Trip to Berlin and Points South

The “Elegant Elba” is how Viking described the land-cruise. But the linchpin for us was Berlin. That’s where the tour would start. “We need at least three or four days in Berlin on our own,” Frank said when we put down our deposit. I was euphoric. I had never been to Berlin, virtually rebuilt after WWII, and I longed to see the architecture that had so impressed Frank on his visit nineteen years earlier. He’d talked about the dining room of a once-grand hotel encased in glass in the middle of a modern shopping center and his discovery of Hitler’s unmarked suicide bunker site beneath an asphalt-covered parking lot of an apartment complex. At a bookstore on Linden Street, Frank had found a book in English that led him to the site. When he shared his discovery with a German who lived nearby, the man was shocked.

---

In mid-October, a few minutes after midnight, we taxied out of JFK, buckled into British Airways for our overnight flight to Berlin by way of Heathrow. Early the next morning, we were awakened for breakfast – a delicious tasting of curried chicken between thin slices of brown bread, a curl of salmon with a dab of cream cheese and a sprig of dill, chopped egg on a slice of rye, and sitting next to a warm scone, a mini-tub of clotted cream and berry preserves. A far cry from my usual bowlful of Cheerios!
 
It was nearly dark when we landed in Berlin and made our way to the InterContinental Berlin hotel, a few steps away from the Zoological Garden and Aquarium. The next morning, heeding advice of the concierge, we purchased tickets for the Hop On Hop Off bus near the majestic ruin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Bombed by Allied forces in WWII, a remnant of its spire stands as a stark reminder of a consequential war. On two sides of the towering stone shell, gold clocks keep perfect time.

Our first hop-off was at Checkpoint Charlie, probably the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Along the street, a wall of remarkable photographs illustrates key individuals who played a role in the separation of Germany after the war: a smiling President Truman stands between Churchill and Stalin. His arms are crossed as he shakes hands with each. Nearby sits the unimposing American Guard House, rather a copy of it. After the original American Guard House was moved to an open-air museum in 1990 (the year Germany became unified), a copy was constructed on the site, complete with a sandbag barrier. I couldn’t resist standing behind the sandbags and pretending to peer into East Germany.
 
Taking a look at our Hop On Hop Off map, we discovered that the Jewish Museum was an easy walk away. “There is a sculpture inside that I’ll never forget,” Frank said. “You’ve got to see it.” As we approached the building, I was puzzled. I’d heard it referred to as a zigzag building designed by American architect David Libeskind, but from the outside, I couldn’t detect any zigzag. To me it looked like a multi-story modern building with a titanium-zinc façade. But once inside, I sensed something different. As we walked through an underground passageway to reach the main exhibit area, the stone floor seemed to zigzag. High concrete walls punctuated with oblique slashes–narrow windows above eye level–made me feel claustrophobic and disoriented, without any idea of where I was! Architect Libeskind created empty shafts in several parts of the building, which he called “voids.” Extending vertically through every level of the museum, they represent destruction, loss, and absence. A small sign on one wall, indicated a path to the sculpture that Frank remembered, “Memory Void.” The sculpture, in one of Lisbeskind’s voids, is an installation by the Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman entitled Shalekhet, or Fallen Leaves. When I looked closely, I shuddered. More than 10,000 loose 10-inch circular pieces of heavy metal, each depicting a face in agony, covered the floor. Kadishman dedicated them to all innocent victims of war and violence. Encouraged to walk the length of the installation, over the faces, I heard the clanging of what sounded like shrieking voices.
 
When the Hop On Hop Off dropped us on Platz der Republik, we were mere steps away from the Reichstag, a historic legislative government building. Built between 1884 and 1894, it is one of Berlin’s most famous landmarks. The building has chambers for Berlin’s parliament: the Bundestag (lower house) and the Bundesrat (upper house). Generally, the dome and the roof terrace are open to visitors but we couldn’t get in. Online reservations must be made at least 24 hours ahead of arrival, which we didn’t know. In front of the Reichstag building is a memorial commemorating 96 members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic who were “murdered by the National Socialists” between 1933 and 1945. Memorializing these protesters are 96 cast iron plates with the names, birth and death dates and places, e.g., Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, engraved on the edges. I was struck by Germany’s showing its history, scars and all.
 
From the Reichstag, we walked to the Brandenburg Gate, a neoclassical monument and one of Germany’s most famous landmarks. A ten-minute walk from the Brandenburg Gate, we found the Holocaust Memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. On a sloping field of nearly five acres lay more than 2,700 coffin-like slabs of concrete arranged in a grid pattern. Of similar length and width, they varied in height from eight inches to more than 15 feet. We were too late to get into the underground museum but this powerful sculpture, which was completed in 2005, sixty years after the end of WWII, will stay with me for a long time.

“If I remember, Hitler’s bunker is not far from here,” Frank said, as we left the Holocaust Memorial. And not more than three city blocks away, he found it. “This is the site but when I was here, there was no sign.” Now, alongside the parking lot stands a large marker that gives details–in German and English–of the layout and construction of the bunker buried under the car park: In the 1980s, when the East German government constructed apartment buildings on the site, the roof of the bunker was removed and the interior filled with sand and gravel and turned into a parking lot. The eight-story apartments still stand. In 2006, one year after Frank shared his discovery of the bunker with an apartment dweller, who was dumbstruck, a Berlin historical society installed the sign, marking for the first time exactly where the Nazi leader took his life at the end of WWII. Was Frank an unwitting catalyst? Reportedly, the many-year absence of a sign was based on fear that it might encourage Neo-Nazi gatherings.

Late one evening, a taxi dropped us far from our hotel in front of a graffiti-covered 15’ high piece of the Berlin Wall in an area called East Side Gallery. Before leaving home, we’d purchased tickets online for an evening of British Comedy aboard a boat in Berlin. The taxi driver wasn’t sure where the boat was located and neither were we. Figuring that a river must lie on the other side of the Wall, we started walking, looking for an exit through the Wall. Seeing a crowd ahead of us, peering at the wall, we paused to see what was so riveting. It was a large painting of two men kissing. I thought it was an LGBTQ statement but looking closer, I saw that it was something more. The two men were the Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev (his infamous eyebrows were a dead give-away) and Erich Honecker, head of East Germany, in a show of unity during the festivities of the 30th anniversary of East Germany’s German Democratic Party in 1979. Originally, the kiss, caught by French photographer Regis Bessu at the decisive moment, appeared in many magazines. Later, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, a Soviet artist, Dmitri Vrubel, painted the iconic image on the east side of the Berlin Wall. The caption beneath says: “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.”
​
Walking through an opening in the Wall, we found ourselves on the banks of the Spree River; docked in front of us was The Laughing Spree. Holding onto the rope lines, we climbed up to the deck where we were ushered into a cabin with a raised platform stage, some thirty empty chairs and a bar to one side. It was 9:15 p.m. and we were the first to arrive with a choice of seats. By 9:30, every seat was filled. The British comedy turned out to be four stand-up comics, not one of which was British but all spoke English. One was from Turkey, another from Ukraine, and two were German. In response to the emcee’s question, “Where is everyone from?” one young woman said, “Belgium.” “That’s a small country,” the emcee said. “How many people live in Belgium?” After a long moment of silence, a deadpan voice (aka comedian Steven Wright) responded, “Seventeen.” “How do you know that?” the emcee asked. “I counted them all,” the voice said, adding, “I should have said 18 because I forgot to count myself.” The audience roared, and before the evening of comedy was over, everyone on the boat knew that Frank was celebrating his 93rd birthday and the emcee wanted to hire him for future gigs. Yes, the mystery voice was Frank’s and he still doesn’t know what compelled him to speak out. During intermission, the young woman from Belgium was in a serious tête-à-tête with Frank, asking him for advice on how to live.
 
The next morning, we joined a Viking panorama tour of Berlin, revisiting a few of the sites we’d taken in on our own. One we hadn’t noticed, as we walked toward the Brandenburg Gate was the Hotel Adlon, made infamous when Michael Jackson dangled his two-year son from the balcony of an upstairs room. While I snapped photos, Frank, wearing a baseball cap, wrap-around sun glasses and leaning on a cane, was counting his change, trying to figure out how much he had. As he examined his foreign coins, a woman dropped two Euros into his open palm. When Frank relayed his experience to our guides, they couldn’t stop laughing. This may have been the first time that an American tourist was seen panhandling in front of the Brandenburg Gate!
 
Eventually, we found the Sony Center where Frank had admired the dining room of the pre-war preeminent Hotel Excelsior encased in glass. Surrounded by construction work, the building, a once-celebrated example of contemporary architecture, was in conspicuous disrepair and the dining room had been reduced to a fragment behind glass through which we could see nothing.
 
Our last night in Berlin, we treated ourselves to the Konzerthaus Orchestra of Berlin. When we’d purchased tickets online months earlier we had no idea of what the orchestra would be playing. In fact, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks before we left home that our tickets were confirmed! Inside the Konzerthaus, we were delighted to find our seats mere rows away from the orchestra. The Konzerthaus itself, with its high painted ceiling and multiple crystal chandeliers, not to mention the numerous silver pipes of a pipe organ on the wall behind the stage, took my breath away. The program, entitled “Very British” featured works by composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar. We loved it all–acoustics were great–but our favorite was Concert for Violin and Orchestra by Britten. The soloist was 23-year-old Dutch concert violinist Noa Wildschut and the conductor, 25-year-old British-Franco Stephanie Childress. Both were amazing! The only damper on the evening occurred as we tried to leave. I couldn’t find my coat check ticket and had to wait until everyone else in the Konzerthaus had claimed a coat before I could lay hands on mine, which was visibly hanging near the checkout counter. When the head of the checkout counter went inside to check the floor around our seats for the lost ticket, I knew it was no laughing matter. “Shirley, this is the German way,” Frank said, as I stood at the counter audibly fuming. In the end, I paid a 5 Euro fine and left in a huff with my coat. Later, back at the hotel, I discovered the “lost” metal ticket inside a tissue at the bottom of my purse. In the morning, heeding Frank’s suggestion, I asked our Viking guide to return the ticket to the Konzerthaus. Lutz later told me that his wife offered to return my ticket while we were cruising the Elba.

---

I should say that despite our resolve to eat in an honest-to-goodness German restaurant, we did not succeed. Lutz, our resourceful Viking guide directed us to one within walking distance of our hotel but neglected to tell us that it was inside a mall on the second floor. Back at the hotel and still hopeful of finding a good German meal, someone on the front desk recommended an “even better” German restaurant, which we never found. That night we ended up eating, for the second night in a row, in our hotel. Our third and last night in Berlin, we made a meal of hors d’oeuvres before catching the 7 p.m. concert at the Konzerthaus.