April 1: Brandenburg to Bavaria

 

Today we saw the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Berlin Naturskinde Museum, and made the train trip to Bamberg, a Medieval Town that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Our hotel has been around since 1308 in one form or another, and we are looking forward to seeing this town tomorrow!  A record low for pictures for me, only 85.

Standing near iron markers where the wall once stood.

A section of the wall is visible in the distance.

Ian has sworn off milchkaffee after another sleepless night.  We packed our bags and stowed them at the hotel, then went out into the still cold, grey and windy streets to see a bit more of Berlin the city.  We have been staying in what was Eastern Berlin, and right next to our hotel there is a bunker with bullet and bomb damage.  Everywhere the streets are full of construction as Soviet era buildings are torn down and replaced.  Some, including the main administration building build by to run East Germany, had to be torn down because of Asbestos contamination and poor construction techniques.  This is very much a city under renovation, and as a result does not strike us as having much “personality”.

 

 

 We walked to the Berlin Wall memorial, where we learned a lot more about the divided city, and saw some of the buildings from Western controlled Berlin, which had been restored much earlier.  They have removed most of the wall, placing iron posts to show where the wall once stood, and leaving a representative section in place. 

 

Signs and exhibits explain the history of the wall in German and English.  When they started building the wall in 1961, to stop the flow of skilled workers to the much better conditions in the west, they started with a wall that already existed, the back wall of a cemetery, which is still there.   While many people feel the need for a place to remember the wall, the church would rather like its cemetery back.  A sort of compromise exists with a hedge between the memorial and the cemetery, and a marker commemoration St. Catherine’s Church, with the 10 commandments on the back, to mark the fact that one is in a cemetery as well as a historic site. 

 

 It is a sad place.  A wall hold names and pictures of people killed while crossing the wall, including people of every age, and the cemetery holds two mass graves of civilian war dead from World War II.  It was important to see it, but we didn’t really linger.

On the way back, we happened upon the Natural History Museum, and of course had to go in.  The dinosaurs were wonderful, but the fossils were really spectacular, including archaeopteryx and insect fossils that looked like a botanist’s scientific drawings.  There were fish you could swear you could eat for dinner!

 

Famous fossilized imprint of an early bird - Rampharincus. 

You can see the imprint of the feathers

 

 

Next, it was off to Hauptbahnhauf Station to catch the train to Bamberg.  Many trains were cancelled and rail lines were down due to the terrible storm, “Niklas” with its hurricane forces winds the day before.  We arrived in plenty of time to get lost in this huge train station, but had no problems at all.  It was nice to travel first class! 

 

Hauptbahnhoff.  Berlin's main station.

 

On the way to Bamberg. It is snowing outside in this picture!

We shared our cabin with a family from Munich, Dennis, Peggy, Viktor and an older boy.  The kids were born in Vancouver, Peggy was a teacher born in Edmonton of Italian parents, and Dennis was Dutch and German.  We had so much to talk about that the trip flew by – a good thing, since detours down small agricultural routes delayed us considerably, and we were an hour and a half overdue beyond our expected four hour journey.  We saw every kind of weather there was, including snow up in the mountains.  It was a very beautiful trip.

A small village seen from the train

A cathedral in the setting sun.

We arrived in Bamberg without either of us having been to the bathroom since 9:00 this morning, which made getting lost a little bit exciting.  Many streets were not signed, and darkness was rapidly falling when Ian led me into a maze of pedestrian walkaways and tinkling fountains.  I was finally crying at the thought of being arrested for public urination when we finally stopped at an Irish pub and found relief.  A nice elderly couple pointed us in the general direction, and we finally made the “20 minute walk” in just over an hour.  I did find a cookie cutter shop that I must visit tomorrow.

 

 

Our hotel is much nicer than our Berlin cell, and we were happy to see Shilo here to welcome us.  We ate dinner in the restaurant / pub, which is centuries old, and had traditional Bavarian food.  And so to bed!