Our choir tour officially kicked off this morning as we all met together at the Hotel Berlin at 10:00 a.m. We were introduced to Silvio, our tour guide, and then boarded our bus for a tour of the city.
Berlin was heavily bombed during WWII and as a result much of the city has been reconstructed in what you might call a modern industrial style. As Silvio admitted, it's not the most attractive city, and we were told it's one of the least wealthy cities as well. A city mayor is reported to have said, "we're poor, but we're sexy" which we decided could quite easily become our motto as well!
One of the city's pluses is that it's very green and beautifully treed.
One of our first stops was the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, designed by U.S. architect Peter Eisenman. It's a very interesting design described as follows:
The grey stone slabs undulate in a wave-like pattern. Each is a five-sided monolith, individually unique in shape and size. Some are only ankle high while others tower over visitors. The paths that are shaped between the slabs undulate as well. Eisenman hoped to create a feeling of groundlessness and instability; a sense of disorientation.
One of the most interesting things we saw were the remnants of the Berlin Wall. There's actually very little of the wall remaining, but they have chunks of it displayed here and there. We also visited the site of Checkpoint Charlie, where diplomats were allowed to pass between East and West Germany. There were apparently three checkpoints: Checkpoint Alpha, Checkpoint Bravo and Checkpoint Charlie.
Shortly after 3:00 p.m., we left Berlin and headed for Wittenberg, about a 90 minute drive. We'll be returning to Berlin later in the week to sing at The Berliner Dom.
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Awesome first day! I'm going to pass this on to Joan Williams; she went through Checkpoint Charlie many times while smuggling Bibles in the 80's. Looking forward to tomorrow :)
ReplyDeleteWow, Marilyn! Unbelievable.
DeleteYes, I was thinking the same thing. It's such a recent event.
ReplyDelete