As promised by the Eurosleeper schedule, I arrived in Berlin at 06:18 in the morning. Mom had proposed to come and pick me up, but that’s just crazy at this ungodly hour if we’re only returning to the apartment anyway. I take the first taxi in the row – the driver is not impressed with my pronunciation of the street name, but at least he has a decent taste in music. I take it as a compliment that he’s surprised that I recognised Alice Cooper on the radio, he must have estimated me younger.
After a quick hug and congrats to my mom – she did just cycle 2100 km – we get started on the practicalities. We find the nearest supermarket to buy fruit/yoghurt breakfast stuff, but are then tempted by the sandwiches in an organic bakery on the way. Breakfast at eight, followed by a short planning session. All we’ve planned so far are two dinner reservations in fancy restaurants, so we take Google Maps, find our list of items to see on a MyMap we made six months ago and decide to do a first reconnaissance on foot.
Fortunately Berlin has a great underground system: the U-bahn. We compare a few options at the ticket dispenser and decide to go for a 7 Tagen Karte, meaning free rides for seven days. Since I should be taking it easy – ideally stay below 10.000 steps per day or so – we’ll use the metro to skip around town and save the walking for the interesting neighbourhoods. First up: the U2 line to Mohrenstrasse. I use Google Maps to guide us around, first to a saved bit of Berlin wall, then the location of the Führer Bunker where Hitler died and on to the Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. Aside from the history that’s being remembered, the memorial itself also has a long and interesting history, with lots of politics and committees involved since the eighties. The design is very symbolic, I mean that it doesn’t immediately evoke strong feelings, so we look up the comments of the architect. On a high level the design is structured and ordered, composed as it is of identical concrete columns – also called steles – arranged in a geometrical grid. When you walk into it, you immediately see that the steles are slightly crooked and have slightly differing heights, symbolising the inherent instability of large systems. That’s all I got from the German text, it used quite specialised terms.
We walk on, past the Branderburger Tor, the Reichstag with its glass dome designed by Norman Foster and decide to move on to the old town. The U5 drops us off on Museumsinsel. We have a snack in the café of the Humboldt Forum, admire the Dom and walk on to Rotes Rathaus. I catch sight of a poster explaining that the Deutsches Historisches Museum is closed for renovations, but that the Pei annex remains open. Recognising a famous architect, we deviate to see this annex. It’s remarkable how you put a modern steel and glass annex next to a grand historical palace and somehow make both of the buildings come out better for it.
I’m thankful that my German is still okay (I lived in Germany as a student in 2003-2004), so I don’t have to find translations for everything. We’re not too interested in history today, we just want to do a walk and enjoy the sunshine. We have a delicious lunch in Fischer & Lustig, which we selected purely because of the tree shaded courtyard. We share an entire salmon trout, with a green salad and warm dish of potatoes, beans and bacon.
We take the U5 back to Märkischer Museum around two thirty and chill at the apartment. Mom does some laundry and plays a game of Scrabble with my grandma on the iPad, while I read and sort the pictures. We’ll have fruit/yoghurt breakfast for dinner (to make it more confusing, at home this is a recipe I always prepare for lunch time). We also make some tentative plans for museums tomorrow: we’ll focus on the Charlottenburg area and see some Bauhaus and Jugendstil!
We hop out around five for quick stop in the nearby organic store for some fizzy drinks and arrive back home with some appetizers and a bottle of wine as well. Never mind, it’s a holiday and we don’t have to be sensible every day. 14.500 steps today, that’s a bit much and I’m tired, but we had plenty of rest stops, so I’m reasonably confident I can keep going yet another day.
Febe writes 