Berlin - Day1

The adventure begins.  We left Baltimore in the early evening, flew all night on an older, uncomfortable jet, and arrived in Berlin Tegel in the morning.  Customs and Immigration were almost nothing and we were out in front of the terminal very quickly.   We took a cab to our boutique hotel and they were incredibly cool about letting us check in early -- 9AM -- and even let us have breakfast!

Here we are taxiing by a big Russian transport jet at Tegel Airport.
   

We decided to start out doing the "Best of Berlin" self-guided walk from our Rick Steves Germany book.  We took the above-ground S-Bahn (fast urban train) to a stop closest to the beginning of the walking tour:  the famed Reichstag.  It's the German equivalent to the U.S. Capital Building, their parliament building.

"Finished in 1890, the Kaiser was not real big on democracy but it was from the Reichstag that the German Republic was proclaimed in 1918.  Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 as an execuse to grab more power.  Who started the fire will never be known.   The building wasn't used much from 1933 to 1999.  The Reichstag stood just inside the West Berlin side of the wall.  In 1999, the German parliament convened in the Reichstag for the first time in 66 years.  To many Germans, the proud resurrection of the Reichstag symbolizes the end of a terrible chapter in their country's history."  -- Rick Steves

You can tour the building and go up into the glas cupola but it required advance tickets which we didn't have.  Next time.
   
A short walk away is the famous Brandenburg Gate.  Looking good now, it was an abandoned derelict during the Cold War, cut off behind the Berlin Wall.
   
Built in 1791 -- the last survivor of 14 gates in Berlin's old city wall.  The symbol of Prussian Berlin, crowned by a four-horse chariot, with the Goddess of Peace (later renamed Goddess of Victory) at the reins.
   
On the other side of the Brandenberg Gate, at "Parisian Square"  on some prime real estate is the American embassy.  Across from it are the British and French embassies.  Just down the street is the Russian embassy.
   
Looking down the Unter Den  Linden.  Big wide street.  Sort of equivalent to Paris's Champs-Élysées.
   
On the other side of the American embassy is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, completed in 2005. I don't know about the architecture, but just the fact the German government committed such a large area of prime real estate to memorialize the murdered Jews I think is important and significant.
   
A short distance away in this non-descript parking lot was where Hitler's Bunker used to be.  Hitler spent the last two months of the war and committed suicide here in the underground bunker.
   
Because the German's don't want this to be a shrine, all that marks the location is this informative sign.
   
We walked back to the Unter den Linden, passed the Russian embassy, and then down the Unter den Linden some more.  We turned into Bebelplatz Square.  Here on one side is Humbolt University Faculty of Law.
   
Everything looks very Prussian in Bebelplatz Square, since Frederick the Great designed this square to be the center of the Prussian cultural capital: an Athens on the Spree.  In the center of the square is this glass plane.  Looking through it, Lynnette sees a room of empty bookshelves;  a memorial repudiating a notorious Nazi burning of 20,000 books here in 1933.
   
At the end of Bebelplatz square is one of Berlin's fanciest hotels:  the Hotel de Rome.
   

From Bebelplatz Square, looking across the Unter den Linden at the main Humboldt University building.

It was established by Frederick William III as the University of Berlin  in 1809, and opened in 1810, making it the oldest of Berlin's four universities.  From 1810 until its closure in 1945, it was named Friedrich Wilhelm University.  During the Cold War the university found itself in East Berlin and was de facto split in two when the Free University of Berlin opened in West Berlin. The university received its current name in honour of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1949.

Among its notable alumni, faculty and researchers are Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Otto von Bismarck, W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Walter Benjamin, Karl Liebknecht, Arthur Schopenhauer, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ernst Cassirer, Heinrich Heine, Albert Einstein, Max Planck.
   
A statue of Alexander von Humboldt Denkmal.  He was the brother of the founder William and promoted the learning of new scientific disciplines.
   
The New Guardhouse -- Neue Wache -- the emperor's former guardhouse which now holds Germany's main memorial to "all victims of war and tyranny"
   
Inside is this replica of the Kathe Kollwitz statue, Mother with Her Dead Son.  This building also marks the tombs of Germany's unknown solider and an unknown concentration camp victim.
   
Our first look at the River Spree, Museum Island and the Berlin Cathedral.  Plus a good look at the iconic Berlin radio tower.
   
It seems like Cathedrals always have scaffolding on them.
   
The Altes Museum which features displays of Greek and Roman artifacts.   Unfortunately we did not have time to visit this one.   A large grassy area called the Lustgarten is in front of the Altes and was very popular with the Berliners.
   
By the afternoon, we were pretty tired from all the walking (and practically no sleep from flying all the previous night) so we bought a ticket for one of the Hop On - Hop Off buses.  We sat in the upper level.  It was nice to just sit and ride for awhile.  They had an audio-playing device for the various sites, which was OK, not great.
   
Cruising along-side the River Spee and government buildings.
 
Berlin, despite 3.4 million residents, doesn't seem that big to me.  There are no sky-scrapers.  I guess it is just spread out.  It's really almost a new city, having been completely destroyed in World War II.  And then the East Berlin section was junk, so all that was torn down and rebuilt.
   
Cruising alongside the River Spree.
   
The big, modern Berlin Hauptbahnhoff Train Station.  In addition to trains, the metro and subway run through here.   A few of the Hop-On, Hop-Off buses are in this picture.
   
The Victory Column in the middle of the big Tiergarten Park.
   
Designed by Heinrich Strack after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria and its German allies in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), giving the statue a new purpose. Different from the original plans, these later victories in the so-called unification wars inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victoria, 27 ft high and weighing 35 tonnes, designed by Friedrich Drake.
 
Berliners have given the statue the nickname Goldelse, meaning something like "Golden Lizzy".
   
Entranace to the Berlin Zoo.  We passed on the zoo, though.  Animals look pretty much the same whatever country you are in.
   
That old tower looks like a survivor of World War II.
   
The Topography of Terror museum, built on the site of the WWII Gestapo headquarters.  A remnant of the Berlin Wall is visible to the left.
   
A closer look at a remnant of the Berlin Wall.  Throughout Berlin, you can see where the wall was by colored bricks in the road/sidewalks.
   
Checkpoint Charlie which is now very touristy.  You can get a funny picture taken here.  It was no joking matter back in the day when most foreigners passed through here.  There is a Museum of the Wall here but we did not visit.
   
The Konzerthaus Berlin, a concert hall that is the home of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin.
   
The Berlin Television Tower or Fernsehturm Berlin.   The tower was constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It was intended to be both a symbol of Communist power and of the city. It remains a landmark today.
   
St. Mary's Church, known in German as the Marienkirche, sits close to the base of the Tower.
   
The Berlin Cathedral from a different side.
   
Riding around in the bus rejuvenated us so we hit the famous Pergamon Museum on Museum Island.    The Pergamon houses houses ancient Roman & Greek art collections, plus Babylonian & Persian antiquities.   It is probably the most visited art museum in Germany.  The most famous pieces the museum displays are:  the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way, Babylon, the Mshatta Facade, and the Meissner fragment from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
   
This is the the Processional Way to the the Ishtar Gate in ancient Babylon.
   
A Lion is presented in beautiful ancient art.  Parts of the gate and lions from the Processional Way are in various other museums around the world.
   
The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon.  It was constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. It was part of a grand walled processional way leading into the city. The walls were finished in glazed bricks mostly in blue, with animals and deities in low relief at intervals.  The bricks are also molded and colored differently.  A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way was built at the Pergamon Museum out of material including glazed brick fragments excavated by Robert Koldewey and finished in the 1930s.
   
Dragons and Bulls are pictured on the Gate itself.
   
 
   
A model of the main procession street towards Ishtar Gate.
   
Photo of the Ishtar Gate remains from the 1930s of the excavation site in Babylon.
   
A model of Ishtar Gate with its double structure.  The part that is shown in the Pergamon Museum today is the smaller, frontal part.  Photo by Gryffindor (Wikipedia)
   

The Market Gate of Miletus.

The gate was built by Romans in the 2nd century AD, in the city of Miletus, on the western coast of what is now Turkey, most likely during the reign of Emperor Hadrian about 120 to 130 AD.
   

A model of Miletus in its Roman era showing the market gate right at left-center.
 
   

The gate was built in the 2nd century AD, most likely during the reign of Emperor Hadrian about 120 to 130 AD.  It served as the northern entrance to the southern market, or agora, in Miletus.  The gate underwent restoration in the 3rd century following damage from an earthquake.  When Justinian strengthened the defenses of Miletus in 538, the gate was incorporated into the city walls.  In the 10th or 11th century, an earthquake caused the gate to collapse. Fragments of the structure were scavenged and used in surrounding buildings, but the majority subsided into the ground.

German archaeologist Theodor Wiegand conducted a series of excavations in Miletus from 1899 through 1911.  In 1903, the Market Gate of Miletus was excavated and from 1907 to 1908, fragments of the gate were transported to Berlin.  Wiegand wrote in his diaries that he gave a presentation using models to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was so impressed that he ordered the gate's reconstruction at full scale "like a theater backdrop" in the Pergamon Museum.

From 1925 to 1929, the gate was reassembled in the recently expanded museum from over 750 tons of fragments.  However, the fragments did not constitute the entirety of the gate, and fill material had to be used in the reconstruction.

The gate suffered significant damage from aerial bombardment in World War II.

From 1952 to 1954, the structure was extensively restored and then restored again in the 2000s.
   
Roman statue.
   
What's left of a Roman statue.
   
On the side of the big room opposing the Gate is this overlook which is a collection of Roman architecture from Western Anatolia (Turkey).
   
A palace relief panel (Assyrian sculpture).  This art is from the ancient Assyrian states, especially the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911 to 612 BC, which ruled modern Iraq, Syria, and much of Iran.
   
This one is from the the palace of Ashurnasirpal II.
   
 
   
Unfortunately, the famous Pergamon Altar was not open for viewing so we did not get to see that.  Pergamon was an ancient Greek/Roman city in Western Anatolia (Turkey). Two days later, we discovered quite by accident the Pergamon annex just across the river which features a 360 degree Panorama of ancient Pergamon including the Alter.  It was a very impressive of murals, statutes, and of course, the 360° Panorama by Yadegar Asisi.
 
Here is what the Pergamon Altar in the Pergamon Museum looks like when open.
   
Here is what the site of the Pergamon Altar looks like now, overlooking the modern city of Bergama, Turkey.
   
Here is the front of the Alte National Gallery, which features a collection of Romantic, Impressionist & early Modernist art.  We never had the time to check it out though.  Too much to see.  Next time.
   
Crossing over the River Spree heading east towards the nearest S-Bahn station.
   
We walked by this gigantic Webber Kettle.  We are Webber Kettle people; have been using them forever.
   
Ah, it's the Weber Grill Academy.  Lynnette is thinking of applying for work as an instructor.  She knows a thing or two about grilling on a Weber.
 
It had been a long day.  We took the S-Bahn back to our boutique hotel.  There were lots of restaurants right by the S-Bahn station so we had dinner there.
   
 
   
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