This was a boring travel day. The most interesting thing that happened was that I thought I had screwed up my train reservation, but it turns out I had just mixed it up with a previous train reservation I had used, and the proper one was hiding in my bag. I spent the day reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman on my tablet. It was absorbing and I moved on from The Golden Compass (Book 1) to The Subtle Knife (Book 2), but I occasionally took breaks to window watch.
During my fifth hour of travel, I saw the first lake I had seen in days! There was so much farmland it reminded me of driving through south-western Ontario, except for the rows of crops planted on the sides of hills so steep that a combine would surely tip over during harvest. I think now that these might have been hops plants. The forests were incredibly and uniquely beautiful and if it weren't for them, and the architecture in villages we passed, you would hardly know you were outside of Canada.
Once I arrived in Berlin, I managed to ask someone "Vor ist die S-bahn?" (Where is the S-bahn?") which I nicknamed the SkyWay in my head, and managed to book myself a ticket.
The Hauptbanhof (Central Station) was impressive, and so was the view from the SkyTrain to Alexanderplatz. It criss-crossed the river, which was boarded on either side by impressive buildings in various architectural styles, and kept up a neat pace as it weaved in and out of those buildings to our destination. Here, I also managed to find the right U-bahn (Untergrund-bahn, which is pretty self-exlanatory) train and found my way to the hostel without much effort. The Pfefferbett hostel was on the site of a former brewery, tucked into the corner of a chic mini-neighbourhood consisting of restaurants and music stages.
I checked in and noticed that the bar offered halloumi burgers, so I dined alone and retreated to my room to shower and keep reading. My one roommate was a friendly gentleman from Colombia who was in Berlin for vacation and was visiting several other major cities in Europe during his stay, but we didn't make plans to go out, and after I was saturated by the novel I went to sleep.
July 9, 2016:
One of my travel brochures recommended Fat Tire Tours and after feeling like I'd wasted a perfectly good night out, I convinced myself to do something. Someone had done a bike tour in Munich and said it was fantastic, so I thought this would be a good way to get an overview of the city. I also relished the opportunity to get some exercise that wasn't walking.
The tour met at Alexanderplatz, where the TV Tower looms about a beautiful square with fountains, a marketplace, St. Mary's Church, and the Red Town Hall. As a whole group, we were given a brief history of how Berlin came to be a major city in Germany.
It used to be all swampland, and the first people to settle it were the pagans in the 12th century, who called it "berl" which meant "swamp". The Romans hadn't really been interested in the area, and ignored it until Albert the Bear decided the pagans should be converted to Christianity in 1157. The emblem of modern day Berlin is the bear, given to them by Albert the Bear. Eventually, Berlin became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor, is considered by some to be the father of Germany may have provoked an attack by the French in order to unite the Northern German Federation (including the Kingdom of Prussia) with the southern states in Germany, like Bavaria. The Franco-Prussian war in 1870 succeeded in doing this. I learned that Germany is a younger country than the United States.
Our tour guide, Neil, was awesome. He explained to us that during the Cold War the Soviets had built the TV Tower as a way to show Western Europe that they were capable of technological feats, but they had to quietly sneak two Swedish engineers across the Berlin Wall to help the finish the tower because they couldn't get it to work. He also made the first joke of the day about German creativity. The Red Town Hall is literally a red Town Hall building. The TV Tower is literally a TV Tower. Mentally, I started a game of "#GermansNameThings" after the Twitter hashtag inspired by BoatyMcBoatface, and the "#InternetNamesAnimals" phenomenon.
One of our first stops was Bebelplatz which is framed by St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Humboldt University (one of the best respected universities in Europe), and the Opera House. Next to St. Hedwig's Cathedral is notable because it is a Catholic cathedral is a predominantly protestant city. Next to it is an alley called "Hinter der Katholischen Kirche" which literally means Behind the Catholic Church #GermansNameThings.
In the centre of the square is a glass panel, and when you look down into it, there are empty bookshelves that seem to be extending into the ground. This is the Book Burning Memorial. Apparently, the shelves would hold the 20 000 books that were burned by students when they were called to do so by the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. "The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism. These included books written by Jewish, [homosexual,] pacifist, classical liberal, anarchist, socialist, and communist authors, among others." These included the works of Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and many other authors. Our guide told us that German scientists were banned from using any of the theories of these authors in their own research, which may have saved the world from the nuclear warfare. The Nazis attempting to develop nuclear weapons were not allowed to use Albert Einstein's theories. Einstein had been a professor at Humboldt University a year prior to the book burnings, but he left Germany when the Nazis started to rise to power.
In the square, there is also a plaque with a quote written in 1820 by one of the persecuted authors, Heinrich Heine, which reads: "“Where books are burned in the end people will burn.”[4] He wrote it about the Spanish Inquisition in his play Almansor. The Spanish burned Jewish writings, and Heine was noticing similar nationalistic, antisemitic attitudes in his peers following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. He may as well have predicted the Nazi Final Solution.
We also learned that Hitler was a huge fan of opera, especially Wagner, and that when the Opera House was bombed early on in WWII, it was repaired immediately so that Hitler could continue to attend. He abhorred jazz music, which is his loss.
We passed through the French quarter, which Neil explained to us was the result of Frederick William (the "Great Elector")'s policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. In 1685, he invited persecuted French Protestants (the Calvinist Huguenots) when they were exiled from France by Louis XIV and 6000 of the 15 000 who came to Germany settled in Berlin.
These buildings were reconstructed from their plans by the Soviets after the end of WWII, and the walls were burned to make them look older. One of the only original things about buildings in Berlin are the statues which Hitler had removed prior to the war. They were sunk in lakes or hidden in parks under camouflage. On the Konzerthaus (#GermansNameThings), you can see bullet holes in some of the columns that survived the Allied bombings.
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