We flew into Berlin on Lufthansa and were surprised that the airport was a bit on the smaller side, for a city with such a grand history.
Our first day began with a 15-minute walk along the Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate, located in the Parisiner Platz.
More than any other object in the city, this gate symbolises Berlin.
When we spotted it, clouds that seemed to be breaking out in an overture framed it.
The gate is patterned after an entrance at the Acropolis in Athens. The Quadriga at the top of the gate had been taken by Napoleon to Paris as a trophy after his conquest of Berlin in 1806, which followed his celebrated victory at Jena.
After his defeat in 1815 at Waterloo, the victorious Germans led by Field Marshal von Blucher brought it back to Berlin.
Nearby was the Reichstag, which was once again the seat of the Berlin parliament. The glass dome at the top, the work of world-renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster, gave it a modern look.
The next day, we headed to the museum island. The island was the location for numerous world-class museums and art galleries. The Pergamon Museum was on the list for the day. The displays are very nicely presented and the artwork is truly awesome.
The entire altar from the ancient Greek town of Pergamon is housed there, as is the imposing gate of Ishtar from Babylon.
And there are numerous artefacts from the Greek and Assyrian civilisations.
Some cannot be found in any other museum in the world.
Suitably enriched with ancient history, we emerged from the museum only to find that a hard rain was falling, threatening to soak us from head to toe.
So it was difficult to pass up on the offer being extended by a young man in a plastic-covered bike taxi. He was a Berliner married to an English woman.
We went through the cradle of Berlin, which was a nice cluster of shops and restaurants around the old St Nikolai church, past the very large square which used to be the site of the Palace of the Prussians until it was torn down by the East Germans, through the Gendarmen Markt Plaza, with its two churches and culture house, and on to Checkpoint Charlie of Cold War fame.
The entire altar from the ancient Greek town of Pergamon is housed in Berlin, as is the imposing gate of Ishtar from Babylon. And there are numerous artefacts from the Greek and Assyrian civilisations
The guide observed that many of the Prussian monuments that had been destroyed by the East Germans were now being rebuilt to rematch the originals. So that led to the inevitable question: “Would a memorial ever be built for Hitler?”
He said, “No.”
Then, to erase even the trace of a doubt from my mind, added, “It is unthinkable.”
To calm him down, I asked him if he had seen the film ‘Downfall’, and he said no. But he added that the actor who played Hitler is Germany’s best.
The next day we toured the New Museum, which houses within it the incredibly rich Egyptian Museum.
All the museums on the island are a treat to behold, even from the outside, but this one truly is the jewel.
The precious collections are generously spaced so you can spend some quality time with them without being crushed by crowds.
The original bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti is the grand treasure in this museum but there are numerous other objects that capture your attention: mummies, mummy cases and statues, some housed in caves and caverns which evoke the experience of being entombed, and large paintings that transport you to Luxor.
Surprisingly, most of the objects are not housed in cases and you get a distinct sense of being in ancient Egypt as you look at them.
The Berlin cathedral, the Dom, is located nearby.
It is an architectural masterpiece.
The crypt houses the remains of Prussian royalty including several of the Kaisers.
The crowns placed at the head of some of the graves single out the monarchs of a bygone era.
There is not much left of Hitler’s Bunker. A parking lot sits solidly on top.
Very little of the Nazi-era architecture has survived.
One of the buildings that housed the aviation ministry and which included the offices of Field Marshall Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, still stands. The buildings, which housed the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, also stand nearby and have been repurposed.
There is not much that is left of Checkpoint Charlie either. That gate came into being when the Wall was put up in 1961. Around town, you can see sections of the Wall, some covered with German graffiti and some smothered with modern art.
Unsurprisingly, there is also a Marx Avenue in town. Elsewhere there is a giant statue of Marx and Engels standing side by side.
There is also a statue of Comrade Lenin at the entrance to the very large and capacious Museum of German History which houses collections going back to the time when the Celts lived in what is now Germany.
The storied Humboldt University has a beautiful campus along Unter Den Linden.
Albert Einstein taught there and Marx was a student and Lenin spent time there.
Others included Heisenberg and Plank, and the philosophers Hegel and Schopenhauer. Over the years, it has produced more than two dozen Nobel Laureates including Wassily Leontief in Economics. When we toured the campus, a book fair was underway.
I spotted a copy of Clausewitz’s opus, Vom Kriege.
On our last day we took a train to Potsdam.
There are two palaces there: the Schloss Sanssouci and the Neues Palais.
Between the two palaces is the expansive Park Sanssouci.
Frederick the Great lies underneath a very simple slab in the Sanssouci (care free) Palace. He wanted to be remembered as a philosopher and not as a king and chose not to be buried with his family members at the Dom in Berlin.
Also in town is the Einstein Gymnasium.
The physicist spent a fair bit of time in Potsdam. Of course, Potsdam is also the city where the future of Berlin was decided by the Big Three at the conclusion of the Second World War.
We saw the building where it was signed.
It seems to have been converted into a hotel.
The guide pointed out the rooms in which Churchill, Stalin and Truman were housed.
A few miles away is the facility where the KGB had a large and presumably top secret facility during the Soviet era.
We were told that Russian President Vladimir Putin, served there for many years.
On our last day, we walked over to the Holocaust Museum, located just a few blocks away from Hitler’s bunker.
It was mid-morning and the light was good.
The museum occupies an area the size of several blocks. It evokes silently the tragic isolation, incarceration and murder of six million European Jews. There are rows and rows of concrete blocks of different sizes and heights with undulating walkways that run in-between them. It is the ultimate meditation on the human condition.
The writer has visited 35 countries on six continents. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, October 4th 2017.