I am not a history buff by ANY means, probably stemming from a really tough history teacher I had in 8th grade who made us memorize every date and battle. Now I realize that history is so much better learned through stories and actually visiting historic sites. Serg had a history teacher who taught through storytelling, and subsequently really loves history.
I just used the word history six times in that last paragraph. Phew! But that's really how Berlin felt to us... so chalk full of it that it almost hung in the air. We stayed in a gorgeous nook of the city, right along the River Spree bordering the Tiergarten. The train station was a ten minute walk and from there all the major sites were easily accessible.
Several people had told us that Germans are efficient, helpful, and most speak english. We found this all to be very true. Everything seemed to work very seamlessly and quickly. For example, when we got to the airport upon arriving the luggage disposal thingy (??) was right there. No walking for miles to get to it. Then right through a walkway was outside where taxis were waiting. A lady who worked for either the city or airport or taxi companies helped us find a large van to accommodate us and our luggage, popped in a booster seat and a baby seat, and off we went. Pretty streamlined, right? We thought so. It pretty much carried on like this the whole trip.
Berlin is being recognized as a city of old meets new. It did not feel like a big crowded city to us, more of a small, clean one that happened to have huge historic importance. We had not done too much looking into what we wanted to see, we figured there would be trains and playgrounds and we would just wing it with the rest. That's pretty much how it went, but thankfully we got to see these two sights which stood out as our favorites.
The Holocaust Memorial was not at all what I had expected. I hadn't done any research before going so I was surprised to find that the memorial was made up of thousands of big stone rectangles of various heights, ranging from knee height to what felt like about five feet above my head. I tried walking through it from one side to another, but took a shortcut out because I honestly felt a bit freaked out! Alot of people were playing in it and jumping out from behind these things to startle each other. And like in this picture below there were kids jumping around on the tops of these things. It evoked lots of questions like 1) is this supposed to make me feel uncomfortable? 2) is it ok to appreciate this from an architectural perspective? and 3) what the hell was Peter Eisenmen thinking in this design?
I can't imagine living in a city that was home to all the atrocities that took place under Hitler. The taxi driver on our way back to the airport was upset at just the mention of the Memorial. After seeing it I did a bit of research, and if you're interested you should too!
The other place we were in awe of was the Brandenburg Gate. It was initially built as a symbol of peace, and was later used as symbol of Nazi power. Even later it stood just inside of the wall separating east from west. Hmmm, that whole peace thing didn't quite stand the test of time... We saw a cool exhibit showing pictures of the gate over time, and its been the host of so many different historical events and following the fall of the wall has been used for occasions from concerts to speakers to strange day to day sights like the darth vader looking guy who happened to be strolling around when we were there. If you do a google image search of the Brandenburg Gate you'll get a glimpse of all its uses.
For more on old meeting new in Berlin, here is a good article. We loved visiting and want to return some day. It would be fun to take the boys back when they're old enough to appreciate, or tolerate us telling them about, all the history and culture here.
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