Berlin: So much to do! - Lisa Burke Simon

Our second full day – in again 90 degree weather – was action-packed and, I admit, exhausting. There is so much to see and do in this fantastic and mesmerizing city!

We began the day with breakfast in a cafe, located in the Moabit district, with Jutta’s daughter Milena and Milena’s three-week old sweet baby Elior. Elior kindly slept the whole two hours so the adults could chat – so kind of him!

Next, we went to the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauerstraße. This is where I had my “aha” moment! After so many discussions about the wall, West Germany vs. East Germany, West Berlin vs. East Berlin…everything clicked and came together at this Memorial. It was here that I found a map of the country divided into four sectors – and the city of Berlin, located as a small dot in the northeastern part of East Germany, also divided into four sectors. It was also here that I saw that the wall was not ONE wall but rather TWO walls with a frontier between them.

Other sights included Prenzlauer Berg, the neighborhood where Jutta’s husband Hans-Juergen lived before fleeing, at age 20, from East Germany into West Germany; Käthe Kollwitz Platz with powerful statues created by this strong woman; Hans-Jeurgen’s old neighborhood Wörtherstraße; and the Old Synagogue (open only on Shabbat and Jewish holidays) on Ryckestraße.

This was all before lunch! We had a delicious lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant Umami near an old brick water tower.

Additional locations were a beer plant converted to a cultural center, Kulturbrauerei; the Hotel Orderberger, which used to be a public bath location where Hans-Juergen would bathe weekly since they didn’t have facilities in their apartment; Hackesche Höfe, a complex of buildings and courtyards – now apartments and stores – which used to house a Jewish community; the home of the first female rabbi in the world, Regina Jonas; the new synagogue on Oranienburger Straße where the Center for Judaism (Center Judaicum) now resides; and Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), a former gate into the city.

Tired yet? I am!

We then moved onto another emotional sight, the Holocaust Memorial (aka, “The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe). This memorial consists of 2,711 concrete rectangular slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. I read nothing about the memorial before experiencing it, so I developed my own ideas about the meaning behind the site based on what I saw, felt, and heard. I sensed I could get lost…I felt visually and physically disoriented…I heard a scared young girl calling for her mother… Relating this to the Holocaust, I could only imagine how lost, disoriented, and scared they felt. It was a truly powerful experience.

From the memorial, we walked down the street to the Parliament (Reichstag) and onto a viewing area across the Spree River where people could sit to watch a water and light show later in the evening. We, instead, grabbed a beverage and viewed the white cross memorial dedicated to those who died fleeing from East Germany. Feeling only slightly refreshed, we took a look at the fountains near Kanzleramt where the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, lives.

Hungry and thirsty? Yep!

Dinner that night: pizza! And beer. And two Ramazzotis (Italian liquor). 🙂