Feb 9th. A weekend in Berlin

 The weekend was so busy that I have a hard time remembering what we did during the week. Then again, what an I saying, we did have a couple of major breakthroughs... Isabella learned to read in Russian..

She did know letters and could stumble through a set of syllables but never before she had mastered the magic of holding them in her memory long enough to unravel the full word unless it was a really short word and then it was more of an exercise in memorization. Finally something clicked on Wednesday and she is able to read long words like "TAPAKAH" and "TELEFON." It is really cool and she really is enjoying it and trying to read any other words she can get her hands on. Georgia, on the other hand, not to be passed over, did a few remarkably well images of animals. I tried to learn to draw and know how difficult it is to get proportions right, and she seems to be able to do it quite easily.
So back to the weekend. On Friday we took a short flight to Berlin. As we waited in the airport bar we watched the opening ceremonies of 2014 Olympics. Very impressive show. Especially the ballet part.

The world being small as usual, on the plane we were seated next to a Russian guy from Vilnius who now lives in the UK for quite a long time. He told us interesting stories about buying houses in the UK. In his last house, the descendants of a noble family who owned the land still retained the hereditary right to mine coal in his basement and keep the proceeds.. and the farmer who bought the land from the nobles retained the hereditary right to run cattle through his land before selling it to developers. We are having it easy in the US :)

We spent the weekend wondering what part of Berlin we are in: formerly belonging to the West or to the East Germany. It was substantially damaged in WWII and complete reconstruction of a former Nazi capital was probably not on top of anyone's agenda. So the city is filled with ultra wide boulevards, with soulless concrete buildings and more than a few of lovely Soviet type block constructions looking like a carbon copy of the other such buildings in the former Soviet block.

The buildings that survived the war look like left over yellow teeth in the smile of a senior with a few too many falsies. That being said the city is full of life.. and center (center?) around the museum island looks like it is going through the major reconstruction with many buildings torn down and cranes working around the clock... at this pace they may finish their work sooner than the cobblestones at the Kingston marketplace... or a bit of facelift along the 20 meter portion of the boardwalk near the bridge. Having first visited Kingston last April (2013) we can attest that construction has at least continued since then.

Back to Berlin, the entire area around the museum island is covered in multi-colored pipes. When we returned home we read up on it and apparently they are there whenever the new construction is being done because Berlin is built on the marshlands and so the ground water constantly have to be pumped out until the new foundation is in place. Now it is a problem for some of the older buildings whose foundations are starting to lose integrity. For those considering going, many historical buildings are already restored, the museums are amazing, and there is rich (and at times awful) history that that provides context to many things in our world today.

Not Nefertiti

But anyway, having settled in the always welcoming Novotel complete with stuffed animals for kids just like the last time, we headed out on Saturday morning in search of the freshly baked pastry... We found many of them at the nearby train station. Let the un-Hungry games begin. Thereafter kids and I headed for the Museum Island while Dan took a cab to go on his business.. We started out by looking at the Greek collection at Altes museum, and then moved on to look at Nefertiti over at Neues museum. Nefertiti was really amazing.. awe-inspiring. Hard to believe that an artifact like this is 3300 years old. You cannot take pictures but there is a bronze copy that blind and other people can feel. Very nice of the museum to provide such an experience.

We wandered through the Roman gallery marveling the differences with Greek sculpture and stopped at the museum coffee shop to complement the cultural fulfillment with some excellent apple strudel. It was very different from the style used at home. The German version featured very thin slices of apple between the many layers of dough, and some heavy cream and caramel custard to balance things out.

Refreshed, we continued out tour at Pergamon Museum. Kids really enjoy stories about Gilgamesh and so welcomed the chance to see more images.

Zombies!

Pergamon went for the kill by reproducing the life sized walls of Uruk complete with beautiful 3-D glazed tiles. It was interesting to read in the link above that Russia has relieved Germany of some of the artifacts in the collection after the war to prevent looting and to help preserve them. Despite the treaty of 2003 Russia is not in sweat to return them. Arguably they don't belong in Germany either.. but then again it is easier to go to Germany to take a look at them than to go to Russia. The other lovely artifact we enjoyed was the Pergamon Altar. It looked like an ancient depiction of the very first Zombie attack.

By lunch we met up with Dan and took a stroll through some modern art by visiting a street market along the museum island. Lots of beautiful works by Georgian painters and some local artists. We continued our walk and saw Brandenburg gates.. rather unimpressive, but the colorful demonstration against the Japanese killing of dolphins made for an interesting experience. We saw Reichstag, the seat of Nazi Germany and presently the seat of Parliament, walked past the Gypsy genocide memorial, over to the Jewish memorial. Our plan was not to cover any of the Holocaust topics during the trip because the kids are too young for the subject matter. Even though Georgia covered WWII in school, she did not know who Nazis or Fascists were.

At first we did not know that we were at the Jewish memorial. We saw a huge square filled with rectangular concrete blocks in parallel rows. They have different heights and at some point when you get too deep in you can get "lost" in this strange forest. Other tourists were playing "hide and "see" and we followed their example trying not to lose the kids. Only when we came out and read the plaque we learned what this place is. The confusion was there by design. It is a kind of cemetery for adult games. Strange..

What's interesting about Germany, is that following the war West Germans had had very introspective way of teaching the next generations about what happened to help prevent Holocaust from happening there in the future. Germany takes this subject very seriously. Following the unification of Germany, that practice was made mandatory in East Germany as well. Berlin is a capital of graffiti, compared to all the other cities we've seen. Yet, we could not see any anti-Semitic writings or Nazi symbols on the walls anywhere. We are not sure whether it is an indication of the current general consciousness of Germans or someone is constantly on the lookout for these and they get removed right away or both. Certainly, not a rare subject for street expression in Warsaw or Paris. But in a light on this bit, could just be a matter of time in Germany as well.

We continued our walk and finished our tourist activities for the day at the Potsdamer Platz. We wanted to walk to the Berlin wall but the day was drawing to its close and we decided to seek the physical replenishment again.

We were not sure we could find a place as good as Hoboken Beergarden easily so opted for Austrian for dinner instead. Jolesch was delightful. We walked nearly 4km to get there.. Berlin is the first ever city we saw that requires taxi drivers to supply car seats and boosters for kids.

Makes every sense considering that taxi should not be less safe for kids than a personal car. But that also means that you cannot necessarily count on hailing a car on the streat that actually has these on board. And public transport required 3 transfers to get there. So the poor kids walked some more to get their dinner. The walk though some new interesting streets was actually pleasant. Fortunately they let us in into the restaurant too. Apparently it is a very popular place, we got lucky. Schnitzel with a barrel of beer followed by a Sachertorte! How many way are there to describe perfection! We did try a few other things and they were excellent as well :)

We started our day on Monday with a different arrangement of  pastries in a desperate attempt to ensure full coverage, and then walked some more until our late afternoon flight. First we saw Mauerpark fleamarket - a different view into how locals spend their time off and also a great perspective into of the past history of the town. Interesting and inspirational. Georgia wanted to draw some of the things we saw right away.

Next we walked over to the last remaining portion of the Berlin wall. Thought provoking. It is our third wall in the last year: Belfast Wall that separated Catholics and Protestants, Ireland and Ireland UK was first one..  Hadrian wall that separated the civilized Roman-controlled world from the barbarians in the North was next. And now this third wall that separated Communism from Socialism. Initially they serve some purpose but ultimately all of them get destroyed to be re-erected elsewhere, but it is sad though to think that humans really have not progressed much from Hadrian times and beyond. Characteristically, the Soviet side was a lot more creative.

We did our final walk through town and got our ride back to the airport. Nice weekend. Have to get some pictures up tomorrow.