Potsdamer Platz by Night...

Not much to say, you've seen the info about Potsdamer Platz in several blog posts, I just wanted to say goodbye...when I first got here I thought Potsdamer Platz was really 'odd', because it's like a small 'ultra-modern, NYC' coming out of nowhere (it's right next to Tiergarten, HUGE park!), but I am starting to like you now and to think you're cool and I think I will miss you....



This giraffe welcomes kids of all ages to their UBERexpensive Legoland adventure (I'm too cheap; I didn't do it)...'she' didn't always have those flowers up in her hair to let her know she was a girl...










This is the Sony Center - how cool you are! This 'arrangement' is supposed to look like Mt. Fuji in Japan, and it kind of does...I just LOVE these photos (thanks for your camera, Katie!)!!!







Beautiful....













And then the center itself. This is where I'd go to see my English-language editions of movies like 'UP!'.














This is the Kaiser Saal (Emperor's Room) of the old, luxurious Hotel Esplanade. Pieces survive and this is a part that they've preserved on Potsdamer Platz...




That is the DB (German Railways) building in back of the Potsdamer Platz's 'unique' traffic light.

Potsdamer Platz back in the 1920's and 30's was, traffic-wise, the busiest intersection in Europe and thus the multi-sided traffic light...










You're looking great, Potsdamer Platz! Whenever you see the green sign with the white 'S', that means 'S-Bahn' or 'Fast-Train'. It's kind of like a subway, but above ground...




Potsdamer Platz was significant because 'No Man's Land' and the Berlin Wall went right through it....they've left up sections of the Wall as a way to remember...this one says 'there is a hole in the Berlin Wall' ;) And thankfully so!





Au revoir, Potsdamer Platz! You're cool, you're hip and I've enjoyed getting to know you over the years...

"a three hour tour, a three hour tour..."

As one of my 'goodbye Berlin' activities, I chose to do something that I had been also meaning to do for quite a while, but never got around to it. Berlin and the surrounding area is a land of many lakes, rivers and canals connecting these rivers....so, it was time to go for a ride on the Spree river and the Landwehr canal...


Floating right along we see that we're on the Spree river (Shhpray). The area right was 'West Berlin' and the left, 'East Berlin'. Many people died trying to get over to the western side of the river....so sad....




This is 'House of the Cultures of the World' and is an art center and performance hall for non-European art and culture. It was a gift from the US in 1957 and the Berliners call it the 'pregnant oyster'. ;)





This is the Bundeskanzlersamt (the German prime minister's offices, i.e. her Oval Office), but NOT the White House (where she lives)...





This is Berlin Main Train Station and is one of the largest in Europe. It opened in 2006, just 2 weeks before I moved to Berlin, and cost over 1 BILLION Euros to build!





Oddly enough the Reichstag was in West Berlin. I say odd because most of historical, downtown/Mitte Berlin was in East Berlin. You can see a memorial to people who died whilst trying to cross the border in the lower right corner of the photo.

Going on down the Spree we find the 'Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof' (Friedrich Street Train Station). During the Cold War this was known as the 'Palace of Tears' because this is where West Germans visiting relatives in the DDR had to say goodbye. So sad....40 years, and for what?!

On a lighter note, those 2 buildings directly behind the Bahnhof were NOT there when I moved to Berlin. As said in an earlier blog post, 'Berlin bleibt nie Berlin!' (Berlin remains never Berlin - i.e. it's always changing...).

Do you know that 'Mack the Knife' song by Louis Armstrong? It comes from 'The Threepenny Opera' by Bertoldt Brecht. This theater, the Berliner Ensemble, is where Brecht wrote and worked....drama-wise, very famous place...

This is the Bode Museum, part of the Museum Island complex. Another one of those I need to go see it for three years, but never did, but then I finally did in the week before I left, LOL....BEAUTIFUL building, especially inside....

'Just around the river bend...' we find....the Berliner Cathedral! I'll leave the infos for an upcoming blog post...

This is the area where Berlin started....

'Berlin - City of Peace'......

hopefully that is what it can be in the present and future....

I still love this whole 'lock' system. It's so 'simple' and yet so ingenious....here is our lock opening....

we float in and wait....back doors shut...water rushes in, raises us a few feet...

then the front doors open and we sail out...we're now at the same water level...ingenious!

This is near Jannowitzer Bridge...I just like all of those 'wharves' below....I think that would be a COOL place to put restaurants, dance halls, etc.

;) English is the 'world' language...I just thought this was funny....(speaking of English, I still find it hilariously weird that when people protest in Iran or Palestine or wherever, their signs are written in English! Obviously the signs aren't meant for somebody else other than the people/regime they are protesting...)

I just love...'renewal' projects where they combine something old, some old pumphouse (I guess that is what it was) and then add to it, make it cool, new/old instead of just leaving it to rot for another decade....

This is the new O2 World arena where they have concerts, hockey games and basketball games. That 'white wall' is literally the old Berlin Wall!

There is the Oberbaum Bridge - VERY cool looking bridge from the late 1800's, that recently was rebuilt....

Off in the distance, you've seen it before on the blog....

but this is why I love to take tours, you ACTUALLY learn stuff! I was told by a guy I interviewed in this area, that that is supposed to represent East and West Berlin coming to greet each other....well, you might not be able to make it out, but there is a THIRD 'GUY' THERE! IN TOTAL there are THREE GUYS in that sculpture! The arteest said that that was to represent the 3 Bezirke/District of Berlin that come together at that point! So...geography, not 'putting the Cold War behind us' brotherliness.....

And here we go into another lock...now we're headed into the Landwehr canal (Land defense canal)....

Pretty, pretty....the balloon is a bit of foreshadowing as well....

It was election time and here in the district Kreuzberg the Green party was having a 'rally'....

The blue and white pillared building is an old Jewish synagogue, that was not burned down during Kristallnacht, but instead today serves as a Jewish school....

Love it! Beautiful!

This is along the canal almost to where I live. The signs are reminding all of us to go vote. The elections results were that Angela Merkel remains Chancellor/Prime Minister, she doesn't have to 'share' power anymore with her rivals, the Social Democrats and that the Social Democrats received their biggest losses at the polls since WWII....it will be interesting to see what changes these results bring to Deutschland...

I loved the boat tour, so worth the money, HOWEVER, the weather turned VERY cold and so naturally I wish I would have chosen a sunny, warm day during the 2.5 years I've thought about doing this trip! :)

Berlin TV Tower

Here is THE crowning achievement of the DDR - the East Berlin TV tower! (even if they did smuggle Swedish engineers in to make it work LOL!) Located on Alexanderplatz in the center of Berlin, the TV tower was completed in 1969 and is 1198 feet tall!

I also have been meaning for THREE YEARS to go up the tower, but would you believe it, never got around to it...hmph!








Enter, my friends, Rachel and Alyssa and their invitation to go up the tower = Aaron finally did it! Woot-woot!

Danke, Rachel and Alyssa!




Ok, starting in the background...the 'red circle' is the Funkturm - that is where I live - WAY out West! Then there is the 'purple circle' off to the left and that is Potsdamer Platz. Then there is the 'green circle' in the middle, and that is the Brandenburg Gate. To the right, you see the 'blue..boomerang' and that is the Reichstag. Close towards you is a 'purple M' and that is for Museum Island. And then the 'blue C' is Berlin Cathedral. What a sight! What a sight!

So this might be some foreshadowing...'exit', 'sortie'....in other words, I might be doing all of these things that I meant to do for 3 years...because....I might...be leaving Berlin....but shh, don't tell anyone! ;)

Schinkel Museum - Werdesche Church

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (you've seen his grave in past blog posts) pretty much designed and built most of the 'who's who' buildings in Berlin. This is his 'Friedrichs Werdersche' Church, completed in 1830. It was damaged after the war, and the East German gov't being not to keen on spending money on relgion left it to rot until 1982, when it was renovated and turned into the 'Schinkel Museum'.

Shall we go in?...





They have turned it into a little bit of a museum. Here is a copy of a famous statue - I dedicate this to my sisters, Suzanne and Julia - it makes me think of them ;)












I loved how my camera made the surrounding area of the window SO dark - it's almost like the light is truly the only thing that is there...













Here is a look at the inside of the church before the renovation work started....



And here is what it looks like now!















There he be! Schinkel...what a guy. He is to Berlin what Sir Christopher Wren was to London....

We saw in an earlier post that he was born in a town called Neuruppin (there is an earlier post of Neuruppin). His town was destroyed in a great fire when he was a little boy; his dad died weeks later from the effects of trying to put out the fire....his mother and siblings lived in a 'Widows of Pastors' house in Berlin....it's just amazing how some people overcome afflictions...his town was razed and so he 'designed' and 'rebuilt' the Berlin that people would come to know. Amazing stuff....

Aktion T4 :-(

So this is one of the saddest things the Nazis did....firstly, the Nazis killed 'their own', i.e. 'Night of Long Knives' where Hitler killed members of the Nazi party who were not pro-him...then the Nazis killed their political opponents, i.e. socialists, communists, etc. Then....



the Nazis killed/murdered handicapped and mentally ill people because they were 'unworthy' of life. Just looking at this plaque made me cry...this was called 'Action/Operation T4'. And as usually the case is, once killing starts (French Revolution) it's hard to stop. So not only were mentally handicapped people killed, but also social misfits and homosexuals. In the end it is estimated that more than 200,000 were killed in this and other like 'euthanasia' programs. I HATE THAT TERM! Saying this was 'euthanasia' adds credence to the Nazi belief that they were indeed doing these people and their families and the country a service by 'euthanizing' them - I SAY IT IS MURDER and that is EXACTLY what it was! THE NAZIS MURDERED over 200,000 PEOPLE, not animals, who were like children and 'defenseless' and deserving of help and protection....



Here is one of the masterminds of the T4 Aktion. You can read in the following photo what other horrible things he went on to do...

This is a photo taken secretly in 1940 of one of the 'grey buses' that were used to transport mental patients to T4 killing centers - this shows the mental patients being registered before being transported to the killing center in Grafeneck. (and that's the other thing, euthanasia doesn't include experimentation, dying by carbon monoxide being pumped from a truck into the area where the handicapped person was!, starvation, etc... And what's crazy, just like a ball, this idea kept on rolling until it morphed into the gas chambers at concentration camps...

As a memorial a group built a 'grey bus' that you could walk through, i.e. you were now the patient being taken away in 2008 on the Aktion T4 site....

May it never happen again!