Berlin photo dump, Day 1

As usual, living life got in the way of blogging, so I'm resorting to photo dumps.

We took a side trip to Berlin last week. We set out late Tuesday night on the overnight train. If you're looking for an uncomfortable night's non-sleep, then the night train is for you! Here's a photo of E on the jungle gym ladder up to the top bunk. He's climbing up backward, because I'm occupying the rest of the space.

We happily arrived, bleary-eyed, in Berlin at 8am. After dropping our backpacks off at our hotel, we enjoyed a tasty breakfast at Brot & Butter, with some impressively confident sparrows who earned every crumb we fed them.

Berlin is a mix of beautiful old buildings interspersed with newer ones, presumably largely a function of where bombs did and didn't land during WWII. This magnificent Jugendstil door was near the intersection of Herderstrasse and Goethestrasse.

A friend's book auf Deutsch on the first floor at a Hugendubel bookstore. We already have a copy auf Deutsch, so we went for a Berlin guidebook instead.

The Stolpersteine project began in Berlin.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Church, built in the 1890s, was bombed in 1943. It remains as a memorial; a new church, edging into the right in this photo, was built in 1959-63.

The mosaic ceiling inside the remains of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church are stunning.

Wikipedia says the new church has 21,292 stained glass inlays. During the day, from the outside, the church looks gray; at night, it's lit from the inside and glows blue.

The 1962 organ, designed by Karl Schuke, has ~5000 pipes.

The manhole covers let you know you're in Berlin.

We took a bus to Alexanderplatz, then meandered back toward the Museumsinsel. Here's the obligatory photo of the Alexanderplatz TV tower (built 1965-69). We didn't go up.

We took a look inside the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall).

Here's a sign out front, pointing people with disabilities to another entrance. Stefan says there's no story here, as the entrance can't help that it's located on a street called "Jews' Street" (Jüden is middle high German for Juden; the street and the street name date to the 13th century). The sign makes me think of Holocaust atrocities anyway.

Stained glass turkey in the Rotes Rathaus.

Our path took us through the Nikolaiviertel. Here's the Nikolaikirche, where Johann Crüger served as cantor for 40 years.

Lutherans, name that tune.

This impressive dragon is being slaughtered in the Nikolaiviertel by St. George and St. George's impressive steed. The statue was built in 1863 by August Kiss.

A plaque featuring Marx and the revolutionary Volk, across the bridge from the Berliner Dom.

The Dom (Protestant) is large and imposing. We didn't have the energy to wait in line to go inside.

No lines at the Antiquities Museum, so we went inside there instead.

Neigh.

Stefan and I have had a framed postcard of this statue in our bathroom for about 20 years. We thought it was "Young Boy on the John Examining His Athlete's Foot," but it turns out it's "Statue of Boy with Thorn." Boys with thorns in their feet were a popular Hellenistic sculpture motif dating from the 3rd century BCE. The one in the Antiquities Museum is a Roman copy from 150 CE.

Proof that fleas have been around for millennia.

The first time I visited Berlin was in 1991 with Stefan. For me, it was no big deal to walk through the Brandenburg Tor. For him, it was a momentous change. Twenty four years later, it's normal.

The highpoint of our first day in Berlin was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. An info center underground provides cold stats and puts human names and stories to faces, while visually echoing the stelae forms above.