Berlin: Take Two

Brennan was also heading to Berlin on his travels and I was really excited to go back again and show him the city. I also had the opportunity to visit my host mom again and had a lovely time catching up with her. After meeting with her, I took a walk around my old neighborhood and appreciated being back in what had become such a familiar place.

I arrived a day earlier than Brennan and took advantage of the lovely weather to visit Wannsee, a large lake south of the city, my first day there. I had intended to visit back in February, but the timing and weather never worked out.

After a lovely picnic lunch on the lake shore, I visited the Wannsee Conference House, the lakeside vacation home where Nazi officials planned the Final Solution. While much of the information in the museum wasn't new, the sharp contrast between the beautifully serene and picturesque manor house and the genocide that was planned in that place was horrifically striking. 

The trip was a much more enjoyable experience climatically in June than our two winter months there. In particular, the contrast between my winter visit to the East Side Gallery (which ended with us running to the nearby train station to buy warm drinks and regain feeling in our fingers) and this one is striking.

All the fountains seemed particularly different. Best example of this: Neptune’s Fountain in front of the Rathaus. It’s a dynamic feature of the square with the water running as opposed to the slightly out of place collection of aquatic statuary it seems to be in winter.

Once Brennan arrived, I showed him the major sights. It was a new experience to go back to a place I've lived after moving away. Since I live (in some sense of that word) in both Moorhead and St. Paul, I've never been in a position to do that before. 

This statue (I don’t know if it appeared earlier) is of Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. Amusingly, after taking his photo with, Brennan asked me if I also wanted a political career killing photo of me with the statue.

To continue the socialism theme, here we are living the life of your everyday East German citizen.

Well, actually in the latter photo, I’m living the life of the political elite, since I’m driving a Volvo station wagon instead of a Trabi.

One of the most interesting parts of our trip for me was visiting the Bernauer Straße Wall memorial again. Although I had been there as part of the bike tour along the wall, Brennan and I took the time to read most of the free and abundant information about the wall there, much of which was new to me.

This shows the location of a tunnel built under the ground between the east and west. Through this specific tunnel, 56 people successfully escaped to the west.

This cross is from the Church of Reconciliation which stood in the no man’s land between the two sides. Although most of the parishioners were from the West, the church building and pastor lived on the East side. After the wall divided the congregations’ members, the church became a symbol for the tragedy of Germany’s division. Eventually, the DDR blew up the church as it interfered with their increasing security measures on the border.

Both being political science majors, we also took a tour of the Reichstag. It was a repeat visit for me, but that was nice since I had missed much of the information during my earlier German tour.

We were also lucky enough to be in Berlin on the night of Germany’s first game in the Euro Cup against Portugal.  Seeing the match in front of the Brandenburg Gate was a lot of fun, although I could have skipped being showered by beer by the guy behind me after the goal. Overall, I'm so glad I got to go back to Berlin. 

Budapest

I took advantage of only having class a few days a week in June to join Brennan on some of his travels. We headed to Budapest together first. Budapest is another beautiful city and I really wished I had been able to stay longer than two days. Also, this visit really just reaffirmed how much I want to travel more in Eastern Europe. 

Both of us were a bit tired of visiting museums, so we mostly just walked around the city and looked at the major sites.  We started by heading up the hill to the castle complex, which includes a variety of museums and the residence of the president.

There’s a funicular railway going up and down the hill. We did end up riding it near the end of our trip to use up our extra money. As a brief side note, the exchange rate there is 300 forint per Euro which was definitely the most challenging currency adjustment I’ve had to make.

As would be expected, there’s a great view of the city from the castle hill.

Also on the hill is Matthias Church which has a beautiful tiled roof.

There’s also the Fisherman’s Bastion, a terrace on the edge of the castle complex.

By far, my favorite building in Budapest is the Hungarian Parliament Building. Built in a Neo-Gothic style, it’s absolutely gorgeous and impressively large. The crème color of the stone is beautifully rich at night when the building is lighted. The photo really doesn’t do it justice.

Our second day, we went into the part of the building open to the public, which houses the Hungarian crown jewels. The inside is equally impressive.

In the evening, we visited a natural spring bath. Inside, there’s a long line of small pools with differing temperatures ranging from numbingly cold to painfully hot.  There was also by far the hottest sauna I’ve ever been in at 90° C. It was physically painful to stand in there for more than a few seconds so we just walked through briefly. Outside, there were both regular pools and another large natural spring pool. It was a wonderfully relaxing and fun way to spend an evening.

We briefly walked through the inside of the Basilica during mass our second day (a Sunday) which was a bit awkward (I hadn’t visited a church as a tourist during a service before).

We spent most of the rest of our time walking along the Danube, enjoying the local cuisine (goulash is so delicious), and appreciating Budapest’s architecture.

I think this Holocaust memorial along the Danube is beautifully simplistic and it certainly had an impact on me, particularly after my experience in Poland.