September 19, 2024

September 19, 2024

We woke early and took the tram back to the Zurich airport. Normally while we are on tour Aimee lags behind me; humorously once we begin the process of going home, I have trouble keeping up with her speedy gait.

Our flight from Zurich takes off on-time paralleling the line of Alps to our south. From the air these mountains rise up above the cloud layer like an impenetrable wall.

To commemorate our summer trip to Ireland our flight path crosses Dublin and then over the north shore of County Mayo where Aimee’s mom was born. I can see Lough Conn and Mt. Nephin in the distance. For the Titanic Belfast part, we crossed the southern tip of Greenland where I spotted numerous newly-formed icebergs floating offshore. If I can see them from 36,000-feet, they must be huge.

None of the new-release movies interested me, so I watched an old Grace Kelly movie and in desperation, I selected a Ghostbusters 2021 sequel. Little did I realize that it is the 40th anniversary of the original.

We landed in Chicago early. That is when our luck ended. I played the rookie traveller and left my jacket on the plane and had to go back to retrieve it. Customs was having some software malfunction causing Global Entry to backup. If that wasn’t enough, the tram for the international terminal shut down causing chaos to break out. There is no way to get to connecting flights at the other terminals. Eventually O’Hare rounded up some buses. We waited in a long line to board hoping our Swiss chocolate wouldn't melt in the heat. Thankfully we have a long layover so we don’t miss our next flight. Aimee and I are both cursing Chicago.

Our next flight takes off on time. We pass over our old Lombard house and then over the Fermilab particle accelerator in Batavia. Over Colorado, we get a nice view of Great Sand Dunes National Park. From the air, it is easier to see how the prevailing wind direction trapped this mass of sand in a cleft of the mountains. After landing in Phoenix, our driver meets us and takes us home. We have been up way too long.

We enjoyed our trip to central Europe. The Dolomites were stunning. We can see going back, taking day hikes to soak up the scenery, and stopping along the way to drink our new-found Radler beer beverage. We found eastern Germany to be enjoyable and easy on the wallet. There is lots to see and the food great.

September 18, 2024

September 18, 2024

We were up early to catch our flight from Berlin back to Zurich. It left on-time flying over Stuttgart, Germany en-route. After landing we took the tram to our nearby hotel. We left our luggage and set out to explore downtown Zurich.

We walked from the main train station down Bahnhofstrasse. Aimee window shopped along the way, but she said prices were steep. My comparison is ice cream cones. They are about triple the price in Berlin. Zurich should be pronounced Too-rich. Last night we ate the last of the Laderach chocolate we bought at the Zurich airport twelve days ago. Despite the cost we stocked up for the trip home.

We passed several churches with tall clock towers. In the former cloister of the Fraumunster we saw some nice frescoes on the wall. We also passed a dozen water fountains. Zurich is supposed to have 1200 in the city. We turned around once we hit the shoreline of glacier-carved Lake Zurich.

We returned following the Limmat River. We climbed Lindenhof hill topped by a small park. It is the historical center of the town. There was a fort at its peak until the end of the Middle Ages. All the streets surrounding the hill are narrow and winding. We had lunch on the way at a cafe. We both had a tasty Caprese salad sandwich. Aimee is going to try and duplicate it when we get home.

We finished back at the train station which has a statue of Alfred Escher in front. He pioneered the Swiss Rail system. To get the necessary funding he also founded the bank Credit Suisse turning Zurich into a financial center.

September 17, 2024

September 17, 2024

This morning we were out the door early to visit the Berlin Reichstag. We needed a timed ticket and this was the only available. The Reichstag was built in 1894 to house the Parliament of the newly united Germany. It was burned mysteriously in 1933, and heavily damaged in 1945. It sat unused for decades. Now that it is again the Parliament, it has been rebuilt from the inside and surrounded by new German government buildings.

A glass dome was built at the top for visitors. When it opens we are escorted to the roof and given an audio guide that automatically begins as we walk up the spiral ramp. It is pretty informative and relates the general history and describes the view. At the bottom are a series of storyboards giving more history. Interestingly the right to vote was only given to males over 25 that weren’t on welfare. Bismarck instituted the first modern welfare program in 1889, primarily to get socialists on welfare and off the voter roster. Sounds like a great idea to me!

From the Reichstag we walked south into the Tiergarten to visit the Soviet War Memorial. It is the final resting place of 2000 Soviet soldiers out of the 80,000 lost during the Battle of Berlin. When I visited in 1984 it was behind a fence and protected by a Soviet honor guard. The trees are also much taller. In the lean years after the war, they had all been cut down for fuel.

Throughout Berlin, we have had to navigate barriers everywhere. We saw men erecting more as we walked. As much as Berliners disliked the Iron Curtain, wall building seems to be in their DNA. We walked east under the Brandenburg Gate, past the spot where Reagan said ‘Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev’, and along Unter den Linden boulevard one last time.

Back at the hotel, we checked out and put our bags in storage. We then hopped on the subway and took it to the Prenzlauer Berg district. We walked past the oldest water tower in Berlin. Built in 1877, it has apartments around the base that housed maintenance workers. We also passed the largest synagogue in Germany. There were two police officers guarding the entrance.

Farther north we visited the Everyday Life in the DDR Museum. We gave ourselves the audio tour. It is reasonably entertaining but a little bit of a repeat from Leipzig. Most factories had an onsite day-care facility. It was probably less about social welfare and more about solving the worker shortage with women. The DDR had the highest proportion of working women in Europe. One interesting item for us was the rare entrepreneurial product. It was a camping tent that fit over the Trabi auto. It was highly coveted as a way to escape their rigid dreary life, but raw materials were hard to acquire.

We went looking for lunch but most restaurants do not open until noon. After much cajoling, Aimee agreed to a Turkish Doner inside Pita bread. It was delicious. Even Aimee had to agree.

We then took the train southeast to the Karlshorst Museum. This building is where the German Army surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. A Russian T-34 tank sits outside. During the Cold War, it contained a Russian museum dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. Since reunification it has been updated.

On the ground floor is the meeting room where the surrender document was signed. The upper floors have an extensive museum about WWII. It is unique in that it is mostly from the Russian perspective focusing on the Eastern Front where the majority of the fighting and casualties occurred. It wasn’t in the Western American/British front. The exhibits are lengthy and we are running out of time so we fly through it. Interestingly the EU has made August 23, a holiday to remember the victims of Totalitarian regimes. That is the day Germany and Russia signed their compact prior to them invading Poland and starting WWII.

From Karlshorst, we made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. We then found the right trains to get us to the Berlin Airport. Our choices were fewer because of construction on some of the commuter rail lines. That has been a problem during our entire German tour.

We had a burger and salad dinner at our airport hotel.

September 16, 2024

September 16, 2024

A few days ago we heard the weather report worsened south of here. Dresden was pummeled with rain and the Dolomites were getting an early snowfall. This is a recent photo of the Seceda Ridge we hiked on our first day. What a difference two weeks make.

Mondays in Berlin are tough. Almost everything is shut down. So we are going to concentrate on outdoor sites today. We stepped out of our hotel into the subway. A few stops south we visited the Berlin Airlift Memorial. It is rather stark and missing the DC6 airplane I have seen in photos. A passerby told me it was removed to the Tempelhof Airport across the street. There we found an entire museum.

During the Cold War, West Berlin was an island of freedom inside East Germany. In 1948, the Soviets closed the land border hoping to wrest control of the entire city. Truman, to his credit, responded with Operation Vittles airlifting vital supplies. Cargo planes landed here every three minutes. Incredibly the biggest cargo was coal. The Soviets relented a year later.

Humorously the airport once had a huge Nazi eagle atop it. The statue was sent to the West Point Museum. In 1985, it was returned, minus the body. We thought about walking around to the rear to see the old DC-6 Transport but the terminal is way bigger than we could have imagined.

We returned north and then walked west to visit the Topography of Terror exhibits. This Documentation Center has a block-long preserved section of the Berlin Wall. On one side is a long line of interpretative boards covering German history from the rise of Hitler to the fall of the Wall. It is called the Topography of Terror because this area was the center of the Nazi regime. In the background of the Wall is the only remaining building, the Luftwaffe HQ, which later housed the East German government.

We walked to Potsdamer Platz to find lunch. On the way we stopped to find an old Guard Tower left standing from the Wall. It was completely covered and hidden inside a construction zone. The guard was not happy with me snapping a photo.

After lunch we took the subway west of town to see the 1936 Olympic stadium. It was here Jesse Owens outran the Germans to collect the gold medal.

Returning east we stopped to visit the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Built in 1890, it was destroyed by bombs in 1943. After the war the rubble was removed and open-air services continued. Against the wishes of the local population, instead of demolishing, it was left as a memorial to war and replaced with an ultra-modern stained-glass chapel. In 2016 a truck was deliberately driven into an adjoining Christmas Market. A brass memorial crack is inlaid in the concrete outside.

Our next stop is at a major intersection inside Tiergarten Park. This Victory Column was built in 1873 initially to celebrate a Prussian victory. By the time it was dedicated it became a symbol of a united Germany. France didn’t like the part that included victory over them, so after WWII they took part of the decorative frieze and refused to return it for decades.

Across the street is a large memorial to Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian politician who was the architect of German unification and the first Chancellor of Germany. Both these memorials once stood outside the German Reichstag building. They were moved here out of the way by Hitler.

For dinner we ate again at the Bavarian brewhouse by our hotel. This time delicious BBQ Ribs with Apple Strudel a la mode for dessert.

September 15, 2024

September 15, 2024

This morning we took the subway and commuter train to the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. We caught each one with seconds to spare. Our luck caught up with us in Potsdam when we found the tram line we wanted was down for construction. So we hailed a cab that took us to Glienicke Bridge.

The many lakes around Potsdam formed the western edge of the former West Berlin. Because the Glienecke Bridge crossing remained under Soviet control during the Cold War it was often used for prisoner exchanges. The captured U-2 pilot Gary Powers was transferred back to US control over it. The 2015 Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies is a great retelling.

We then walked west along the formerly-fenced lakefront to Neues Garten. The Potsdam area was a summer playground for the Prussian Hohenzollern Kings. This new park was a late addition. We ended our walk at the newest palace in this World Heritage Complex of Palaces. The Celienhof was built for the last prince heir of Kaiser Wilhelm.

After Germany surrendered in 1945, the three Allied powers needed a place to meet to decide Germany’s fate. Berlin was in ruins so they chose this newest of Potsdam palaces. We followed an audio guide tour through the Celienhof and the role of the Potsdam Conference in history.

The most important room was the main conference chamber. Here Stalin, Truman, and Churchill met. Unfortunately Truman was new, and Churchill lost his reelection and was replaced mid-meeting with Attlee. Stalin got his way. 14 Million Germans had to migrate west from their former homes. The borders of Poland were shifted dramatically west to allow Soviet expansion.

Finished with our excellent audio tour, we walked the length of the New Garden southwest. Along the way we stopped at the Orangerie (citrus greenhouse) to briefly view an exhibit on Immanuel Kant, a famous German Enlightenment philosopher. This is the 300th anniversary of his birth. I can’t get excited about philosophy.

We crossed Potsdam town to Park Sanssouci. We are too early for our timed ticket to tour the next palace so we have a Caesar salad lunch at the historic windmill restaurant. I tried another version of Radler beer with Orange soda. Not as good. We are sticking to the Lemon soda standard.

After lunch we ran through the kitchen and wine cellar of Sanssouci Palace and then entered the main palace at our assigned time. The tour is by audio guide again. Sanssouci was built by the most famous Prussian King Frederick the Great. Sited on a low hill, he called it ‘his Vineyard’. It was his summer escape from the political pressures of Berlin. Hence the French name ‘without care’.

Sanssouci has a modest ten main rooms. He had no children, his wife lived in the city, and there were few invited guests. He loved music, the arts, and Rococo decoration. There are lots of gold accents. A little gaudy for my tastes. Both Aimee and I liked the last room we toured best. It was decorated with colorful Porcelain chandelier and accents.

After the tour we crossed the large Park Sanssouci only stopping at the China House. This is a gold leafed four-lobed fantasy house built for guests to party in.

We finished our walk at the Neues (New) Palace. Frederick built this palace later in life to entertain and house guests away from his personal retreat. It is oversize and also decorated in Rococo even though this style was on the outs being replaced by Pompeii-inspired Neoclassical. There are also two grand Neoclassical service buildings across the courtyard.

We have to walk across the grounds to get a timed ticket even though every time slot has open spaces. Back at the entrance we follow the German tour listening to an English audio guide. By this time Aimee and I are tired of palaces and we both think the tour and audio are unexciting. There is an interesting Grotto room with lots of inlaid shells and fossils. And the required large nicely decorated ballroom. Most rooms have lots of French paintings. Interestingly this Prussian king spoke better French than German.

We took the train and subway back to Berlin and had another Tapas meal by Checkpoint Charlie. It was a long day with lots of walking.

September 14, 2024

September 14, 2024

The Berlin museums don’t open until 10 am so Aimee and I take our morning walk east across the Spree River and then up the bank. Near St Nicholas Church, the oldest in Berlin, we run across an impressive statue of St George slaying the Dragon. Just north is the Marx-Engels Forum containing a statue of these two German philosophers who got so much wrong and caused the world too much trouble. Humorously we met several Chinese taking lots of photos. I am guessing they are employees of the nearby Communist Chinese Embassy.

Across the street is Alexanderplatz with a Neptune fountain and the Berlin TV Tower. This 1200-foot structure was an icon of East Berlin and can be seen for miles. I used it as a homing beacon on my venture across the Iron Curtain many years ago. Walking north we passed the old Berlin Palace to Museum Island.

We entered the Altes or Old Museum. It was the first built almost 200 years ago and has a broad Neoclassical facade, two lion hunter statues and an enormous granite bowl.

The archeology collection starts with Greek culture. Early statues were stiff-looking like the Egyptian versions they probably copied. As Greece flourished and expanded east onto the Turkish coast, and west into southern Italy and Sicily, their sculpture became lifelike and much admired.

Much of their creativity apparently came from Symposiums. This was their word for male drinking parties. The ubiquitous Kraters and Amphora would be filled with a wine and water mixture and ladled out generously. Women attended for entertainment only. The pottery was highly decorated.

Our visit to the Greek wing ended at the central rotunda ringed with statues of Greek gods, goddesses and heroes.

The next section is on the Etruscans, an early civilization of Italy centered around present-day Tuscany that would be subsumed by the Romans. Their culture would be greatly influenced by the contact with the Greeks. The Etruscans are a mysterious culture mostly known for their painted sarcophagi that seem to have come off an assembly line. This museum nicely has some other artifacts like jewelry.

The Romans famously were enamored by the Greeks and copied their culture almost wholesale, adopting their religion, just changing some of the names of the gods. Fortunately for us they copied their statues on a mass scale giving us a rich history of Greek sculpture. Most Greek sculptures on display are likely a Roman copy.

Romans usually cremated their deceased and interned the ashes in a small urn. It wasn’t until much later in the period of Imperial Rome (2nd century) that they started burying the bodies in the decorative stone sarcophagi that I love. The Romans must have deployed an army of sculptors to carve these detailed facades.

The other Roman art I find fascinating is from Egypt. Here they had to adapt to local practice. The result was painted portraits atop mummified remains. The paintings are amazingly realistic giving a detailed look into the diverse ethnic makeup, their clothing, and even their jewelry.

Whereas Greek sculpture tended to display an idealized representation, Roman sculpture, especially the head, is amazingly realistic. That makes it easy to identify the person being portrayed. Romans copied these statues and portrait busts in an assembly line.

One interesting find was an entire room full of silverware. Surprisingly this horde was found in Germany outside of Roman control. It surely was stolen, carried away and buried, never to be retrieved.

Like the Naples museum, there is a small room devoted to Roman erotic art, which they obviously loved. Some of the pieces make me laugh out loud. Besides wall art, every Roman must have carried an erotic charm around with them. Aimee spent a little too much time in this room.

We had lunch outside the museum eating Thai food at a Chinese restaurant. It wasn't too bad.

When I visited East Berlin in 1984, I made a point of visiting the Pergamon Museum. Seeing the large-scale Pergamon Altar and Ishtar Gate was a highlight of my visit. Sadly this amazing collection is closed for a years-long renovation. Instead a Panorama was painted to satisfy the curious. Aimee and I are not impressed. Pergamon was an ancient Greek city on the Turkish coast. It became rich producing writing material made from animal skins. The word Parchment is derived from this city name.

We finished our Museum Island visit at the Bode Museum. This one is housed in a cool looking building on the northern tip.

Surprisingly the first floor is almost exclusively religious art. It makes sense. Artists have to follow the money and the Catholic Church held the purse strings. Plus in olden times, there were churches everywhere that needed decoration. Triptychs in wood were the most common. Some were painted. While the majority look mass-produced or created by amateurs, a few are stunning showing great craftsmanship and creativity. Some artists devoted their life to their creations. Unfortunately the best are behind reflective glass.

Aimee and I were both amused and happy to find a Byzantine mosaic piece from Ravenna, Italy in the collection.

The upper floor of the museum had a mish-mash of religious and secular art and coins. Running through the collection, it is obvious art comes in many flavors, forms, and mediums from intricate ivory carvings, to wood, gold, stone, and porcelain. It is not just oil painting. Also artists are not all created equal, or I just don’t appreciate some. For me, I only find a small fraction interesting, which means walking by lots of stuff I don’t appreciate. Most museums could use more filtering of their collections.

One piece nicely described Aimee’s view of the last two days of marathon museum going. A Screaming woman!

On the way back to our hotel we stopped at the German History Museum. We find it also closed for renovation. That seems to be a common theme in Berlin. We see construction cranes everywhere. Instead the museum has a special exhibit in a new I.M Pei wing called 'Roads Not Taken' or ‘What if’. It takes a handful of pivotal events in German history and supposes the outcome if only different choices had been made. Sadly Germans have often been unlucky and made a lot of bad decisions. One sculpture called ‘Mourning Germania’ sums up the exhibit.

For dinner we had Potato soup and salad at our nearby German restaurant. Tasty!

September 13, 2024

September 13, 2024

We saw in the news yesterday that one of the downtown bridges in Dresden collapsed the day after we left. Oooh, that was a little too close for comfort! From our downtown Berlin hotel we walked northeast through the city. It is chilly and I am wearing my thick fleece. I had been telling Aimee I over-packed bringing it. Not Now!

We passed through Bebelplatz, a square facing Humboldt University. In the center is a memorial to the book burning the Nazis did here in 1933. We then passed an equestrian statue of the Prussian leader Frederick the Great. It sits at the beginning of the Unter den Linden boulevard that stretches toward Brandenburg Gate. We walked east past the Neue Wache and its modern Pieta dedicated to the victims of war and tyranny. We crossed the River Spree onto Museum Island running into the massive Berlin Cathedral.

We are going to spend the day seeing the many great Berlin museums crowded together on this World Heritage island. It seems the opening time got pushed back an hour with the end of summer. We stay warm having a donut and coffee at a local cafe.

At 10 am we return to the Neues (New) Museum, buy a 3-day pass, and stuff our pack in a locker. We start on the first floor and immediately run into a number of Egyptian Scribe statues in various styles. More than we saw in the Cairo Museum.

I tell Aimee Germany was very active in archeology in the 19th century. The proof becomes clear when we enter a large room with just one artifact. A bust of Nefertiti, probably the finest piece of Egyptian art. It is the Mona Lisa of Berlin. This mother of Tutankhamen is beautiful in so many ways. If this was the only thing we saw today, I would be happy.

We have barely made a dent in this museum so we push on. The next section is Roman, with the greatest number of artifacts coming from an oxbow lake off the Rhine. It is thought these artifacts were looted by barbarian raiders but lost trying to cross this former bend of the river. The artifacts are generally quite ordinary (like pots and pans, iron chains, and cow bells) but fascinating that the Romans had the skill to make these items especially in a far-off colony in Germany. Who could imagine the Romans manufactured padlocks. And their glassware was exquisite.

After this long morning, we needed a break so we had lunch in the small museum cafe. Appropriately we had an Egyptian meal of Falafel and Hummus on Pita bread. It was quite tasty.

After lunch we moved forward in history with the Barbarian invasions, euphemistically called the Migration Period. Not surprisingly there are lots of metal weapons, but also nice jewelry, and humorously big metal buckles.

Moving to another floor we ran into more Egyptian relics, but on a larger scale with sarcophagi, temples, and wall murals. There were also papyrus scrolls, canopic jars, grave offerings, shoes, cosmetics and jewelry. Egyptians had their stuff just like us.

The next wing covered the quasi-amateur German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, most famous for discovering the city of Troy on the Turkish coast. He snuck these artifacts out of the country for display here.

In the Celtic section was a lot of weapons. Apparently they were mounted warriors as this hall displayed lots of harness bits and other horse tack. There was also an unusual tall golden hat shaped like Merlin's wizard hat. The relics also included the tools used to stamp the decorative design.

In the end, this museum is too overwhelming for one day. We ran through the last half. You really need to focus on one historical era and ignore the rest. I would love to come back and listen to the audio guides.

We still have an hour, so we went next door to the Alte National Gallery. It is a museum on German painting and sculpture. The museum building is like a Greek temple on a hill.

Aimee surprised me when she said she recognized a painting. It turned out to be Alex von Humboldt. We have run into him a lot lately. He was an explorer, who is considered a father of geography and ecology. The Humboldt Current off South America is named after him as is the local Berlin University. He was emphasized in the Amazonia Panorama we visited in Dresden.

It started to rain as we left the museum so we hurried back towards our hotel. Aimee had to stop in a store devoted exclusively to Traffic Light Man gifts. This is the character on Crosswalk signs. We actually found something we needed and was small enough to pack.

We had dinner next door in a traditional German restaurant. We had their Pork and dumplings with sauerkraut. It was tasty.