Berlin, Germany Part 1: Sight-seeing
On Friday March 9th Caroline, Meghan, Farhad and I hopped on an Easy Jet plane and traveled to Berlin, Germany for a long weekend mini-vacation. We packed a lot into 4 days, and so I’m going to break up my summary of the trip a bit since I tend to be pretty long-winded at these things anyway.
Friday
Our flight arrived more or less on time, around 7:30pm. We had arranged to stay with some Franciscans in the city, so we took the S and U-Bahns to the Wilmerdorf area of town. The Franciscans there do parish work at a beautiful church called St. Ludwig, and our quarters was just across the road from the church.
We were greeted by Fr. Hans-Georg who showed us our rooms and took us out to dinner at an (of all things) American-themed 50s-style diner just around the corner.
The food was good, though, and we started off our journey right—with a tower of Berliner Pilsner.
After dinner we popped into an Irish pub for another beer or two and a bit of live music. Here’s Caroline drinking some non-German beer (Newcastle, to be exact, which was just what the doctor ordered).
Saturday
We awoke fairly early on Saturday to begin exploring the city, starting at Potsdamerplatz. Sony has a complex there with movie theaters, restaurants, and a home for the German Film Museum, which was built within the past 10 years.
Nearby is part of the Berlin Wall and information about its history, etc.
I’ll state this for the record: Maurer (my last name) means bricklayer in German. Mauer (without the first “r”) means wall. Hope that clears things up.
We next headed to Alexanderplatz. The Television Tower is one of the city’s easy reference points. We didn’t go up in it (considering the others are basically all from Toronto, it doesn’t really equal the CN Tower), but ate some Currywurst nearby.
As we continued to wander, we passed this amazing fountain. The sculptural detail was gorgeous.
We soon made it to Museum Island, an actual island containing—you guessed it—many of the city’s museums. We also had a chance to check out the impressive Berlin Cathedral.
We decided to go to the Pergamon museum which features a variety of sculptures, etc. from antiquity. The museum gets its name from the Pergamon altar which has been reconstructed inside.
The interior of this place was massive to allow the presentation artifacts from Greece (like this set of columns) and the Near East.
A lot of the statuary was really interesting. This is a dying Amazonian.
My personal favorite was the Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon. Reading about it in Art History couldn’t do justice to walking into a room and having it loom over you.
The museum also has a nice collection of Islamic art. Here, a prayer niche and some tiles.
This room is actually from the house of a wealthy Christian, but is really interesting because the art to either side of the doors depicts biblical stories in a Persian style.
After leaving the museum, we continued down Unter den Linden (a street literally meaning “under the Linden trees”), the main drag to the Brandenburg Gate.
That was a pretty impressive site. One of the things that is really apparent in the city is the massive scale of everything. I suppose that’s the facist influence, but the grandiosity of everything was both pretentious and impressive. The Gate was no exception.
We through the Tiergarten, Berlin’s central park, on the way back home. We passed by the Memorial Church which is an interesting site. The preexisting church was bombed during the war, but has since been complemented by very modern glass additions.
Later on in our trip we passed a chocolate shop offering this depiction of the building.
That evening we went out to Oranienburger Strasse which is a pretty cool artsy bar area. We found (Hooray!) a Mexican restaurant and had a really good meal. It was a great end to a full day.
Mmm… guacamole.
Friday
Our flight arrived more or less on time, around 7:30pm. We had arranged to stay with some Franciscans in the city, so we took the S and U-Bahns to the Wilmerdorf area of town. The Franciscans there do parish work at a beautiful church called St. Ludwig, and our quarters was just across the road from the church.
We were greeted by Fr. Hans-Georg who showed us our rooms and took us out to dinner at an (of all things) American-themed 50s-style diner just around the corner.
The food was good, though, and we started off our journey right—with a tower of Berliner Pilsner.
After dinner we popped into an Irish pub for another beer or two and a bit of live music. Here’s Caroline drinking some non-German beer (Newcastle, to be exact, which was just what the doctor ordered).
Saturday
We awoke fairly early on Saturday to begin exploring the city, starting at Potsdamerplatz. Sony has a complex there with movie theaters, restaurants, and a home for the German Film Museum, which was built within the past 10 years.
Nearby is part of the Berlin Wall and information about its history, etc.
I’ll state this for the record: Maurer (my last name) means bricklayer in German. Mauer (without the first “r”) means wall. Hope that clears things up.
We next headed to Alexanderplatz. The Television Tower is one of the city’s easy reference points. We didn’t go up in it (considering the others are basically all from Toronto, it doesn’t really equal the CN Tower), but ate some Currywurst nearby.
As we continued to wander, we passed this amazing fountain. The sculptural detail was gorgeous.
We soon made it to Museum Island, an actual island containing—you guessed it—many of the city’s museums. We also had a chance to check out the impressive Berlin Cathedral.
We decided to go to the Pergamon museum which features a variety of sculptures, etc. from antiquity. The museum gets its name from the Pergamon altar which has been reconstructed inside.
The interior of this place was massive to allow the presentation artifacts from Greece (like this set of columns) and the Near East.
A lot of the statuary was really interesting. This is a dying Amazonian.
My personal favorite was the Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon. Reading about it in Art History couldn’t do justice to walking into a room and having it loom over you.
The museum also has a nice collection of Islamic art. Here, a prayer niche and some tiles.
This room is actually from the house of a wealthy Christian, but is really interesting because the art to either side of the doors depicts biblical stories in a Persian style.
After leaving the museum, we continued down Unter den Linden (a street literally meaning “under the Linden trees”), the main drag to the Brandenburg Gate.
That was a pretty impressive site. One of the things that is really apparent in the city is the massive scale of everything. I suppose that’s the facist influence, but the grandiosity of everything was both pretentious and impressive. The Gate was no exception.
We through the Tiergarten, Berlin’s central park, on the way back home. We passed by the Memorial Church which is an interesting site. The preexisting church was bombed during the war, but has since been complemented by very modern glass additions.
Later on in our trip we passed a chocolate shop offering this depiction of the building.
That evening we went out to Oranienburger Strasse which is a pretty cool artsy bar area. We found (Hooray!) a Mexican restaurant and had a really good meal. It was a great end to a full day.
Mmm… guacamole.
posted by Aaron at 12:53 PM
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