Berlin
- Þorkell Daníel Jónsson
- Nov 25, 2022
- 8 min read
28. September - 4. Oktober 2022
Berlin is a major city on a European scale. The fifth largest city in Europe with a population of over three and a half million. It has a history of over seven hundred years, so for someone interested in the past, this city is extremely interesting to visit. My wife and I had a few days left of our summer holiday and decided to visit Berlin. This is my first visit but my wife has visited Berlin once before. Sure there are some impressive buildings in Berlin that look old, but it's not necessarily that they are. This is due to the bombings the city suffered during World War II. Over seventy percent of the city was in ruins after the air raids in the spring of 1945.
We flew out on Wednesday morning and landed at Brandenburg Airport at about one o´clock. To get to the city centrum we took the S9 train from Willy Brant station to Friedrichstrasse station. Walked up from the station and on the other side of the street was the Eurostar hotel where we had accommodation for the next six nights. It could not have been more convenient. Outside of the terminal, there were taxi drivers waiting in lines trying to lure us into their cars. The trip into town costs probably about 50 euros by taxi but the train ride costs 7 euros for both of us. Finest savings there.
Olympic Stadium
On the first day of the trip we just strolled around the neighborhood close to the hotel. The day after we visited the Olympic Stadium and bought a guided tour of it. There was originally a riding field in this area, but the first version of sports facilities was built in the area for the Olympic Games planned for the year 1916. Due to World War I the games were never held. In,, Berlin was selected as the host for the eleventh Olympic games in 1936. The Nazists who came to power in 1933 decided to use the games for propaganda purposes. It was them who built the stadium that stands there today. The Nazis wanted to show their power and built a huge stadium that could accommodate no less than 110.000 spectators. Today, the stadium has been renovated in line with modern demands. It now has a capacity of nearly 75,000 spectators. The stadium is the home field for the football team, Hertha Berlin. Herta Berlin is not the owner of the stadium. The team rents it for its home games. This is inconvenient for them. A home stadium is to be built for them in the near future. The stadium is also used for all kinds of larger events such as concerts. Recently Rammstein played on the field.
Bicycle tour
We heard back home in Iceland that it was possible to get a guidedStadium tour of the city in Icelandic. We ordered a tour on Friday. We rented the bikes at the hotel. In most hotels, you can rent bikes. The bike ride was to start at the Neptune Fountain by the Red City Hall. There we found the guide and the group that wasn't really a group. It was just us and another couple. Then we rode our bikes to the city's main landmarks. The bike ride ended in the Beer garden where we had a beer and pizza. It turned out to be much more comfortable riding around Berlin than we expected. You just have to be careful not to put the tires into the trams that the trams follow. The traffic was no problem. There was not as much traffic as we expected. We've seen it much worse in other big cities.
Probably the Brandenburg Gate is Berlin's best-known landmark. About a hundred years before the construction of the gate, Berlin was surrounded by a fortress wall, and only a few gates provided access to the town. At that time, Berlin is a town rather than a city. The Brandenburg Gate was not one of those city gates. Around 1730, more roads into the town were built because Berlin was expanding and on its way to becoming a city. Then the gates became eighteen, and they played the role of being toll gates. One of them was the Brandenburg Gate. The gate gets its name from the city of Brandenburg an der Havel because it marked the beginning of the route from Berlin to that city. The gate as we know it today with Victoria the conquering goddess at the top was built by the orders of Freiederich Wilhelm II in 1788 – 1791.
Aðalbrautarstöðin
We found the Berlin Central Station impressive. It wasn't the architecture that fascinated us, a huge modern glass house. The station was opened in 2006 and it was its size that impressed us. We have nothing compared to this in Iceland. Berlin – Hauptbahnhof was built between 2002 and 2006 in an area where there used to be a transport station called Lehrter Stadtbahnhof.
The Lehrter Stadtbahnhof was opened in 1882 and at first it served transportation to and from the city. Around 1930, it also served as a station for transportation within the city. When the city was divided into east and west, its importance was greatly reduced, as the next station was the Friedrichstrasse station, which was in east Berlin. When the wall was built, the importance of the station was further diminished. When the wall fell, the importance of the station increased again.
The TV tower
The Fernsehturm or TV Tower is one of Berlin's landmarks and it is the fourth tallest structure in Europe, a whopping 368 meters. You can go up to the top and enjoy the breathtaking view of Berlin. Why not to reserve a table at the restaurant at the top of the tower and spin round and round while you enjoy the view and the meal. My wife didn´t and I regret it. When the sun shines on the tower, the shadows cast on the curved glass ring form að cross on the glass. The Berliners say that this is the Pope's revenge for the treatment Christianity received east of the Iron Curtain.
Berlin Cathedral
There is hardly any German city that does not have at least one glorious church. Berlin Cathedral is located on the Museum Island in central Berlin. There has been a church there since Frederick The Iron Tooth had a church built there in 1451. The church was connected to the palace in Berlin. The church that stands there today was consecrated in 1905. It is a huge building and was conceived as the Lutheran church that could be a counterweight to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. When you get in, it's the dome that attracts the most attention and the pictures painted on it. You don't realize due to the hight (116 m) that each picture is over ninety square meters in size. My wife and I went out of our way to climb the stairs to the dome to enjoy the view of the city. The walk raised the pulse quite a bit but the wiev was worth the effort. Under the church, there is a crypt worth looking at, but we were not allowed to go down there because of some renovations that were being made there.
War relics and memorials
You can´t help to think about World War II when you visit Berlin. We liked to see that the Germans are not hiding that tragic story and they seem to focus on the things we need to learn rather than the history of war itself. For example, they choose not to show the bunker where Hitler lived his last days. It's just a lame parking lot. With this, they prevent modern Nazis from making the place a holy place for pilgrimage. Instead, they depict Hitler's story in another less-known bunker but make more of a Holocaust memorial.
The Holocaust memorial covers about nineteen thousand square meters of valuable land in central Berlin. This has sparked controversy in Berlin, the monument is there and it is impressive. It was built in 1999 and designed by an American architect, Peter Eisemann. What can be read from the design has to be based on your own thoughts because the designer himself has never revealed what he was thinking.
Reichstag and the Red Town Hall
We went twice to see the Reichstag. The first time on the bike ride and the second time on the last day of the trip. Reichstag is the Parliament Building and it is a huge building near the Spree River. The Tiergaten is to the west and the Brandenburg Gate is to the south. The building was put into use in 1984 and it was the headquarter of the Empire from that time until the Weimar Republic took over. The house is built in Renaissance style and is quite impressive. In 1933, a massive fire broke out in the building, triggering a process that ended with Hitler assuming totalitarian power in Germany. The Reichstag building was badly affected by allied bombing during World War II, but after the reform and reunification of East and West Germany, it was again used as a parliament. Right now, the House of Commons has its meetings in the House.
You can go inside the Reichtag but you need to order admittance beforehand. We did not do that so we only admired it from the outside. We regret that we didn´t because it would definitely have been worth it. On top of the house, there is a huge glass dome where you can see over the city. The dome was built in 1999.
The Berlin Mauer
It must now be admitted that the history of this great city makes one wonder how fragile human existence is. This is especially true of a fairly recent part of Berlin's history. The power game in Germany in the aftermath of World War I created the ground for the rise of the Nazis, and all the catastrophes that followed. Thinking of this part of Berlin's history brings heavy thoughts. The solutions the politicians brought the people of Europe do not make our thoughts any lighter. The Berlin Wall, or the relics that exist of it, is a testament to that catastrophe. It is downright frightening to put this story in the context of what's going on in Europe right now. The resemblance is unpleasantly high. You wonder if history is repeating itself. Again and again these thoughts were awakened while we explored this remarkable city.
One of the places that woke these thoughts was the Berlin Wall. I and my wife recalled our trip to the east of the Iron Curtain in August 1989 when our guide told us about the wall at Checkpoint Charlie. We felt a bit like ghosts from the distant past when we told the young people who were with us on the bike ride about our experience of life in East Europe before the wall fell. Which it did in October of the same year we were there. We also visited other places in Berlin where the wall is remembered. One is an open-air gallery by the river Speer where 105 artists from around the world decorate the wall with their artwork. The other is a memorial about the 141 East Germans who died trying to escape over the wall to West Berlin. The last one died on March 8, 1989, when he fell from a balloon he was trying to fly on over the wall. Between 1961 and 1988, over a hundred thousand people tried to flee to West Germany, and more than 600 of them were killed by East Germany's border guards. It is bizarre to think that someone wants to maintain a social order in which the inhabitant´s biggest dream is living elsewhere.
Dining out
An important part of this kind of travel is dining in restaurants and cafes. During our Berlin tour, there was unusually little of that. Somehow, things just turned out that way. The first night we were simply late and most restaurants turned us around at the door because everything was full. So we ended up at The Doners Kebab at Friedrichstrasse station. There had a kebab with way too much chilly. The next day we were so tired after all the walking so we just grabbed fast food. On the third night, we went to a decent restaurant and had an expensive steak. The day after that I got sick so there was no dining out that evening and the evening after that. The Indian at Doners Kebab saved us again. The last dinner was eaten at a decent restaurant and of course, the meal was schnitzel.
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