So, we're in Prague - Alice has to go back to Australia from Munich in about a week, where to next? I met a couple from Berlin in the back of a bus in Patagonia in February this year, so why not go and visit, as it's only 350kms away.
I had trecked 5 days in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and on the bus back to Calafate in Argentina I started talking to Oliver, who was reading a book called 'The Time of Gifts' by Patrick Leigh Fermor. I asked him what it was about (the author's journey across Europe from Holland to Hungary as an 18 year-old in 1933 - a second book 'Between the woods and the water' covers from Hungary to the Iron Gate, a gorge on the Danube River, forming part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania.), then we admired the fantastic cloud formations in the Patagonian skies and chatted for several hours. I said goodbye to Petra and Oliver, then ran into them again at the airport, where my flight was delayed by several hours.
They gave me their email address so here I am about to pop up on their doorstep.
I'm looking forward to meeting them again and we organise to meet the next day. We have arrived in the afternoon and by the time we get to our hotel, unpack and relax a bit it's evening, so we go for a little walk around the neighbourhood. Just near us it's a bit down at heel and grungy but we head for Alexanderplatz, one of the main city squares and come across the Alexa shopping centre. We go in and it's modern and upmarket and full of well-dressed and prosperous looking people, so it's a bit of a shock to the system after having only left Prague that morning. We even go to the food court for a light meal, as we can't be bothered going any further.
Next morning Oliver comes to our hostel in East Berlin, a huge building built during the communist era, which has been given a few coats of paint and some additional amenities and turned into a hotel and hostel - we are in the 'upmarket' hotel part (pardon the irony).
Breakfast in the morning comprises handing over a token, standing in a long queue, getting a tray, then working your way around this very crowded room and filling your tray with your selected breakfast items, which include muesli, breads, cheeses, various types of smoked meats, pig paste (yes, I kid you not), eggs, toast and jam, etc. After eating your breakfast you put the leftovers in the bin, stack your dirty dishes and cutlery in separate platic containers and put the trays in their place, then you are allowed to go. It's all very school camp, except we are backpackers, families, elderly people travelling on the cheap, etc.
It's wonderful having locals show you around - Oliver has organised to take us to a number of places that not many tourists may go to or know about and therefore give us a bit of an insider's view. He picks us up in Petra's mother's car and takes us to Treptower Park - this park is a Soviet War memorial, a vast green area peopled with monuments, statues, murals, etc - 5000 Soviets soldiers from the Battle of Berlin are buried here. We switch to train and bus and visit some bohemian and Turkish neighbourhoods, stroll through a mainly Turkish market eating dried fruits (cranberries, aloe vera, cumquats, jackfruit, etc), climb up a hill with a great view of the city, then drive out to their house near Potsdam, about 20-30kms away.
Petra and Oliver live in a beautiful leafy green area in a lovely apartment. They are both keen outdoor people and go running every day, bicycling, camping and trekking often, and are vegaquarians like Alice, to boot. In this company I'm the odd one out, what with all the strange things I've eaten, my late hours, etc. We have a light snack of Prosecco sparkling wine and delicious chocolate for lunch (why not?) then we go on a tour of Potsdam and environs.
We go to Belvedere (beautiful view in Italian), a lovely building modelled on the Villa Medici in Rome, set on a hilltop which gives great views all the way to Berlin, stroll through Potsdam (the seat of the Prussian Kings until 1918), and an area nearby where there are the remains of a Russian colony built in the 19th century, visit the parks and palaces of Sansouci (without cares in French), the summer palace of Frederick the Great. It is a great day, the morning in the grit and bustle of Berlin, and the afternoon walking kilometres around palaces and vast parks. Before we leave Sansouci Petra says we must visit her favourite spot, which remains a mystery until we reach the statue of Mars firing off an arrow, and when we come around the front we see his rather large and well-formed masculinity, and Oliver asks me with a twinkle in his eye if I feel somewhat inadequate.
We finish up the day at a restaurant in Berlin called the Austria, where the 3 vegaquarians have a vegetarian specialty and I have deer steak with mushrooms. At the next table to us are 3 young men eating enormous schnitzels (more than 30cms wide) and drinking beer.
Berlin is vast and there are numerous things to see and do and the next couple of days we try and pack in as much as possible. We go and find the parts of the wall still standing, go to Checkpoint Charlie and its Museum, the Jewish Museum (some fantastic architecture and a very moving experience) including seeing an exhibition on Charlotte Salomon (who I had never heard of), which featured her autobiographical series of paintings 'Life? or Theatre?', consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1940 and 1942 - she was killed in a death camp in 1943, the Modern Art Museum, with a vast number of art installations, and finally the Pergamon Museum, which features the Pergamon altar and Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon along with many other ancient middle eastern exhibits. Berlin has a vast number of museums and galleries (many of them are concentrated in an area called Museum Island) and we have no hope of doing justice to them in the time we are there, but are very happy with what we have seen.
Petra and Oliver meet us the evening we are leaving for Munich and we take a tour through the famous Reichstag building, which houses the German Parliament, the Bundestag. The Reichstag was reconstructed in 1999 after having been burned during Hitler's early years and bombed dring WW2. Within the 19th century shell there is an extremely modern and impressive complex. We finish the evening with another vegetarian meal then Petra and Oliver see us off at the station, with a lovely gift of French wine, chocolates and 2 apples from their apple tree. How good is that?
We have thoroughly enjoyed our rather short, but full time in Berlin, and Petra and Oliver's companionship and generosity has helped us to really get the most out of our time there. If only I could meet more people like them in the backs of buses.
Berlin is a vast sprawling city and does not immediately impress in the way many other historical European cities do - it is a bit like London, not in architecture, but in the fact that it was a collection of towns which joined up to become a city, therefore there is no real city centre as for example Melbourne, and important buildings, plazas, etc are spread out, and there is that similar feeling of of empire and monumentality - also like London it is the sort of place that you need to live in for a while and get to know to really appreciate.
It is important to understand how badly Berlin was damaged during WW2, then there were 50 years of communism, and now it is the capital of a united Germany, so you find an incredible mix - buildings from before the 20th century, buildings from the period of the 2 world wars, communist era buildings - many now renovated and re-used (like our hotel), and some impressive modern architecture. In a short time you can see grungy and run-down areas, old world elegance, cosmopolitan, cutting edge modern, etc. There is an abundance of public art in the streets and platzes.
I almost forgot to mention I went to a milonga one night (Alice decided to have an early night so went by myself), adding one more city where I have danced tango. I have been getting to bed relatively early for me so it's great to get back around 3.30am after several hours of dancing.
So, we board the train one Sunday night, bound for Munich.
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