2014 Poland, Austria, Germany Tour: DAY 27 - WED 10/15 - MARTIN-GROPIUS-BAU MUSEUM, MORE WALL

We've been so busy every day, with one thing just seeming to flow into another, that, aside from reading travel books, I never got a chance this whole 9 days in Berlin to check out all the clippings I had printed out as reminders of special things to see and do. So this morning, our last morning at Cafe Oberholz, I sat with my cappucio and decided to start reading to see if we missed anything.

So far, I found:

> an article about a famous beer garden opposite the government offices of Angela Merkel...maybe we'll try and hit that today, since we have a light schedule on our last day in Berlin.

> an article about pockets of Mitte, the district where our apartment is located in central Berlin, and Neukolln, the district where we visited Roberto and Noah, that are transforming faster than it takes to say "fair-trade organic coffee bar" and should be visited, and also that Mitte is 'the choice for Berlin's global professionals.' I have to admit I do my homework, and really picked a choice area this time for our stay here in Berlin.

> an article about the Old School that is New School, reference to the building where we went for dinner at Pauly Saal last night. Ok, been there, done that too.

> an article about Katz Orange being another hip, in place that we've already been to as well! I guess we're 'In.'

> an article about some new hip midnight watering holes...we won't be going there unless they have a pillow at the bar!

> a big article about a museum, Martin-Gropius-Bau, that is having a block-buster show. As it happens, Voila! that is what is in fact on our agenda for today. I think the show has changed but we've heard that this is the most avant-garde museum in town...sounds like the Whitney in New York.

So off we go, sadly using our last U-Bahn tickets. Marty really gets a kick out of the open train cars.

Besides the article, this museum, Martin-Gropius-Bau, was highly recommended to us by several natives. It is a well known international exhibition house in a historically registered building, the Martin Gropius Building, named after a famous architect, and built in 1881 as a royal art museum.

It is special in that it is used from time to time to introduce the broad general public to major current developments in art and the major cultures in the world. So in that way it is different from all the major museums on Museumsinsel (Museum Island) which house all the time-tested classical art, much of which we've seen in other museums in other parts of the world, including of course, New York.

There are several exhibitions currently going on...

The block-buster main exhibit running now is "The Vikings and Norsemen." It features a restored Danish longship that was discovered after centuries of submersion in the North Atlantic.

As it happens, we have seen an even more expansive permanent exhibition of the Vikings and their times when we were in Oslo many years ago. So we look down at the longboat from one of the beautiful balconies above, and then proceed to the other currently running exhibits.

The first is "The World Around 1914: Colour Photography Before the Great War." It shows how several photographers of that period attempted to document cultures and diversity around the world. The mindset was: 'If you see how other people live, you won't wage war against them.' All efforts to secure a world-wide peace at that time were in vain, and color photography was of course then used for propaganda purposes during World War I.

Picture Posrcards started being mass produced around this time, and became an important means of propaganda as well, the first visual mass medium. Remember, this was 100 years ago!

The second exhibit was a retrospective about the life and times of "Pier Paolo Pasolini."

Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual and very political and controversial. His political vision, based on his entwinement and conflictual ideas related to Eros, Catholicism, and Marxism, foresaw Italian history after his death, and the burgeoning of consumerism. He was a homosexual, and well known for his frank, often shocking depictions of sexuality.

His work is renowned, e.g. MoMA mounting a retrospective in 2012 praising his work, and in April of this year the Vatican, which had once pursued Pasolini and helped secure a criminal conviction for blasphemy, declared his masterpiece, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, "the best film ever made about Jesus Christ."

Some of the many other films he directed that have become classics are Decameron, Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, Oedipus Rex, and La Dolce Vita, just to name a few.

During the university student street fights and riots in the battle of Valle Giulia in Rome in 1968, he felt closer to the police than to the students.

He actually lived not too far away from where we lived in Rome in the early to mid 1970s. This picture was taken with his mother.

Pasolini was murdered in a shroud of mystery that Italy specializes in. This is the last photo shoot before his death.

After these two very informative and intense shows, we needed some fresh air. As we left the museum there was, however, another display of Wall remnants and descriptions that we immediately encountered just outside the museum. We had already seen so much about the Wall, that we just glanced as we walked by.

For now and the foreseeable future, Berlin is all about the Wall. Remnants are everywhere...It is another integral part of their history that they do not want the world to forget.

But then the atmosphere lightened, figuratively and literally. We came upon the take-off point for a big tourist balloon that you can see bobbing in the breeze from many vantage points around Berlin.

We watched it go up and down a few times, but we didn't need to actually experience it.

The balloon is tethered to the ground and the carriage holds about 30 people. You pay for a 15 minute sail.

That was as close as we needed to get. Even without going up in it, it makes you smile.

Next we encountered a miniature exhibit for a somewhat miniature car, the infamous Trabant, lovingly known as the Trabi. It was produced in the former East Germany, and was the most common vehicle there for decades. Over 3 million of them were produced over a period of 30 years with no significant changes. Despite its poor performance, inefficient engine, and production shortages, the Trabi is regarded with affection as a symbol of the extinct former East Germany and of the fall of the Eastern bloc. Many East Germans streamed into West Berlin in their Trabants after the opening of the Wall in 1989. It has become trendy now for collectors to import older models to the U.S. due to their low cost and easier import restrictions on antique vehicles.

Just a little further along in our stroll we got stopped in our tracks by yet another dark time in the history of Germany. It was a small exhibition about STASI, the Ministry for State Security, the secret police of East Germany, known as the GDR, German Democratic Republic.

Its goals, during the time of the Wall, were surveillance, intimidation, and persecution, death by firing squad if you tried to escape.

To minimize the damage to the communist state's reputation, STASI did all it could to cover up deaths. The people who suffered most from this cover-up strategy were the relatives of the Wall victims. Many of them did not learn the truth about the death of their loved ones from the STASI files until after German reunification.

After the Wall came down, STASI attempted to wipe out all traces of its activities, but these attempts were halted by the courageous efforts of many citizens. What has been preserved are 111 km of written documents, 1.4 million photographs, and 34,000 film and sound documents. Quite an indictment of the Communist era.

Every aspect of life was closely and secretly monitored, particularly where people gathered, e.g. sporting events, rallies, offices, as well as simple social interactions.

This exhibit is the first time that original items from the STASI files, as well as some personal belongings, with approval from the families, are being shown. It is to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Wall's construction, and the suffering of the Wall victims and their families.

We decided to walk back to our apartment from here, several miles, just to see more of the sights and sounds of Berlin...we were getting to know this fabulous city better and better, and wanted to take it all in on the last full day of our trip.

Architecture old and new...

Restoration everywhere...

There are those water pipes again...at least they're colorful so they look like art.

Locals

Everything in chocolate...

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church...

A piece of the Wall...

The Reischtag...

The Brandenburg Gate...

A huge cuddly teddy bear...

Petit Fours...

Candies...that's enough...I gained a kilo just looking at this stuff!

Maxim Gorki Theatre, our apartment's namesake. He was a Soviet Russian writer, the founder of the Socialist realism literary method and a political activist. Concerts and plays are presented here at this preeminent Berlin venue.

This guy wants in...badly!

This radio-transmission tower is fondly referred to as the Space Needle. It also has a slowly rotating restaurant way up there marking the center of the city.

Now we're nearing home, with the familiar bottle store tucked in among all the cafes. You don't just buy a beer, you select your favorite brew from among hundreds of brands. Curiously, there are no restrictions about openly drinking alcohol in public, even on public transportation.

And here are our neighbors, just chattin' and waitin' at the cafe for us to join them for an aperitif before going to dinner! They sure know how to relax, laugh and enjoy each other...they're always in large groups having a good time. We wish we had cafes like this back home but the suburbs just don't lend themselves to this life style.

We're back home at our apartment now, feeling good after that long walk...we are getting our exercise, sometimes walking 6 or 7 miles in a day, and that's a good thing with all the eating we've been doing, morning, noon, and night.

We're sad...this is our last dinner in Berlin. Lisa at Reception made this reservation for us. Most of the restaurants she gave us (we only wanted typical good German fare) were either within walking distance, or a short cab ride away. When we looked at the map, Schneeweiss was quite a distance away. We trusted her recommendations and decided to keep the reservation. The cab ride seemed to take forever, probably close to 20 euros worth! The further we went, the darker the streets got, and the more ethic it became, so we wondered if there really was a typical German restaurant in these parts at all! We turned the last corner before we stopped and the driver informed us that we had arrived. The restaurant had a simple glass door and large windows, very non-descript, but he assured us this was it.

As we entered it was like the parting of the seas...a totally different atmosphere from outside...all white, sleek, and sparkling. It could have been a movie set, although most of the other restaurants we went to in Berlin, on Lisa's recommendations, definitely could have been as well.

When we first arrived this long table was set for 20, all white and gleaming, highlighted by the modern long chandelier lit above it. Then as we were being served, this crowd arrived...stunning whether empty and waiting or full and alive with banter and laughter.

This gal was not really beautiful, but she had that edgy style about her that we love.

There was our charming waitress Luisa at the small kitchen window checking on our order.

Delicious German style ravioli (we are starting to miss our pasta).

I had a white fish filet, seared in the pan, crispy on the outside and soft and flakey on the inside, just delectable, along with shaved vegetable chips and other things that all went perfectly together.

Marty had roasted veal with delicious root vegetables.

And the dessert! Oh La La! It was so artistic, one of the best presentations! And the flavors...amaretto and panna cotta gelato, with a solid chocolate pudding bar, intensely thinly shaved plums perfectly ripe, buttons of caramel sauce, and other flavors...one of the best!