Berlin - Day 2

Usually when on holiday we get up early and are out of the door, raring to go. On this occasion we decided that we would take life at a gentler pace, so set the alarm for 09.00 and took advantage of the extra rest.

Eventually up and out, we made our way to the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, largely on the advice of friends P & L, who had visited earlier in the year. We walked to Stadtmitte station and got the U-Bahn four stops north, walked a short distance and then caught the M10 tram to Bernauer Straße.

The memorial to the division of Berlin and those that died as a result is extensive, and not easy to 'read' when you first arrive. Accordingly, our photos were taken in a somewhat random fashion, but have been reordered here to try to provide a more useful narrative:

From the Documentation Centre, this display photo shows the Church of Reconciliation (Versöhnungskirche). The Berlin Wall was, of course, actually two walls, and when it was constructed, the Church found itself between the two parts; as a result, no-one except the East German border guards could access the church, and they used it as an observation post.

In 1985 the Church was blown up ‘to increase the security, order and cleanliness on the state border with West Berlin’ according to the official justification by the GDR - see here.

In 1999, a Chapel of Reconciliation was built on the same site; this photo was taken from the five-story viewing gallery attached to the Memorial Documentation Centre across Bernauer Strasse from the Chapel.

and this from slightly closer on the other side of the Chapel:

Adjacent to the Chapel stands this sculpture by Josefina de Vasconcellos; Reconciliation is one of a number of casts made from the original:

Beyond the sculpture lay Berlin Crows - a temporary installation by the artists Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov:

The location of at least one of the escape tunnels used by East Berliners to escape to the west is marked out on the site; by contrast, these markers show the path of one that was actually dug by the Stasi in an attempt to intercept the escape tunnels:

Many of the surrounding buildings feature historical photos:

As is often the case throughout this part of Berlin, where the wall no longer stands, its presence and direction is shown by plaques in the ground:

or here by metal poles:

The topology of the wall itself is best illustrated by the composite photo:

A preserved section of the border is now secured between two new barriers, left and right, to prevent access to the interior, thereby maintaining it as it would have appeared when the city was divided.

On the far side is the eastern side of the border, complete with watchtower which would have been occupied by guards with orders to shoot anyone who entered the "death zone" - the area of no-man's-land. The western wall of the border is that in the foreground. The cylindrical concrete tube along the top is not there for aesthetic reasons - the curved surface simply made it harder to get a grip on the top of the wall to pull oneself over.

The watchtower, seen from the eastern side:

and, on the day we visited, a suspicious-looking foreigner:

The Documentation Centre housed all kinds of interesting exhibits, including this bed of spikes, which would have been laid at the base of the inner sides of the wall, to cause maximum discomfort or injury to anyone slipping off the wall and onto them:

A final stitched-together panoramic view from the observation tower, looking towards the east:

Down from the observation tower, we made our way further along Bernauer Strasse to Gartenstrasse where, on the advice of friends P&L we visited Nordbahnhof, one of a number of former ghost stations.

A quick look round, and then on to Tucholskystraße and Augustrasse. Along the way we passed this little guy, warning drivers of a 'blind' entrance to a school:

A little further along, and a number of what appeared to be metallic cobblestones brought us to a sudden halt:

This is a Stolperstein; once our eyes were attuned to looking for them, we saw more and more - particularly in this, a predominantly Jewish area. The number of people killed by Nazi Germany has been put at 21 million (source here). I found it profoundly moving that following horror on that scale, individuals - not the great and the good, but ordinary people - were commemorated in this way, at the location of their last "free" dwelling or work place. The story of Käthe Simonsohn is told here; if you are using Chrome you can get the page to translate automatically.

More walking - mostly up and down Augustrasse, while we looked for The Kennedys - a private museum holding artifacts and photos of the eponymous family. We expected it to be more heavily signposted, but it hid its light under a bushel and we eventually found it on the second floor of what had been a Jewish girls' school. For another take on the museum, look here.

Photography was strictly forbidden, so we had to content ourselves with this; my somewhat pained expression belies the delight I felt at having visited. The Kennedy family and JFK in particular have been an interest of mine for a number of years; to see personal items such as his briefcase and spectacles, and speeches with his hand-written notes (including phonetic renderings of the German phrases he used when speaking in Berlin) was a real thrill:

Round the corner and back on Tucholskystraße we called in at the intimate and very funky neighbourhood cafe/bar Caffetteria Buchhandlung.

Outside:

Inside:

Apfelschorles were ordered:

as were two portions of boulette with bread (actually toast) and mustard - very tasty!

Out and more walking. The dome on top of the Reichstag could be seen on the horizon:

as could the Fernsehturm, next to the Bode Museum on the end of Museum Island:

I couldn't resist the temptation:

Yet more walking, and we found ourselves back at Dussmann for a second visit - your correspondent again making use of the listening post in the jazz department:

Back to the apartment for a quick change. We were off to the Symphony, and this was, to the best of my recollection, the first time I have worn a tie while on holiday:

Out, and to an early supper at Vapiano. It would appear that 'Vapiano' is German for 'the most complicated way of organising a restaurant that you could imagine'...

On entry you are issued with a card like a credit card. You then find a free table (without assistance) and then study the menu, deciding what you want. You then leave your table and queue at any one of a number of different stations, to order whatever you require - which is prepared or cooked while you wait, and the cost of your order is electronically added to your card. To avoid having to wait at the 'station' you are also issued with a vibrating pager, which goes off when your order is ready, allowing you to return to the station to collect it.

So, in our case, having decided that we required a pizza, a lasagne, two side salads and two soft drinks, I left Amanda holding our places at a communal bench table, ordered the hot food and soft drinks and collected a vibrator, returned these to Amanda and then moved to the salad station where two small side salads were prepared in front of me while I waited (eventually, that is, when I got to the head of the queue). In the meantime I was praying that our 'hot vibrator' would not go off, as either Amanda would have had to leave our seats unattended and unreserved to collect our food, or I would have had to abandon my place in the salad queue, or I could have maintained my place and risked the hot food becoming less so while it waited to be collected...

In the event it all worked out OK, but relaxing it wasn't. We took our card to the desk to be totalled up, paid and headed out into the early evening, making our way to the Berliner Philharmonie.

Sadly, the home team were playing away (in Paris) and in spite of my exhortations, Sir Simon Rattle could not be persuaded to return for the night. Accordingly, we had tickets to see the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

The programme:

As usual, the venue was quite strict about photography, but before the event started I did manage to get this shot from our excellent seats:

It is said that every seat in the house has an excellent line of sight, and I can well believe it.

This was a first for me. Throughout my life I have been to probably hundreds of concerts - rock, folk, blues and jazz, and I have also been to the opera - but before this night I had never been to a classical music concert. The lights dimmed and we settled back - in the case of yours truly, more than a little misty-eyed, as I thought about how much my Mum would have loved to have been there, and how much I would miss telling her all about it afterwards.

So how was the concert? Since this was my first experience of 'live' classical music my opinion carries little critical heft, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience from start to finish - including the Rihm, which could best be described as challenging - though, if I'm honest, not as challenging as some 'free' jazz I have sat through.

Observations:

1) As can be seen from my photo, the piano did not begin the night on the stage. It seemed strange, to my inexperienced eye, that the pianist would sit so much lower than the rest of the orchestra, but what did I know? All was made clear during the break between pieces when a gentleman appeared from the wings and re-positioned the steps up to the stage, and a lady followed him with a remote control the size of a small ghetto blaster and caused the piano and the portion of the stage below it to rise majestically from the ground to the same height as the main stage - 'Vorsprung Durch Technik' indeed.

2) Berliners LOVE their orchestras. I have been to many concerts where the applause was long and loud, but never have I been to one where the applause lasted to the point that my arms started to ache.

3) An almost ballet-like etiquette was observed at the end of each part of the performance:

• At the end of the first half of the concert, the principals left the stage and disappeared into the wings. The principals reappeared to continued applause. They disappeared again. They re-appeared, and the female soloist received an enormous bouquet of flowers. They left again.

• At the end of the concert, the conductor and male pianist left the stage and disappeared. They reappeared. The pianist was given an enormous bouquet of flowers. They left the stage, during which the pianist threw the bouquet to a young lady sitting next to her boyfriend in the second row.

• The conductor returned. He was presented with an enormous bouquet of flowers. He called forward the female leader of the Second Violins and presented his bouquet to her. The conductor left the stage, and the orchestra started to pack up.

4) I was completely unfamiliar with the evening's pianist, Tzimon Barto. I did, however, comment (to Amanda's embarrassment) that the last time I had seen an adult male with a chest-to-waist size ratio that large, he had been wearing his underpants over his trousers and had a big red "S" on his chest. No great surprise, then, to find during my later research that as well as a world-class concert pianist, Barto is a "bodybuilder, novelist, poet, philosopher and speaks seven languages"... I suspect that he also has a world-class publicist; a significant proportion of web searches yield pictures of him looking like this, whereas in reality Anno Domini has had the same effect on him as on the rest of us, and he now looks more like this.

Out into the night and a walk back to the apartment in light misty drizzle, accompanied by the almost continuous sound of police sirens criss-crossing the area - keeping the peace, but not in every sense.