Monday, October 11, 2010

Gray Berlin

I was very excited to go to Berlin, especially after spending time in London and Paris – all three great European capitals, one right after the other. This had be a special way to see them, to be able to compare their feel and style. Well, it was that for sure – London and Paris have much in common, but Berlin…I just didn't connect with Berlin, and I'm not sure why. London and Paris are so overwhelmingly urban, so crowded, so full of movement and people all the time. Berlin seemed more subdued, but also rather joyless and gray around the edges. There is a feeling of...embarrassment perhaps, enforced humility maybe, I really don't know what to call it but there is a slumped shouldered, look at the ground tiredness about Berlin that is so very different from the other cities. Berlin is a little unkempt on the edges – grass isn't trimmed, weeds are omnipresent on the medians – but this is all extraneous. Berlin feels closed down still, as if the one-two combination of the Nazi period followed by 28 years of a divided country and city have simply sucked much of the life out of it and even 20 years of unification haven't been enough to recover from those traumas. Like Frankfurt Berlin feels very safe, even late at night, but it all feels very drab and dispirited.

Even the museums – I spent an afternoon at the Pergamon where they have the reconstructed Ishtar Gate from Babylon – a magnificent piece, but the museum itself felt a little disorganized with some tags in English as well as German, but many only in German, and the flow from room to room felt a little random. I went on to the Neues Museum which houses the Egypt logical collections including the very famous bust of Nefertiti – she is in a room of her own, with a crowd much like that around the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum – and a very interesting display of papyrus fragments. They are in a long table half of which is glass covered and you can push one of four buttons to get a tray to slide out with fragments in it. Push another button and that tray slides back and another slides out – slowly and rather majestically revealing the new papyri. A very slick system and one that saves much display space. The Neues Museum was very well organized on four floors with a collection ranging from Neolithic artifacts through treasures from Troy excavated by Schliemann to a massive Egyptian collection including mummies, statuary and papyrus scrolls of the Book of the Dead. An oddity – this was the firat museum that I have been told that I cannot carry my jacket – I had to either wear it or check it.

We went to a very interesting and large flea market on Sunday in Mauer Park, which is where the remaining section of the Berlin Wall is located and where graffiti is not only legal but encouraged on the Wall. Paul Veit is doing a photographic essay documenting the weekly changes on the Wall and he showed us around the Wall and the park. It got really crowded that afternoon – many Berliners hang out at the park on a sunny afternoon and there were various musicians (a brass band, someone playing a electronically altered jaw's harp, a couple of guys playing plastic kiddie instruments through all kinds of electronic hoo-hah, etc. with much beer and pastries for sale. It was nice but very different from a Sunday afternoon in the Luxembourg Gardens. Granted there are differences in size and history, but the basic function is the same – a green place in the city for people to go and relax in. Mauer Park, in the shadow of the Wall and the large light towers, seems somehow listless and solemn, as if that attitude, that Communist ethos that has seeped into the ground and continues to infect the city. Perhaps that is a little dramatic, but those lingering echoes of the literal and psychic damage that was done to this city are there and it will be many more years before Berlin recovers – perhaps the generations that survived the war and the wall need to pass on and the attitudes that keep 'west Berliners' out of 'east Berlin' need to pass on with them. The country and the city may have been reunified but the national psyche has yet to heal.

Surprising Frankfurt


This city was the most pleasantly surprising place we have been so far on this trip. With nicknames like 'Mainhattan' and 'Bankfurt' and with the reputation as the largest banking and financial center after London, I was expecting a sleek, gray, corporate city with not much to get excited about. Add to that the fact that 80% of the city was destroyed in two bombing runs during WW2…boy was I mistaken. After the hyper and uber-urban environments of London and Paris, Frankfurt was a wonderful and much needed break. It is a very relaxed and relaxing city with a superb waterfront on the Main (pronounced 'mine') River, some surprisingly interesting and off-beat museums and very lively squares off the old town center. We did see our first real European skyscrapers, but even they were interestingly lit up at night.

We went to the Museum of Communication which was much more interesting than the name might indicate. And there in the lobby was an art piece that Lynn had just found out about from our friend Curt LeMay –

Yes, those are sheep made from old telephones. The bodies are from many old cords, the feet are receivers, and the heads are the whole unit. Quite ingenious and very effective – they really look like sheep – there's even a black one, off all by itself. The museum had much artwork related to communications – there was a Christo piece, a public telephone wrapped in plastic and canvas, several paintings (including a Jawlensky and a Broodthaers) an extensive collection of stamps, some spectacular old televisions – a truly remarkable museum in a beautiful space right along the river.

We had lunch at a traditional Frankfurt apple wine tavern where they serve an alcoholic apple cider called ebbelwoi. I had a version that has lemonade added to it and some just straight. It is a unique taste, better with the lemonade, but it was delicious with the Weiner schnitzel I ordered.
The river walks were just delightful – flocks of geese bedded down in the sun, tour barges cruising up and down the river, lovely rows of linden trees lining the path – it was marvelously relaxing.


We wandered through the remains of the old town – very few buildings survived the bombs and those that did needed extensive rebuilding – but the square does feel quite old world. This is the old town hall which is now used by the mayor and the town council. The stepped roof line is traditional in Frankfurt although there are few examples remaining.


We had a lovely dessert – apple strudel, what else? – in another square before walking back along the Main to our pension. It had been a very lovely day, all the more so because it was so unexpected. And although it was raining the next morning when we headed out to Berlin, Frankfurt is a city I would love to go back to when the world feels too much with me.

I must say something about Pension Aller where we stayed. I choose it because it was very close to the train station and it had some good reviews. It is run by Frau Kraus (insert Young Frankenstein reference here), a lovely elderly woman who will cruise up the three flights of stairs before you've closed the front door and provide you with all the morning conversation you need. She has traveled widely and will tell you that she won't talk politics or religion, usually just before (or after) a long political narrative. She is very interesting to listen to and a very kind host. It was a comfortable room (twin beds, of course) but clean, convenient and relatively quiet, for being close to a busy intersection.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Mea Culpa

Well I did say that I am a lousy diarist. I keep trying to get things updated but after a day of walking and time spent on the computer getting email and accounting up to date I don't seem to have enough left to write about the day. I will try to get caught up over the next several days – but no promises!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Excursus 2 - Beer

I have had some truly excellent beers so far on this trip. In Paris I had two different Grimberger (sp?) varieties – a blanc and a red, both of which superb. I would highly recommend seeking them out – they are, if I remember rightly, Belgian beers. I also have had several made by Trappist monks, all very good. And the surprise in something called Manger's Irish Apple cider made from 17 varieties of apples – very refreshing and even Lynn liked it! We also sampled the apple wine in Frankfurt, something of a local specialty. It was interesting, good with a little lemonade added.

Here's a surprising fact – I really didn't drink much scotch in Edinburgh (aside from some of Charlie Rader's private stock – thanks Charlie!) and now that we're in Germany I don't really feel like drinking beer – very odd…

Excursus 1 – The twin bed tour…

The Dick and Laura Petrie Memorial Twin Bed Tour continues in Frankfurt….so far out of seven places we have stayed we have had twin beds in four of them. The ones in Paris where we were first were the worst – uncomfortable and the wooden frames were so loud and creaky that you could wake yourself up at night just be turning over. We had very comfortable beds in both Orkney and London and the twins in Frankfurt were not bad either, but it's surprising how many places have twin beds.


Addendum - We just checked into our our Berlin Hotel - very nice, very quiet (another great recommendation from Charlie Rader) - it is a double which means - two twin beds pushed together to make a double!