the placards.

We also took a walking tour entitled Hitler and the Rise of the Nazi Party—again, excellent. The tour guide was terrific, and it was great to see the sites of events like Hitler’s first major speech, the route of the Beer Hall Putsch March and where it was crushed, the house where Hitler learned how to rub elbows properly with the upper crust who were crucial in his early fundraising years, and the various monuments that the German people have erected to commemorate the victims of the Nazi regime.

This is where some of the participants in the Beer Hall Putsch were killed. The Nazis made it sacred ground and required everyone who passed to give the Nazi salute.

The golden cobblestones mark the path that people who wanted to avoid giving the Nazi salute would take —it marks a detour around the “sacred ground.” Like any form of resistance during the Nazi control of Germany, taking this detour required courage.

Apart from the WWII excursions, we enjoyed shopping in Marienplatz, walking through the Englisher garden, watching the foolhardy surfing on the river rapids, and getting lost even with GPS on our phones. 

Now it’s time to leave the urban bustle for awhile and head for the hills. Next stop — Berchtesgaden in the German Alps near the Austrian border.

The Women in the Castle

The Women in the Castle, by Jessica Shattuck, is another WWII novel but what sets this one apart is that the women are all German instead of part of the Allied effort. The main woman character is Marianne von Lingenfels, a strong, aristocratic matriarch whose castle, by marriage, features in the story itself and becomes home for all three after the war and symbolizes the struggles they endure to face the reality of their situation, loss, and sense of identify.

The other women are Benita, an ingenue Aryan prototype who marries Marianne's childhood friend, a Nazi resistor, and Ania, the purported wife of another Nazi resistor.

Shattuck does an excellent job of telling the stories and back stories of all three women, weaving in their children's lives and experiences. I felt both sympathy and frustration with all three, and really appreciated getting a look at the German experience during and after WWII.

I particularly admired Marianne's leadership, even when those around her resented her for it. She is the reason any of the extended circle survived, and while her tactics and forcefulness may have caused their own wounds, she truly did what needed to be done.

I thought the ending was particularly satisfying and realistic.