Day 4 - Avenues and memorials of the former DDR
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
5
14
Trip End
Sep 13, 2008
Kladow, Berlin,
Germany
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Rain on the roof woke me again in the dark hours, but when I woke again at about 0630 the sun was shining right through the leaves of the trees in the forest where I parked, and the effect was impressive. The back of the van was lit up in bright orange early light - a much more civilised way to wake up than by means of a radio alarm.
I drove off heading to Lüneburg, but due to shortage of time - plus the fact it was a big place which needed more than a few hours - I didn't stop there. Going through Dannenberg I spotted a street sign, quite modern, saying it was Kaiser Wilhelm Allee. Now I thought all such references to this cheeky chappie had been removed after WW1, so perhaps the old road signs are starting to come back again? Mind you, I don't think I will ever see a Hitler, Goebbels or Goering Strasse in my lifetime. However, I like the idea that Germany is facing up to its history, and rather than feeling it has to apologise every few minutes, it is putting these historically important people forward (including Bismarck and Ludendorf) as people to be proud of. So long as you forget that they were megalomaniacs, of course. Nice red flowers on Kaiser Wilhelm Allee though - I'm sure he would have been suitably impressed. Might even have raised a smile. Then again, perhaps not.
I crossed the river Elbe, the old border with the DDR, and drove into Dömitz. The change from the west was noticeable in the first few minutes. The farms in the west were generally well turned out, tidy and with very attractive brickwork. Those in the east were generally smaller, more grey, more concrete and less brick, and - not to put too fine a point on it - looked like they had seen better days. The town centre had several of its main roads of cobblestones, something I haven't seen in the UK for many years, except for some of the seedier back streets of Manchester. But for all the greyness of the town centre, it was clean, there were lots of bright flowers planted to give it some colour, and not a spot of graaffiti anywhere.
Just outside Dömitz was an interesting memorial in a parking place. They had left one section of the old bridge that went over the Elbe, built in the 1930s, and was subsequently bombed in April 1945. Rather than try to repair it, they just built a new one - the one I drove over. It's interesting that Germany - obviously, really - has such memorials to the war, but keeps them low key. In the UK such memorials will say things like "to our victorious dead" and so on. Here it will say "victims of tyrrany and oppression" meaning the power of the Nazis over the public. All quite sensible really.
Driving in the old DDR you get to see the layout of the roads quite different from the west. In the east the roads between towns are almost always straight, and tree lined, these avenues often lasting for many tens of kms. In the west, most of the trees lining the roads seem to have been pulled down for local businesses. A shame, but there's progress for you.
In Perleberg I parked right in front of the train station, completely free. Where in England can you do that? A photogenic town this, which is my way of saying my camera got some exercise. As well as the cobbled town square with its attractive high gabled-roofed buildings, all the shops except one were of local businesses and owners. The exception was a Vodafone shop, which really didn't fit in with the 18th century carvings over the doorway. I had quite a few people say Hallo to me as I wandered around. They either thought they were honoured I was taking photos of their town. More likely though, they thought they had better be nice to me, in case I wrote anything inflammatory on this blog. But really, the town was gorgeous. The massively tall redbrick cathedral in its square was just what you might expect to see in Spain - very attractive. I discovered a real oddity here, a DDR Geschichtsmuseum (museum of the old East Germany). From what I can make out, the whole DDR thing is now all treated as a bit of a bad joke, and not to be taken too seriously. That's a good way of looking at it, in my view. The museum itself, closed, was housed in a drab grey building, with heavy iron railings on the windows. A bit like the ex-state really.
In the town centre was another oddity, a war memorial and graveyard. Except this wasn't German. It was for the Russian military, so with 1 metre wide stars on the gates, and every gravestone having cyrillic writing (I recognised the word for Major) it showed that the Russians really could get away with murder (quite literally) in the DDR-days. Odd thing is, this would have been torn up and graffitied-upon if in the UK. Here, not a mark on it, and the grass all well tended.
At tea time I reached Berlin at last! I am now at the official campsite south of Spandau, near Kladow. No ballets in sight. It is big, nearly full, and remarkably clean and quiet considering the number of people who must pass through (or live) here. Mr Satnav was trying to get me to drive through a river (I think) so I switched it off and just followed the signs. Easy when you know how.
The loo block here is quite the biggest I have ever seen. I think half of Berlin could use it. A two-storey building, there are umpteen toilets downstairs, and umpteen showers upstairs. Then half way up the stairs a landing leads off into a room just for washing up. There are even trouser presses and an ironing room. It's all a bit different from last night's stop in a forest layby. The campsite is heavily wooded, so you don't really feel you are on the edge of a capital city. A really nice quiet place to return to after a busy day touristing in Berlin. Which is exactly what I am going to start tomorrow, if the rain stops, that is.
