Voyages
Tag: Berlin
Travel 2
Can you believe it’s May 1st? April was so long and I think May will be the same as the confinement continues. More travel photos from trips through the years.
Berlin Food and Culture
Berlin has the largest department store in Europe called KaDeWe famous for its food hall. The store is loaded with luxury items which I walked right past as I am not a shopper and I can see them anytime in Paris. Instead we headed to the sixth floor to look at the food hall and then the 7th floor to look at a rather magnificent food court, if you can call it that when they are serving champagne and lobster.
One wall in the food court.
Many desserts were offered.
On our last day, when it started raining, we headed to the Pergamon Museum which has this stunning tiled wall from Babylon. It was in thousands and thousands of pieces and was reassembled in Germany.
There was a copy of this in the metro station near our hotel.
Closeup.
They had ruins from other countries too like this Roman one.
Rather grand.
Seen in Berlin
On a Saturday we went to a great little market called the Boxhagener Platz Food Market. It was small but had the usual flowers, veggies and fruit and meat and fish. There was also a lot of good looking food for immediate for sale.
Did you know brussels sprout grew on a stalk like this. I only know because I attempted to grow them once.
This guy was making toast with a jam topped with melted cheese, a raclette. He is scraping the cheese off a heated slab of cheese here. There was a line for these.
Look at these waffles with, I think, apple sauce on top.
The double decker Oberbaum Bridge. We walked it and found it rather dirty at either end with homeless and druggies, something we hadn’t seen before then. We got a bit lost and ended up in places covered with graffiti.
But we did find this beautiful building.
I thought this was funny. I wonder how many people were in there getting their photo taken?
Around Berlin
We took a city bus tour on the first day to get our bearings of Berlin and then went back on our own to see things that interested us.
Of course we went to see the Brandenburg Gate, now a symbol of the unification of East and West Germany. These four horses were taken to Paris by Napoleon during his Empire movement but returned after his defeat.
Here it is from the front. As you can see, it was packed with people. There was some sort of installation-maybe art?-going on behind it which sort of ruined everyone’s photos.
You can find portions of the Berlin wall all over the city. After Germany was split in half with Russia taking over the Eastern part, hundreds of thousands of Germans crossed into the West, leading to the building of the wall to prevent this. It was there for 30 years and finally came down in 1989 leading to the reunification of Germany and Berlin. What a time that must have been to be there!
We went to Checkpoint Charlie, a very touristy area now, which was the crossing point in Berlin from the west to the east, run by the American army. You can see it depicted in many movies.
This is called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (There were over 3 million of them) containing over 4000 tomb like rectangles.
Berlin Tower
The TV tower in Berlin can be seen all over the city. It was another landmark that we used to get back to our hotel. One day we took a 40 second elevator ride to the top. It’s 203 meters high which is 666 feet.
A look of it from the top of the Berlin Cathedral.
From the bottom. It was built in the 60’s by the Russians and the round part symbolises Sputnik, the famous satellite. It was lit up in red, the Communist color. Now it is a symbol of Berlin.
Inside the round part is a revolving restaurant with great views, as well as a viewing section below.
The shadow of the tower from up above.