While I dreamed of pedaling through the Black Forest and Bavaria, I never thought about visiting Berlin, so I had no preconceived notions about the city. It's flat. It has canals. It's historic. It's building. It remembers.
Little is left of the 156km of the Berlin Wall. In the 27 years it was up, many died trying to climb over what took only 56 hours to build. In the pavement now, there is a double cobblestone line showing were it had been. Cars and pedestrians cross it by the thousands. The few sections left standing aren't very impressive. And yes, I bought a piece of the wall - only $5.
I signed up for a 4-1/2 hr bicycle tour of the major sights around downtown Berlin. The leader was a very knowledgeable Australian student studying political history. Along side the Reichstag (the old parliament) modern government buildings are being constructed because ten years ago the German government voted 257-240 to move the capitol from Bonn to Berlin. Near these modern buildings and Berlin's Space Needle wannabe radio tower, are the old buildings of East Berlin including a Huguenot church using the same architecture and situated across the square from the Lutheran church. Nearby is the world's third oldest museum, after the National Museum in London and that Mona Lisa repository. I could see three types of architecture in one line of sight as Prussian, Nazi and modern Germany intermerge.
In the center of Berlin is Tiergarten Park. It is crisscrossed with trails - some 15 foot wide hard packed, some narrow dirt foot paths. In the center of the park is the GroBer Stern Memorial, a 100 foot high column. With a golden winged lady at the top, in three levels it commemorates the victories over French through the 1870's. Hitler moved it to Tiergarten Park in 1938. He added a 4th level to celebrate future victories. If only the French had taken heed.
Two of the events that marked the rise of Hitler's Nazi Party were the burning of the Reichstag and the burning of books outside Humbolt [not the correct spelling] University, both of which occurred in 1933. In the university's square there is a memorial glass window in the pavement with an empty room below it indicating an empty library - without books there is no knowledge - no learning.
There is a holocaust memorial planned, in the form of a contoured graveyard, near the site of the SS bunker. On the other hand, there is nothing to indicate the location of Hitler's bunker - therefore no place for fools to worship him.
On our bike tour we stopped for lunch at Schotzky's Deli in East Berlin near Checkpoint Charlie. I ordered the same sandwich I ordered at the Schotsky's in Redmond, Washington. It was there that I first learned that German prices are more moderate than Scandinavia. The bike paths aren't quite as good, but the bike shops were better than anywhere except Copenhagen. The towns in what was East Germany continue to keep bumpy cobblestone pavement as their form of traffic calming. I prefer speed bumps. And, the cell phone usage in Berlin was the same as the rest of Europe. Only in Russia did I not see people talking on cell phones while walking down the street.
The next city I toured was Dresden. The city was rebuilt after being firebombed near the end of WWII. The renovation continues with the added task of removing the soot left by the Soviet style economy's pollution. While it's already impressive, 20 years from now, Dresden will be gorgeous. 20 years from now, St. Petersburg will be falling apart. 20 years from now, I'll be remembering the year I saw the world from my bicycle seat.
Happy Trails,
Bruce