The Bottomleys' Trip to Berlin - 2019: October 2019

This is the record of Sue Anne and Bruce’s September 2019 visit to Berlin. We have a long history with the city, dating back to the Cold War era when it was isolated within East Germany, and then further split in two by the Wall. We had been back twice since the Wall came down and Germany was reunited, and this was trip #3. There surely will be more. We rejoice in the progress that has been made in the 30 years post-Wall, and in the resilient and joyful spirit of the Berliners. Berlin bleibt doch Berlin!

We posted day by day on the blog, so it is arranged here in reverse chronological order — most recent first. To read it in the customary beginning to end order, click here to get to the first entry, and then work your way back up via the Newer Posts link at the bottom of each page. Or click on the desired post in the list over on the right side of the page.

As has been our practice on previous trips, we wrapped the blog up with a dissertation of the impressions we gained throughout the trip. That’s the next post below here. Click Older Posts to get there. We might keep adding on to that one for a while as new thoughts come to mind.

As always, Sue Anne came well equipped with sketchbooks and drawing supplies. You can view her artistic impressions of the trip on her art blog.

Come share our trip with us!

We’ve tried to end up each of our travel blogs with a summary of impressions we gained from the trip. We look for insights that transcend one or two days’ activity, developed during our total immersion in the area or only realized after we got home.

As always when we visit a place where we’ve been before, there will be a lot of compare and contrast. Add to this the fact that we’ve been around a good bit longer, had lots of other experiences along the way, and easily could find ourselves tuning in on different aspects of things than we had on earlier visits to the same area.

If history is any predictor, we will be getting back to this post a few times to incorporate new thoughts that just occurred to us. These will be just mixed in with the existing impressions and not otherwise highlighted, but we will try to keep up a brief list here of the topics that we’ve added. Check in from time to time and see what might be new.

OK, what impressions did we bring back from this, our third post-Wall visit to Berlin?

The center of activity is indeed moving back toward the original center of town. The Ku-Damm is still the Ku-Damm, but ever more of the action appears to have moved to Alexanderplatz and nearby areas in the former East Berlin.

Almost everybody is bilingual, German and English. As are lots of signs. Bruce’s ‘practical German’, developed in many Gasthaus, restaurant, and commercial experiences over a span of more than 50 years, is no longer vital. Indeed, starting out such a conversation in German often leads the other party to assume that they are speaking with somebody totally fluent. We now start our conversations in English, and usually get a corresponding response. But Bruce quite successfully would lapse into short utterances in German when something at the breakfast buffet had run out and we were in familiar territory, known to the hotel staff. “Wir brauchen Lachs.” for example. Or “Gibts kein Kaffee.” But we still like seeing the menus in German, as the English translations are often just too simplistic. ‘Sauerbraten nach Schwäbischer Art’ does not simply translate to ‘pot roast’, as we once saw on a menu elsewhere.

Credit cards are accepted almost everywhere. Is this a big deal? It sure used to be. Ah, the long ago memories of travelers checks and a visit to the American Express shop to turn them into local currency. And currency exchange shops that could handle all possible swaps from one country’s currency to another’s. At a cost. It took quite a while for credit cards to penetrate the system in Germany, but they are pretty much there by now. In the big cities anyway.

The Euro (€) is down from its 2008 peak of over $1.50, and in a comfortable range of about $1.10. So you don’t even have to do much mental math to figure out the prices. Unless you’re talking something really big, a Euro and a Dollar are the same thing. Adding ten percent is no big deal. Concentrate on the experience, and don’t lose sleep over the exchange rate. And, dollars or Euros, we found prices all to be quite reasonable.

We were super happy with our hotel, Hommage à Magritte at Grolmanstraße 32, a half block off of the Ku-Damm. Great location, quiet neighborhood, family owned and operated (nice people), good price, tasty breakfast buffet included. It’s a small place, with 18 rooms on just one floor, so reserve early. We did hear from another guest that the hallway noise was disturbing, mostly involving people trundling suitcases past their doorway. We lived in a higher numbered room and never encountered this, and it wouldn’t strike us as something that would happen too very frequently given the size of the place.

The public transit system is great. You can travel anywhere within the outer ring for 2.80 Euros, just over $3. Subway, elevated, bus – it’s all the same. Mix and match. No gates, no turnstiles. Dart out for a quick drink along the way if you wish. Just go for it! You do have to finish the trip in 2 hours and you can’t reverse directions, but that’s not hard to deal with. Here’s how the system works:

    - Buy a ticket at one of the machines in the station or at a major bus stop. The machine works in German or English, as do most other interactive devices throughout town. Just choose the icon up in the corner. And it works with credit cards. You don’t have to use the ticket right away, as it doesn’t start to expire till you get to the next step below. Buy it the night before if you don’t want to lose any time getting to the airport in the morning. That’s what we did.

    - Stick the ticket in the little yellow canceling machine when you’re ready to go. Be sure to wait till you hear the click. This time-stamps it and starts the clock on the 2 hours. Keep it with you — this is essential! The place works on the honor system, but with a strong penalty for cheating. Only occasionally will you be challenged (We never saw this happen.), but the penalties for failure to cancel the ticket are big. There is no sympathy for confused tourists.

    - There’s a price break for buying 4 tickets, which is good for a couple planning to go somewhere and then come back. And if you plan to take more than 3 separate trips in the day, buy a day pass.

    - If you should start your trip at Savignyplatz, you will no doubt encounter the nice old lady whose mission in life is to help people figure out the system. She is there on her own, and she does appreciate a modest tip after she helps you get through the transaction.

Jet lag and an inability to quickly adapt to the time zone was a problem to both of us on this trip. It comes with age?

Berlin is just overwhelmed with fascinating museums. We learned a lot at every one we went to. Lots more await us.

Currywurst is everywhere!

Graffiti is everywhere. As is genuine mural art, all over the place.

You can buy a half liter can (approximately a US pint) of some of the local brews for only 69c (Euro cents, about 76¢ US) at the Edeka supermarket. It’s not refrigerated, but it was still acceptably cool.

We were sad to see that the building which housed The Story of Berlin had been torn down. You can read about the place in our 2000 and 2013 blogs. It was an amazing warren of interconnected rooms, built into the innards of a big piece of the block, taking you through the history of Berlin in a very well documented and illustrated fashion. An emotional experience. It has apparently relocated to a place closer to the heart of the city, but we weren’t able to get there on this trip. Next time!

Ethnic eating opportunities abound, especially Turkish and Italian. Sometimes, Turkish and eastern Mediterranean food is called ‘oriental’.

We haven’t written a new blog in quite a while, and we find that Blogger had made a number of ‘improvements’ that we had to figure out and re-improve. Their classic Simple Template ain’t so simple any more. In their attempt to make it phone friendly, they introduced a number of side effects that really messed up the alignment of pictures and text when seen on a PC or a laptop. The engineer in the house has gotten to the root of some of these and made appropriate HTML changes down underneath, but others are still with us.

Coming up on Thursday, October 3 – the Day of German Unity, Tag der Deutschen Einheit. A national holiday, celebrating the reunification of the two parts of the country that were split apart in the aftermath of World War II, with Berlin as its capital. There will be lots of action all over the place. See our 2013 blog’s description of our experience with a group of Turkish-German girls celebrating that day in Goslar. And by the time we got to Berlin a few days later, the celebration was still alive.

Back to Berlin, we’ve already seen the portapotties being set out at the likely celebration locations. (Unfortunately locked tight until then.) The date chosen for the holiday is that of the signing of the formal agreements that brought the country back together in 1990. Yes, there will also be big celebrations in Berlin on November 9th, the 30th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, but that date was rejected as the date for the national holiday due to an unfortunate coincidence with the date of Kristallnacht, an early attack on the Jewish population by the Nazis. So, two reasons to celebrate within a month of each other! But do not forget Kristallnacht.

Unification is an important term in German history. It has been celebrated on different dates over time and with different memorials, depending on what it meant back then. We saw a unification memorial near the Rhine on our 2013 visit, but we never figured out what the story was. The country started out as an amalgam of kingdoms, duchies, and the like. Over time they came together, though regional accents and terminology still exist. And favorite food items and flavors of Bier. It’s Pils in Berlin, and Helles in Munich. Then they were torn apart, put back together, and so forth. We feel good about the stability of the current situation.

Lift a glass in celebration and commemoration. Pils or Helles, your choice. Einheit!

The Bottomleys' Trip to Berlin - 2019

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Introduction

Impressions

Hotel Hommage à Magritte

Berlin Bleibt Doch Berlin

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Friday, September 26