Berlin or Bust
The final destination of our travels: Berlin. I had heard so many things about this city. Would it be a playground for Sally Bowles (of Cabaret fame) with her black page boy coif singing torch songs? Or a grey, dreary post-Soviet city of tower blocks? Or teeming with skinny tattooed punks in slim stovepipe leather trousers and a sneer, but when approached would enthusiastically divulge their grandmother’s recipe for sauerbraten? Just what would we find?
Berlin’s destroyed and reconstructed cathedral.
I had been following the architecture building boom. I was aware of the renovation of the Reichstag and the new embassies sprouting all around it. But architecture is only a small part of what makes a city.
First, I had my sights on Potsdam. I was determined to explore this suburb and Sanssouci. Sanssouci (French for without concern) was a pleasure park built by the German royals to escape the rigors of ruling.
Sans souci says it all.
Sanssouci is dotted with summer residences and pleasure pavilions. This excursion was sure to be one of the highlights of the Maria-Theresa Tour, even though we were firmly in the territory of her rival, the Kaiser. It was here at Sanssouci, in the breakfast room of the Neues Palace that the Kaiser signed the paperwork that started WWI, a rather dark chapter for a place created for frivolity.
Neues Palace in a brighter light.
On the way to the Orangerie.
Set among pathways that crisscrossed the park lay the pleasure pavilions. One the the most interesting was the Romanisches Bad (Roman baths). As was the fashion, it was constructed to resemble a recently unearthed Pompeiian bath.
A welcoming mosaic floor in the Roman bathhouse.
The courtyard of the Roman bath.
The Pompeiian-inspired frigidarium.
But I was there to see Schinkel’s “palace” for the Crown Prince Frederick, Charlottenhof. This charming dwelling is so intimately scaled that I ready to move in.
Sanssouci parkland and its pleasures.
The crown prince’s palace.
The portico of the petite palace.
At last I was to actually stand in the “tented room” whose pictures had provided inspiration for the guest room in our first home. Pinch me! No one on the tour spoke English so I did it myself!
Onto the rest of my tour of Potsdam.
To my astonishment, a mid-century renaissance was taking place in Potsdam. It was similar to what I witnessed in Palm Springs a decade ago.
Mid-century tower blocks before restoration.
This time it was Soviet-era tower blocks that were being rejuvenated. Once the foreboding sentinels of the skyline, they now have been recast with color. Evoking favored pattern and color combinations of the early Bauhaus textile designers like Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers.
Renewed and rejunvenated Potsdam.
After logging what must have been nearly 10 miles on foot in and around Potsdam, I returned to Berlin, ready to discover it.
Berlin is a city of contrasts. It is new and old; beautiful and ugly. Like every large metropolitan city the streets are teeming with cars and pedestrians. There is charm and in certain areas, a great lack of it in others. In a way, it reminded me of the city that I love, Los Angeles.
Like almost every American, we made our pilgrimage to Check Point Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate.
Picture this. Only two Euros!
The Brandenburg Gate.
Growing up in the 1970’s, these two icons were what symbolized Berlin. They appeared in all the spy movies during the Cold War. They elicited a tingle of danger, of excitement. They were the edge; the boundary where freedom stopped, mid street. Now they have become a tourist bus stop where for two Euros you can be photographed with actors posing as Western and Eastern Bloc guards.
All that is left of the Wall, its imprint.
We stayed in the Kurfurstandam, an area which was West Berlin before the Wall fell. Once the height of Western commerce in a divided city, it appeared faded and dated with its impersonal high rises and anonymous architecture.
Venturing in Unter den Linden (under the Linden trees) in the former eastern sector, we discovered the new heart of Berlin. Named for the wide boulevard near the Reichstag this, is the newly restored seat of the German government.
The Reichstag with its new dome.
The Reichstag on the river.
Here the past mingles with the present. Along the boulevard is the grand home of Aeroflot, national airline of the Soviet Union, situated in the same building as the Russian Embassy. A few paces down the boulevard stands the Brandenburg Gate. Turn left and you will find the new American embassy. It’s one of the largest buildings here. The embassy overlooks one of the newest and most poignant memorials I have experienced, the The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial, by US architect Peter Eisenman.
Entrance to the memorial.
It is a gridded labyrinth, orderly and controlled. As one enters the ground gives way. What appeared at first look to be an assortment of rectangular, coffin-like pyres, suddenly loom above.
The memorial rising in front.
Its cobbled pathways undulate beneath you causing uncertainly with every step. As you venture further into the memorial it grows darker. Light is visible, but dimmed. A straight path allows exit. A turn right or left sets you on a new perilous path.
The uncertain path forward.
It becomes a personal journey that really can not be described, but needs to be experienced. This is what makes a truly great memorial, the ability for an inanimate object to become a personalized experience.
I suppose that is the best way to experience any city; come with no preconceived ideas and then just let the experience wash over you. That’s how I approached Berlin. I discovered a city with a sad and tragic past that it has been dealing with for over a half a century. It now struggles with the complexities of multi-culturalism in a modern world; a rather befitting task for a city that was once known for its strident homogenity.
Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pmand is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.