Berlin Travel Day and City Bike Tour

Finally we have made it north of Munich. The long awaited trip to Berlin was a nice one. Who knew that Berlin would treat us to mostly American based food chains for just about every meal? Going in I did not realize how much larger Berlin is than Munich or any other city in Germany, about 3.5 million. The next closest are a couple of cities, including Munich, that are around 1.5 million.

This trip was a hybrid car and train. My thought process was that it took us an hour to get to a local train station (with no good parking option) and all the way to central Munich train station. Then we just have to ride the train back north. So we drove the car to a little city called Ingolstadt. It was only 60 kilometers and about 45 minutes away.

On the way we got to see a lot of the hops fields. They are poles with a metal trellis type design to get the plant to grow up. We are told not to drive around here during harvest time because they just slash this metal wire and it ends up damaging tires.

This worked out pretty well. The tickets were less expensive, parking was great and only cost 8 euros for four days, and we saved about an hour coming and going. The train station was pretty small to so we did not have to deal with central station crowds. I love it when a plan comes together. 

Heading north on the train we got a little bit more of what we have come to know as Bavarian landscape. Very soon it flattened out, not Lubbock flat, but as close as any place can get. Below you can see the windmills that are so common in Texas now. Add some mesquite trees and pump jacks and we might mistake this for home. 

A very uneventful train ride, which is a good thing. We made it to the Potsdamer Platz area of Munich close to the main park and the Brandenburg Gate. We found an apartment for rent in the Sony center. Just below our apartment was a Legoland store and this giraffe. The guy meeting us to give us the keys was late and did not seem to be too concerned about it. We had plans that evening so I was itching to get our stuff dropped off.

We had tickets for the Blue Man Group that evening. We had only snacked on the train so we needed food before the show. The kids spotted a McDonald's so we allowed it for them. With our short time frame Cindy and I chose a hearty burger from the Tony Roma's next door, and it was good.  

So Berlin has a thing with these bears that are "raising the roof". We got pictures of the kids with a few of them. This is a recent addition to the city related to an artistic event from 2001. http://www.buddy-baer.com/en/classic-buddy-bears/events-in-cities/berlin.html

We were stage right on the front row for the show. For those that have not been, there is a possibility of getting wet and/or goo on you so they provide ponchos for the first several rows. Cindy and I have seen them in Vegas twice and Dallas but the kids have not been. I was really hoping to see a little different show but most of it was very similar to what we had seen before. It was still a good time and I am glad the kids got to see it. We highly recommend seeing them if you have the opportunity. The first time is pretty amazing. 

After our successful bike tour of Munich a couple of weeks ago we decided to tour Berlin the same way, this time with the kids. We had to get our day started with some Dunkin Donuts around the corner from our apartment. We had to catch the subway to get to our bike tour meeting point at Alexander Platz. It is an area you can see from all over the city because of a giant observation and television tower (pictured later).

Pictured above is the Rotes Rathaus (town hall) and a fountain with Neptune. I used this picture because of the pink pipeline. I had some thoughts of what it might be but would have never come up with the correct answer. The guide said that everyone asks about the pipelines around the city so now he just talks about it as part of his presentation. Our guide for this trip was an Aussie named Randall. He explained that Berlin is basically built on a swamp. When they do construction of renovation they have to have these pipes to pump out the water on the site into a nearby river. These pipes are a fixture around the city. There is a lot of new construction happening all over. What stuck me about Berlin is how new it is. We have seen nothing but old buildings in the past year. to see everything so new and shiny was a surprise. I realize most of the city was destroyed after WWII, but so was Munich and it still looks old. In this case I thing because of the post was Berlin with the Cold War and the wall the city has been reborn much more recently than other areas.

So far these are some of the oldest building, but we will get to the newer stuff later. This is St. Mary's Church near the fountain above. Inside it was Gothic but very plain.

I liked the picture below because of the new and old together. This is the tower where our tour met. 

Below is another view of the fountain looking towards museum island and the Berlin Cathedral Church.

While waiting for our tour to start we found this fun park close by.

Another view of the tower. 

This is St. Hedwig's Cathedral built to look like The Pantheon in Rome.

We are in Germany so Hitler is always going to come up, especially in Berlin. This was one of those places where you could see in your mind's eye what happened here. From Wiki describing this location..."After 1933, like all German universities, it was affected by the Nazi regime. The rector during this period was Eugen Fischer. It was from the university's library that some 20,000 books by "degenerates" and opponents of the regime were taken to be burned on May 10 of that year in the Opernplatz (now the Bebelplatz) for a demonstration protected by the SA that also featured a speech by Joseph Goebbels. A monument to this can now be found in the center of the square, consisting of a glass panel opening onto an underground white room with empty shelf space for 20,000 volumes and a plaque, bearing an epigraph from an 1820 work by Heinrich Heine: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" ("That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they ultimately burn people")."

You can see a little bit of the empty shelving at the top of the picture in the shadows. It is chilling to read that quote from more than 100 years before Hitler and think about what happened.

Our next stop was the Konzerthaus Berlin that was flanked on either side by sister churches. This was a large open square with oldish looking buildings that we are used to from the Munich area. 

Checkpoint Charlie - You can see some of the new buildings here. I have to admit I retained very little knowledge about the Berlin Wall from my education. To be here and hear about it was pretty cool. The guide did a great job explaining the decisions and divisions that were made. These bricks indicate where the wall once stood dividing the Russian section from the American section.

A little bit further down the road we found another one of the bears and a remaining part of the inner wall.

This picture was a little further down the way

He told us this was the only remaining watch tower from the old wall. 

Above we are riding into the Potsdamer Platz area close to our hotel. Look at all of the new high rise buildings. Below we were in a parking lot above the bunker where Hitler committed suicide. The guide said there was nothing to see down there any longer. There were high rise apartment buildings here built on the east side of the wall to "show" the west how great it was to live there. Pretty interesting that the communists thought their way of doing things was so great that they had to build a wall overnight so people would stop leaving. I just don't get it.

This was pretty cool to see. It is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The picture does not really capture how massive this memorial is. It is a fairly recent addition, but at least the city is acknowledging the history and trying to pay tribute. This guide even referenced Munich here and its failure to memorialize what happened there. It is sad to hear about the controversy when they are trying to do the right thing. People did not like the way it looked or the group they represent is not recognized in this memorial, etc. No matter how big or what design some people are going to gripe about it. In that regard it makes it easier to understand why they choose to just do nothing. Here it seems Berlin has made an effort. Just my opinion on my blog.

Another picture of the memorial showing the surrounding buildings trying to capture the size.

Above is the victory tower that is visible from our hotel room. This has an interesting history related to relations between Germany and France. They don't seem to like each other too much. Below is the house of the German President, who does not have much to do according to the guide. The Chancellor is the much more visible public figure.

For our lunch break we rode through the Tiergarten, a large green area close to our apartment. We stopped at a biergarten and restaurant for lunch. A young Australian couple in our group was on an 8 week tour of Europe. We got to trade stories of places we have been and give tips to each other for places we are going in the future. After lunch we got back on the road. We had decided to not let Katherine have her own bike since we were riding around streets with lots of people and cars. She was either going to be in one of those trailers or a tandem bike thing. It was the safer way to do this, to keep my little girl unharmed. We had been doing good all day with her attached to my bicycle with her own pedals helping to get us down the road. Sometimes when I would try to coast to a stop she would start pedaling and would actually keep us going pretty good. It took a little getting used to at first since we were so long now. I had to give extra room on turns like a long truck. Well, the whole safe thing did not work out as planned. I  plowed her hand into a pole on the path in the park. I did not see the pole until the last second and I was able to miss a head on collision but the turn was not wide enough to keep her handle bar, with her hand on it, from smashing into the pole. It deflected enough to where it did not stop us cold or knock us down, but it was bad enough. She screamed bloody murder and the jumped off of her seat while I was trying to stop. The whole group stopped and we assessed the damage. Within a few second her right ring finger had swollen up around the base and middle knuckle and more swelling behind that on her hand. We were sure there was some serious damage. The guide was ready to call for an ambulance when he saw it. Well, within a minute Katherine was already starting to calm down. We asked her to move her finger and she could, she was ready to move on. At the suggestion of one of our tour mates we taped her ring finger and middle finger together to immobilize it. By the time we got that done she was saying she was good to go. You can imagine how bad I felt about this. I told Cindy I could not believe I did not see that pole. I then blamed the city for making the poles grey on a grey bike path. It was not until a few days later when we got back home that I realized another factor that contributed to this incident. You see, the picture below was taken approximately three second before impact............

It is possible that I was a distracted driver, possible. Now I feel even worse. The good news is that the finger was bruised but it did not bother her after the first night. She is already back to normal and can pretty much ask for and get anything she wants now. Well, she could do that before too, but now it is even easier.

Above and below were shortly after the incident. The group was worried about her, but she was fine. The guide was simply amazed that she was able to keep going. That is my tough girl. Below you can see our rig for the day.

This stop had us out in front of the Reichstag Building. It is the parliament building with a glass dome for 360-degree city views. There is a cool double helix staircase to get to the top of the dome. You can still see bullet holes in the building from WWII. To the left across the street you can partially see the buildings associated with the German government and Chancellery. These three buildings are built on the east and west side of the wall and were made out of lots of glass to represent transparency in the new government. It was funny when the guide pointed out that all of the officials have private entrances and that almost all of the windows had the blinds down and closed.

Here we are standing in Pariser Platz. The guide had lined us up facing the Brandenburg Gate and introduced this place as having a very historical building.........the one above. Where Michael Jackson held his baby over the ledge famously a few years back. We then got to hear about the Brandenburg Gate. You can see most of the family is bundled up. We did not pack well for Berlin. For late June we were sure it was going to be nice. It was very cloudy, windy, and the temperatures were 50's to low 60's. I was not complaining, in fact I was very happy in my shorts and short sleeve shirt.

Our last stop of the day was the area known as Museum Island. There are plenty of roads on and off this area where the Spree River splits and surrounds this land mass. It has several large museums along with the Berlin Cathedral Church.

A couple more of the bears. 

Friday night we kept our American themed culinary experience going with a visit to Pizza Hut with the World Cup matches on television screens at every restaurant. 

Next post will be about our other bike tour and the rest of our Berlin experience.