Berlin Photos

This is the main train station in Berlin, from the inside looking out. It's huge and all glass, with many layers. Quite impressive.
Postdamer Platz used to be nothing. The wall went right through it and the buildings all around were destroyed. Now there's this huge high rise complex here. All glass too. Mark and I saw the Simpson's movie at the theatre here one evening. (We'd actually wanted to see the Harry Potter movie but we didn't want to watch it in German. So Mark picked the Simpson's instead. Quite silly. My favourite part was definitely the choral version of "Spider Pig", at the end during the credits.)

This is also at Postdamer Platz. A section of the wall has been left there as a remembrance. This piece commemorates the spot in the wall that first "broke apart". A little further down there are more sections with historical explanations.
This memorial is quite impressive. It's a memorial to the murdered Jews. It's along the road between the Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburger Tor. It takes up a whole city block and is constructed of these concrete slabs of all different heights that you can walk between, along many rows. Sometimes you're deeper down and they reach far up above your head. Other times you see them from the top. People sit on them and children play on them. There are 2400something of them. It's left up to the visitor to decide what they represent, if anything. Underground there is a museum with pictures and names and histories of families, also letters or journal entries. I couldn't stay there for very long. Partly because of time constraint but more because it was too overwhelming.


Before, After and Inbetween

This is the Brandenburger Tor. It's a bit of a landmark for Berlin. I remember very well being here on my visits in 89 and 90. And subsequently too. I picked up little chips of the wall here in 89. The wall went right by it too and there were no buildings around it either. In 89 in fact, the part of it I could see from the otherside of the wall was in pretty bad shape. Now they've built up the area around it. Buildings all around it again. The street Unter den Linden is a busy street again and they're in the process of building a subway stop there too. The place on this side of the wall has been renamed Pariser Platz again and the buildings are new but have been built in the same configurations, height, similar style even to the buidings that used to be here.



Another Before and After. This of the Reichstag government building. I like the new domed roof they've put on.

One day I spent in Charlottenburg viewing the palace there. I liked the anachronistic look of the posh castle in the background and this simple bicycle tied to its fence. Afterwards I walked all the way to the Kurfuerstendamm and walked in and around its posh stores there. On the way I stopped at an East Prussian restaurant "Marjellchen" for Kaffee und Kuchen. The buildings along the Ku'damm are beautifully renovated and rebuilt too. Some street corners are old style and some new style.