Posted on by dhoch49

Berlin, Sept. 30, 2018

Today we were off to Berlin, Germany.  It is not on the coast, so we had to board a train that would get us there in about three hours.

Berlin has a population of 3.7 million and is the capital and largest city of Germany.  It gets its name from two German words meaning swamp land.  We started our tour in the East Berlin area., which was the Soviet controlled area after WWII. There is a mix of 1987 architecture and old simply because of the cost to rebuild it.

Our train to Berlin.
There was even coffee and cookies  at each shelf area between seats. Must have been an added Viking feature. We seem to be offered something to eat constantly.
Scene along the River Spree at our first stop. . Berlin has canal boat tours, too.
Here  at Nicholas’ Corner is  St. Nicholas Church which is the oldest church in Berlin dating back to the 1200. Most of Berlin was bombed during WWII, so the church has been rebuilt. It was first a Catholic Church, but is now Lutheran.  All churches here have a museum  section showing photos of the church after the bombings.
Statue called “Mother and Dead Son” is a memorial to victims of the war.

Linden trees line the street up to the Brandenburg Gate (1791) and is one of Berlin’s famous landmarks.  It is the last surviving gate of the fourteen gates of the old city wall. On top of the gate is a statue of a four horse chariot.  After conquering the city, Napoleon took the statue to Paris is 1806, but the Prussians later defeated him and got back the statue.  That’s  when it got its name,  Goddess of Victory.  There are four embassies adjacent to the gate.

Brandenburg Gate-It was blockaded since they were getting ready for a big celebration there on Oct. 2nd.
Goddess of Victory Statue which sits on top of the Brandenburg Gate.
U.S. Embassy to the left of the Brandenburg Gate.

One of our stops was the Allied Museum.  One statue was dedicated to the raisin bombers.  After the war, when Berlin was divided between the Soviet’s East Berlin and the Allies West Berlin, the Soviets put up a blockade around the city and would not allow any supplies into West Berlin.  The Berlin airlift began, where planes 24 hours a day bring supplies from Frankfurt to the 2.2 million residents for 10 months.  Candy was dropped for the children in handkerchief parachutes.  The planes were called the raisin bombers and the effort was known as Uncle Wiggly Wings.

Here was a bear statue   decorated with parachute handkerchiefs commemorating  the Story of Uncle Wiggle Wings.
A watch tower that the Soviet’s manned to control the overflow of people from East Berlin to West Berlin after the wall was erected almost overnight in 1961.

 

A section of the Berlin Wall on display at the Allied Museum. Notice the rounded pipe to make it harder to escape.
A replica of Checkpoint Charlie at the Allied Museum. This was a station controlling the flow of people in and out of East Germany.
Picture along the Spree River with the Reichstag’s dome in the background. The Reichstag is Germany’s historic parliament building topped with a modern dome.
The lone surviving section  of intact wall at the Berlin Wall Memorial. There were two walls with a death strip in the middle.
Here a church put up a memorial to remember the wall. It is the Ten Commandments in German.
On the train ride back to our ship, we were treated to a generous servings of beer, wine or soda.   Our car was full of  very tired, but “happy” travelers!

All in all we had a very long but interesting day in Berlin.   I now have a much better understanding of the division of East and West Germany, the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the wall and Soviet control in 1989.  I too was a very tired, but “happy” traveler by the end of our day in Berlin.

3 Replies to “Berlin, Sept. 30, 2018”

  1. Awesome day!! I love Germany! How many steps are you taking every day? That wall is not very high!! The Mexicans could get across that in o time flat!!! The watch tower looks interesting!! Looking forward to your next blog!!

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