Bonn was the capital of West Germany during the cold war
years and East Berlin was the capital of East Germany. West Berlin was shared by the Brits, French
and Americans but was completely landlocked within East Germany. The Russians controlled all of East
Berlin. After the fall of the wall the
two Germanies were reunited with Berlin becoming the new capital of the
restored country.
Our stop on Tauentzienstrasse makes it seem like we are
“downtown” but as we are finding there are a lot of “downtowns.” Pat has a full memory card in her camera and
there is an electronic store across the street.
The person in the camera department is a pretty good English speaker
(which we always find amazing) and wonders how old the camera is. He is skeptical when Pat tells him two years
because there is a 256K memory card inside—prehistoric. Anyway she gets loaded up with something from
this millennium and a couple new batteries to make it all work.
We take a fun stroll through this bustling area and wind up
in an open plaza with lots of food stands.
Pat has heard about the ubiquitous “Curry Wurst”—there are stands everywhere—and
she and John go for it. Or at least John
does while Pat bails out and has a Brat.
Coward. It is an acquired taste
and John is happy to check it off the list.
Mary has prowled all the food stands finding nothing of
interest, meaning that she hasn’t found a pretzel stand. We continue to mill around and eventually go
back to a bakery/sandwich shop we saw earlier where Mary finds a fresh baked
pretzel, Pat finds a pastry and John gets a real sandwich. All are delicious and we remember the name of
the place for future reference—Kamp’s.
We catch the next bus for the hop-on portion of the
trip. It takes us past several of the
cold war sites of interest which we will revisit tomorrow and we eventually
wind up back at Alexanderplatz. There is
a Radisson Park Inn, the same brand as in Tallinn, with a 40th floor
observation deck for a few euros. We go
up and get a couple beers to take in the sights and are starting to piece
together some understanding of the geography.
It is late afternoon as we stroll the long way around
Alexanderplatz which is a huge area of shopping, festivals, and general hanging
out. They are setting up for the local
version of Oktoberfest which begins on Friday, the day we leave. The
Oktoberfest Village takes up a pretty large area but a small fraction of the
Platz—why oh why can’t our city fathers and mothers (Minneapolis!!) understand
the value of public celebrations where good behavior eliminates bad
behavior. Yes, we are talking about
Nicollet Mall. They need to get out more.
We allocate 40 minutes to R&R before meeting again at
6:30 for an apartment cocktail and then going to dinner. There is a much ballyhood historic German pub
(Zum Nussbaum) in the Nickolai district right across the River Spree from
us. Every table is taken when we arrive
which means we go to our second choice, Georgbrau in the next block. John has the big time Schweinhaxe (pork hock)
with kraut and fried potatoes while the ladies enjoy the Bratwurst plate with
kraut and a different kind of potato.
Plenty of beer to go around.
We are early to bed these days so no hanging out late. The beds are perfect for a little reading
before lights out.
What did we learn today? Whatever you break you have to fix
which is why Berlin continues to reinvent itself 70 years after the end of
WWII.
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