Berlin- Den Mauer. The Wall.

Berlin 2016

When I last shared in this blog, Huz and I had been in Wrocław, Poland.

Loved it! He had been lecturing and hosting and being all Rad.

But, now we took the opportunity for a bit of vacation, and traveled by bus back to Berlin. 

I have to say, when planning our adventures from Cowfeathers Farm, we had a heck of a time figuring out any kind of train passage between the cities. It seemed to only be an option of bus. And, even after traveling to the source, we still didn't iron out a train option. 

So, a bus ride through the forests between the two countries, without jet lag this time, was just fine. When we arrived back at the Hauptbahnhof train station in Berlin (the bus stops directly across), we went into the station to the Visitor Center. There we purchased passes that allowed us, as visitors, to ride all the public transportation for a flat fee. And it was a good deal. 

So, back outside the Hauptbahnhof, the tram station a few steps away allowed us to hop on the tram and travel down the Invalidenstrasse to our hotel.

We had booked rooms at the Honigmond Garden Hotel, and it was a great choice. 

This was the walk to our rooms. 

   

Just beyond the little table on the left of the photo is the bannister that led to the steep, narrow stairs and our rooms a few stories above. 

On a narrow landing (I had to stay on the stair, as Huz and I could not both fit on the landing and open the door), we found our door. It opened into a tidy little kitchen with a luxurious little bathroom behind it. Beyond is a dining room, with petite fireplace, and then beyond that our bedroom, with a large wardrobe and a big four poster bed. And Huz.

 And this is our view from French Casement windows. Lush garden below, with this fabulous green wall making our room feel extremely private and as an oasis in the city.
But, we don't go on vacation to hang out in our rooms! So out into Berlin we shall go.

 Our first order of business was food, and that is a touch complicated by me! But, we found a place several blocks from our hotel that was right up my food alley, and had a lovely little luncheon.
We then set out for a wander, and consulting my friend- a map- found we were quite close to a place where the Berlin wall still stands.

Den Mauer- The Wall.
It turned out that it wasn't just a patch of standing wall, it was the Berlin Wall Memorial.

Excellent! Because I must admit my ignorance here. I just didn't understand The Wall. I knew it separated East Germany from West Germany. And was a larger symbolic divide between Communism and Democracy. I knew people died trying to climb over the wall and escape East Germany.
The rest was murky. Who decided this was a good idea? And, if the wall was just across Berlin, why not just go around it instead of over it? Just walk into the countryside of East Germany and walk through the fields to the west. Skip the whole Wall thing and people shooting at you.
Although I do understand it much better now, I still can't answer the question "Who thought this was a good idea?"

 So, my image of The Wall being a line is false. The wall went all the way around the West Berlin, and so it was an oasis of democracy in the communist East Germany. There was a portion of West Berlin allotted to the Americans, another to the Brits and the last to the French. So, after the fall of the Hitler Regime, the victors carved up the spoils, and this was their idea of how to make it fair.
BIG Eyeroll.

 Much friendlier looking that when it was in use, the wall now has some green space, is no longer surrounded with barbed wire and trigger-happy guards.

Along the wall in the memorial area are these boards that have information on them about the wall. This board is about  a man who died here trying to climb over the wall to visit his mother. They had been separated by the ding-dongs who thought up a wall, and he was missing his Mummy.  Humans are really so bonkers. They had to build a wall to keep people in their society, because so many people had left they were floundering. So, instead of finding a way for the society to prosper, they shoot people who try to leave.
And we share DNA. Rather discouraging.

I found this photo interesting, as I realized we were standing in the same location. So this is what it looked like. You can see in the foreground, the wall divided a cemetery from the church on the East Berlin side of the wall. So, not only could you not visit your living relatives, you couldn't visit dead ones either. There is a guard on a small wooden stand, between the wall and the fence of barbed wire. There are visual barriers up across the road, so East Germans couldn't see down the street to the West Germans prospering and get ideas.

 The older building in this photo is the same building as is pictured in the Wall photo. I pointed it out with a curved blue arrow. There are new apartments going up across the street.

And this road, that prior to the wall went past the cemetery, is still blocked off by wall. In the old photo above, it is marked with a red arrow.

Standing in history.

Crazy history. But as they say, history repeats itself. So, better have a good look, just in case we are around when it does.
This is fairly recent history. As the inscription says on the marble in the photo back a-ways, the wall stood from August 1961- November 1989. I was born into a world where this wall existed. And I was in college when it was finally taken down.
Although Germany has centuries of history, the history of the 20th century is truly palpable.
In the next blog, we take a tour of Mitte, Tiergarten, and the postcard sights of Berlin. Plus the devastating reminders of the ugliness of the demagoguery of megalomaniac Hitler.
Fun!