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Monday 9th June 2014

The hotel kindly grants us a late checkout time of 1 pm and this gives us plenty of time to check  a few more items off our Berlin Wish List, before our 5.25 pm flight to Sweden.

Breakfast is taken at a lovely small Backerei which we had spotted on our walk the previous day and following Liane’s advice we head off down Unter Den Linden to view, albeit only from the outside, the superb array of very impressive museums, theatres and the immense Berliner Dom. These are all concentrated around the Museumsinsel area and one can imagine what this great avenue will look like when the huge building and reconstruction works are completed. When taking a photo of the scene we could see 22 cranes on the skyline.

Rebuilding Berlin

Unter Den Linden, minus the cranes and excavations, has the potential to rank along such as the Champs Élysées and it’s a tragedy that this wonderful street was left hidden from the world of so long.

What has been striking about our visit to Berlin has been the realisation that almost all of the areas we have visited were previously in the GDR part of the city( with the notable exception of the Gedachtnis Kirche. )  However, what we now see is a magnificent city which will rank up there with the best in the world once the massive infrastructure projects have been completed.

The Air Berlin flight to Gothenburg is again fine and is made more memorable when a flight attendant approaches Gail to enquire whether we have ordered a hot meal. Gail says  “no” and the attendant asks “are you sure?”, to which Gail replies ” no”. The girl disappears for a short time and asks whether our name is Ireland and sure enough Gail had ordered the meals. In her defense this had been done some months earlier and a lot has happened since then.

We are becoming used to heavy landings on Air Berlin and the captain on this flight lives down to all expectations.

The long taxi ride into Gothenburg  costs 95 Aus$ but the driver is at least more cautious than the Schumacher clone we had had on a previous visit to Gothenburg in 2008.

Our long-time friend Stefan Thylin, welcomes us to his new apartment in a spectacular location overlooking the Gota River and he is looking very suntanned and well from a recent holiday on the Greek island of Kos.

Over some scrumptious strawberries we catch up on all the news and get off to bed at a reasonable time after a fairly tiring day.

Cheers

The Obese Ferret.

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Sunday 8th June 2014

 Wake up to another sunny, sultry day and give the very large buffet-style breakfast at the hotel a miss. Instead we take the short walk to the very impressive square, Gendarmen Markt, the location of the French Cathedral, German Cathedral and the Concert House. Continental breakfast in the square fits the bill perfectly and the coffee is good enough to have a second cup for once.

Based on some advice from Craig we take the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz to view the Fernsehturm which dominates the Berlin skyline and which the East German Government at the time seems to have erected as a two finger ‘up yours’ gesture to the West. The nearby World Clock gives us a timely reminder of how far away we are from dear old Busselton.

The previous evening I had done some research on Berlin highlights and we next take the U-Bahn to Bernauer Strasse station to begin our self-guided tour of the remaining sections of the Berlin Wall. Along Bernauer Strasse from Brunnen Strasse to Garten Strasse the Berlin authorities, through a series of photographs, plaques and audio recordings, have given a very graphic illustration of the horrors of The Wall which caused those living  along this border untold suffering, not to mention the deaths of so many people driven by desperation to attempt an escape to the West.

On my previous visits to Berlin in the 1970’s one monument had always stayed in my memory, the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtnis Kirche, and so it is something of a pilgrimage to get back to this site which had been bombed almost to the point of extinction during the war. It’s a disappointment to see the old church still under scaffolding as the reconstruction continues, somewhat behind the scheduled completion date of 2013. However, the more modern chapel with its magnificent blue stained glass windows and simple but striking bronze cross makes for a memorable return visit.

We only have time for a short refresher break back again the hotel before it’s off to the Gendarmen Markt again to meet up with Liane and Bernd for dinner at the fashionable Borchardt restaurant. Apparently, this is a regular haunt of the glitterati and movers and shakers of Berlin and the Irelands at least don’t fit into either category. In fact, we get the distinct feeling that the Ireland/Schrader group may have been a bit too noisy and boisterous for the staff but they don’t refuse our money and we enjoy a very fine meal and the great company of Liane and Bernd. Our short stay in Berlin is definitely coming up to expectations and this is no small way due to the hospitality and kindness of Liane and Bernd. Hopefully, we will be able to return the compliment in Australia at some time in the future when Bernd, in particular, takes some time out to ‘ stop and smell the roses’ ( I have no idea what the translation is in German!)

Cheers

The Obese Ferret.

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