Goodbye Berlin...and danke....

3 years of my life, were in Berlin spent and now...hmmm, It took me a while to like Berlin and I don't know why for sure....but Berlin you grew on me and after a while I came to like you. I still remember when I'd come back from a school trip to London I would smile when I saw the Funkturm because I knew I was 'home'....thanks for taking care for me all this time. So, now I bid au revoir, to you and you and yer....goodbye German refugee memorial (and does anyone else find that BEYOND coincidence that I would happen to end up living on THE German refugee memorial platz in Berlin?!), keep that flame burning, except when the drunk local kids at night throw things in trying to catch them on fire...



Oh Funkturm....I'll just look away....I can't....I just can't....







Goodbye International Study Center-Berlin, i.e. my home and dorm for the last 3 years. Au revoir and danke schoney for everything! You certainly put me into greater contact with people from the former Soviet republics, esp. Azerbaijan and Armenia, than I had ever had before....



OH Sam Kullman's...you're food was 'ok' and occasionally 'good', but you fed me for over 3 years and dare I say, you were my cafeteria! Danke, danke....





Oh my beloved Funkturm, it is you that I shall probably miss the most from my beloved Theodor-Heuss-Platz area! Fare thee well, and until we meet again, keep on shining!

Thanks Berlin and Berliners-a-many, you have been wunderbar to me in so many ways! (sniffle, sniffle, cry,cry, sigh...)

"Die Welt" Balloon

So, yet again, for 2 years or so I have noticed this big 'Die Welt' (The World) newspaper balloon that every now and then would pop up into the sky. Well, time arrived to give it a try....here the balloon descends to pick the new passengers up. I honestly couldn't believe that the only thing that prevented people from floating off was that ONE CABLE! JUST ONE CABLE kept the people from floating off into Poland...

Looking to the East....you see the wonders of Stalinist city planning, i.e. lots of Hochhauser (skyscraper apartment houses)...

Now looking south, you can see off in the distance a wide, open area...that is Tempelhof Airport where the Berlin Airlift took place in 1948-49.

This is looking west, there you see the 'green' of the Tiergarten and ultra-modern Potsdamer Platz popping out at you....

This is looking north....

And here is an East-Northeast look, with the TV Tower, Berlin Cathedral, etc. below...

Here is a zoomed pic looking westwards, the 'white' spheres you'll recognize from earlier posts as the American listening staion near where I live and then to the right, THE FUNKTURM! That is where I've lived for the last 3 years!

Here is an U-Bahn train going on a bridge over the old East-West border, that are now sand volleyball courts and golf ranges ;)

Starting from the back: there's the 'black' of the Hauptbahnhof; then the Dome of the Reichstag; then the Quadriga statue of the Brandenburg Gate (by the trees)....

And then the 'white' building in the middle is the new American embassy. And then all of those 'stones' are the 'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe' (makes more sense in German). At first I thought that was the dumbest memorial, but a friend of mine Tara explained things from an artistic perspective and now I think it's UBER-appropriate!

Close up of the Berliner Dom and the TV Tower...

Close up of the New Synagogue, that wasn't burned down during Kristallnacht...

DON'T LOOK DOWN! AHHH! ;)

The complex of buildings on the left is the old Luftwaffe/Air Force headquarters from the Nazi era, that later became the East German govt's offices for government ministeries and now it's the federal tax office ;) You can see 'us' as balloon-shadow in the photo....

Right near the ballon ride is a company called 'Trabi Safari', I've shown photos of them before driving around town in the old East German Trabi's...

Parked and ready for more passengers!

Thank you, Die Welt balloon! What a marvelous way to say 'auf wiederbyebye' to Berlin! And I was most grateful for the wonderful weather = answer to prayers! ;)

Tour of Berliner Dom

While I went to 'Christmas Eve Services' here and posted about it, I thought might as well take a proper tour of the place, especially after I saw you could go up the dome and then outside for a view of Berlin.

So roughly speaking, there has been a 'parish' church on this site since 1451, however the cathedral as it now looks was finished in 1905. And here you go, a look into the main chamber. VERY impressive...




Love this pic!







Where the Emperor sat during services...








I didn't realize this, but Wikipedia just explained, that while the whole area became Lutheran, one of the Hohenzollern's later became a Calvinist. So Berliner Dom was actually the Calvinist 'parish church' for Berlin and the royal family, whilst the rest of the people were mostly Lutherans. Then the Prussian king in 1817 in a very 'Constantine' kind of way, banded the Calvinist and Lutheran churches together in Prussia and hence, in Germany, people don't say they are Protestant or Lutheran, they say they are 'Evangelical' = union of the Calvinist and Lutheran faiths. So here we have Luther...

and then we have Calvin....interesting, so interesting...

Beautiful interior!

I love the stained glass above the altar. All of this is recent renovation. WWII bombing raids did their damage to the Dom and the DDR left it to rot for a long while...

The impressive organ - me likey....

This is the view from the side where Imperial ministers and government agents would have sat (kind of off to the right (haha, the right hand ;) of the Emperor's box)...

I am still confused, but apparently this is the model of the 'messenger angel' that was on top of the cathedral roof....LDS people, take notice! ;)

DON'T LOOK DOWN!! AHHH! There is the Spree river....

This is looking north from the dome....

There is the New Synagogue!

Museum Island!

Looking westwards....you can see Potsdamer Platz in the background...

Booyah!

These are the ruins of the old Berlin Castle that used to stand right next to the cathedral....

The green grass is where until 1953(?) the Berlin Castle stood, and then the commi's blew it up and built their 'Palace of the People', aka East German Parliament. They found that the People's Palace was leaking asbestos into the ground water (likely story in my opinion) and decided to tear it down/take it apart. I think it's kyoot how someone put a big heart in the grass...

Looking out towards Alexanderplatz, you have the Rotes Rathaus (Berlin's Red City Hall); the 2-spired Nikolai Church where Berlin began; and then the TV Tower in all of it's socialistic glory! ;)

Off to the West, THE FUNKTURM! LOVE YOU, FUNKTURM!

Back inside the Berliner Dom. Danke sehr, you are wunderbarly beautiful :)

Roughly, since the mid-1500's the Hohenzollern (Hohenzollern is to Prussia, what the Windsor's are to Britain) have used the site as a crypt for family members. The crypt was badly damaged during WWII, but they have now been restored....all people and famous people and queens and kings and....yeh, there they all are....things like this really make me ponder death and what you spend your life trying to do and accumulate or accomplish....few today care if these people ever lived and fewer care if they have cool, beautiful coffins....I'm not criticizing them, honestly, just it makes me wonder what all the gold, marble, etc., is for when we're all going arrive at the same end....

This is a statue of Faith, Hope and Charity in the crypt....I liked it...

As I finished the crypt, I was surprised to see that during the day, while tourists can wander around, the Dom is open to weddings! There they were, the couple about to be married, and I watched them 'walk down the aisle', etc. That is one thing interesting about the 'Evangelical Church' - women can be pastors...so a woman was performing the wedding ceremony...

Well Berlin Dom! Thanks a mil! You're grreeat!

Au revoir, le Tiergarten...

Tiergarten (Animal Garden) was the Prussian king's old hunting grounds outside the gates (Brandenburg Gate) of Berlin. Little by little the monarchs agreed to allow regular folks use the grounds until now it is the largest inner-city park in Europe, and it is beautiful!

Queen Luise...

Pretty flower gardens....

Beautiful!

The only thing with Tiergarten is you have to be careful where you go, nudists are allowed to 'sun bathe' here on the 'meadows', so...as you will notice, no pix from 'the Nudey Meadows' ;)

Love this pic! Thanks Katie for your camera...

It looks like a postcard...

Tschuss Tiergarten! Thanks for all the relaxing walks I was able to enjoy with you...

This is a little foreshadowing as to where I shall be living next....this is that country's embassy, right next to Tiergarten!