A Weekend and a Bit in Berlin

Larry always says 'Keeping tour groups together is like herding cats!' And it's been proven that you CAN'T herd cats. Tauck was putting that one to the test on Saturday morning, when all of us walked from our two hotels (we couldn't all get into one) to the Hauptbahnhof in Nuremberg in order to catch the ICE, InterCity Express, train to Berlin.

We wondered how three tour directors would keep track of 114 people, but they broke the group up into three and had seats for us in three different cars of the train, all in second class. Second class?? What? Surely Tauck, with their pull, could get first class seats for all of us? Some people were actually wondering this, and Larry found himself explaining that we were all traveling on ONE ticket and adding enough first class seats to the train would make it too long to fit into the station.

The other concern people had was if they would be able to get on the train fast enough. Nobody had really serious mobility issues, but there were a few that weren't moving that fast and needed canes to help them on stairs. Somehow ICE had become equated with BULLET train and, maybe, Tokyo Subway, and many of our group thought the train would only make a very short stop. Again, it took a bit of explaining by our tour directors that we would have plenty of time to climb aboard and find seats before the train left. Some others were wondering if everything would be going by in a blur because of the high speed, and, again, we were explaining that top speed would be 225 or 250 km/hour, a comfortable speed.

Eventually we did all get on board and settled in for our three and a half hour ride. Our bags went by truck - it would have been a real nightmare any other way. Although we were in second class, Tauck did arrange a lunch package for each of us that included water, a salad, a sandwich, fruit, a chocolate bar and pack of nuts. Even on the train we were fed as though we were still on the ship!

Once in Berlin, we boarded our buses for a short city tour that would keep us busy until the rooms at the Adlon Hotel Kempinski were ready. First stop was Charlottenburg Palace, where, for a little while (see centre photo) dark rain clouds threatened, but they blew away just as quickly as they came.

We were staying at the Adlon Hotel, which for many, many years has been THE hotel in Berlin. Even during the war it was used for meetings with foreign dignitaries, but it didn't survive the bombing, or the Russians. The hotel, or what was left of it, was actually in the death zone between the inner and outer Berlin Walls after they were erected in 1961, and wasn't rebuilt until the 1990s after the Wall came down in 1989. It was rebuilt in the same style as the original, and without knowing this history, you would think it had been standing since the very early 1900s.

Our room - a nice size, and comfortable

And in case you're wondering - no fancy
electronic toilets here, although this one
did have its own room.

Our view over the courtyard

In the lobby

Old fashioned elevators

The Elephant Fountain 

The lobby 

                        

Larry with his venison and spaetzle, German
style egg noodles

Monica chose the Koenigsberger Klopse,
which are veal meatballs in a sauce, something
Mom used to make

     

 Our tours took us to the Museum Island to visit the Pergamon Museum, where although we saw some interesting exhibits, there was a lot of work still being done to expand the floorspace and create a new display for the Pergamon Altar, the museum's most famous exhibit, which is now in storage until 2023.

The Ishtar Gate. The smooth tiles have been added in, but the
rough and discoloured ones are original.

The Roman Gate; quite impressive, especially when you
look at the smooth white inserts - these were replacements
for damage that occurred from bombs during the war.

We also had a lunchtime cruise on the River Spree - when, of course, it rained, so photos were few and far between.

Monday, the last day of the Tauck tour, in a tour called 'Berlin Divided and Unified' we visited a number of World War II memorials and saw the changes that restoration and rebuilding have been making to the former east zone. Nowadays it is almost impossible to tell by the architecture which 'side' of the old Berlin you are in, as 'early 1960s communist' has been disappearing quickly as the city is being gentrified and housing prepared for the average 40,000 additional residents per year.

Here are a few photos from the tour:

Berlin Airlift Memorial outside the Tempelhof Airport. The Russians
blockaded truck and train traffic into West Berlin so supplies
could not get into the city. To fight this, the allies sent in
planes instead, keeping the residents in food and coal.

This is one of the actual C47 transport planes was used in the Berlin Airlift, where
the allies were sending 5,000 tons of food, coal and supplies into
West Berlin every day for over a year. It hangs over the entrance to the Science & Technology Museum.

One of the only original pieces of the wall still in its original location. Ironic that they have now
had to put up a fence to protect it - from souvenir collectors
who have been chipping little bits off.

At the Berlin Wall Museum. This is a rebuilt section
so people can see what the death zone looked like, complete
with a guard tower - that was apparently bought on E-Bay
since none were saved when the wall came down.

What the wall would have looked like from the West

And of course no visit to Berlin nowadays is complete without seeing the East Side Gallery. This is the longest continuous piece of the wall still in its original position. Once the wall came down, artists from all over the world were given sections to paint, and some of these have become quite famous.

                     

Our farewell dinner was in the rooftop restaurant at the Reichstag, the German Parliament. We had the chance to take a tour to the top of the glass dome before dinner, to get some very impressive views of the city.

The central column - look at the top mirror in the centre - hey, who's that??

At the top of the dome, still wearing our VOX Boxes
to hear the tour guide.

Our tour directors, Jenn, Milos and Karel

On Tuesday, our last day in Berlin before heading to Bremen, we decided to go for a walk....of course, with us that could mean almost anywhere, and in fact we walked from the hotel in Pariser Platz at one end of the Tiergarten, the huge city park, all the way to the other end, and then down to the huge department store, KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) to look around and particularly check out the food court on the top floor and the food shopping level. Just like in both Harrods and Fortnum & Mason in London, you haven't been in town until you've seen their food shops.

Winged Victory in her horse-drawn carriage. Originally she and the
horses were pointed to the west, but they were destroyed
during the war. When the Russians replaced her, they
had her pointing eastward, facing Unter den Linden,
which was the main street of East Berlin.

In the Tiergarten

Also in the Tiergarten

The Siegessaeule, or Victory Column,
that commemorates victories in the
19th century in the Franco-Prussian war

KaDeWe, huge department store and must-see in Berlin:

The food court - what a nice place to grab a quick lunch
under the glass

We went back down a level to the food hall, which also has
any number of small eateries, and had fish for lunch.

Some of the bakery displays...

...and don't forget the chocolates!

Step count for the day was somewhere over 20,000 - around 12 kilometres. We'll give you the grand total for the whole trip in the next post.

Wednesday took us back to the Hauptbahnhof and our ICE trains to Hannover and finally Bremen.

Passau and Nuremberg - the Bus Trips

We awoke in Passau knowing that our sailing days were over - for this trip anyways! And with the changes in the itinerary it meant some longer bus rides were in store. Unfortunately, many of us were getting pretty tired of long bus rides, and this coloured our touring for this stop.

We had planned to go to Kelheim from Passau, to visit the Danube Gorge, but we were told that, due to the low water levels, there was practically no water in the gorge and the tour boat wasn't running. So we would be riding the bus for 2 hours each way to see what, exactly?? We used the day to wander around Passau and get a few things caught up - like the blog.

Our original itinerary for the cruise would take us to the town of Deggendorf after Passau, from where we were going to visit the medieval town of Straubing, which was the birthplace of one of Monica's parents' friends, Elli. Because of the distances again, Tauck gave us a number of other options to replace this one, including a guided tour of Passau and an organ recital in the Passau Cathedral. Why, you ask? Because the organ in the Passau Cathedral has 17,997 pipes and really fills the room - an experience not to be missed!

As almost every other town in Europe, Passau has its
memorial to the Black Plague, erected in
thanks for surviving it.

Looking across the Inn River, which along with the Danube
come together at Passau to form the larger Danube. The
third river, the Ilz, joins them a little ways away from the town.

Now looking across the Danube at the Veste Oberhaus,
a 13th Century fortress.

The town hall clock tower from the
town side. Most of the time we see it
from the river.

The town square and town hall from the front

On the front of the clock tower, the high water
marks and their dates. We wondered if they were
going to dig a ditch to show this year's low water.
Just to show how weird the weather has been,
one of the highest marks was in 2013!

Looking at some of the houses across the river from town

The front of  St. Stephen's Cathedral

In the courtyard

A few of the organ pipes, and the ornate interior decoration

More of the inside of the cathedral, including
the altar and the cupola

Amazing decoration - the pulpit is
wood, covered in gold leaf

 After the organ concert, we walked down to the 'pointy end' of Passau, to find the confluence of the Danube and the Inn.

The dark blue on the left is the Danube; the green coming
from the right is the Inn. It is the Inn that gives
the Danube its strong current.

Of course, we had to have lunch. Usually every town has a 'Ratskeller', or the cellar under the Town Hall where they serve food, beer and wine. Passau's Ratskeller is so popular that they also serve on the town square!

Yes! One more time with the Weissbier

Larry had goulasch with two bread dumplings!

Another of Monica's favourites - German
veal meatloaf, known as Leberkaes,
with potato salad

And just because we hadn't done it yet, we went looking for a bakery for a snack we could have later:

We bought a couple of plum danishes and had them with coffee
(or cappuccino) in our suite.

The original final stop for the river cruise was to have been in Nuremberg (or Nürnberg if you're German), but of course, we couldn't get there by boat so we were to take the buses again, as we needed to be there on Saturday morning to catch our train to Berlin. There were two tours for Nuremberg - one going to the town of Bayreuth (Bye-royt, not Bayruth) which was more a musical history tour, and the other a World War II history tour in Nuremberg. You can guess that we split up for these tours, as did a few other couples. But as we were now getting to Nuremberg by bus, the Bayreuth tour would take 4 hours to get there from Passau and then need another hour to Nuremberg. The World War II tour would take 3 hours to get to Nuremberg and then do their touring locally. So quite a few people bailed on the Bayreuth tour to save some bus time. Monica always has something to do on long bus trips - this time it was knitting, so she didn't mind the ride.

Here are the photos from our two tours. Up first, Monica's tour to Bayreuth:

Even here we found scaffolding, on, what else? a church!

One of the places we visited in Bayreuth was the Steingraeber piano factory. Most people haven't heard of this manufacturer, probably because it is a very small company that only turns out 60 to 70 upright and the same number of grand pianos every year, to the absolute highest quality. Steingraeber has been building pianos since 1859 and is still run by the same family. Their biggest claim to fame was the development in the 1870s of the metal piano frame that made concert pianos much more able to withstand the abuse they took from the likes of Franz Liszt, known for his virtuosic performances. Because he so liked the Steingraeber pianos, Liszt had his own instrument at the company salon, where he would both play and teach when he was in Bayreuth. During the tour, Monica had the chance to try out three pianos made at different times to demonstrate how the tones changed as manufacturing processes developed. One of these pianos was the very instrument that Liszt played! Although the workings had been upgraded later, the body and the keys were still original. What a thrill!!

The Liszt Grand Piano, still standing in the same room
where Liszt played it

During our tour, a demo of how a piano works

Monica playing the Liszt piano...

...and another one from a slightly later period

A lovely fountain across from the Opera House

Sitting with a statue of Wagner and his
dog

Pretty window boxes

Bayreuth, though it is not a large city, has two opera houses. The original one, the Margravial Opera House, was built by Margrave Frederick and his wife, Princess Wilhelmine, to bring culture to the city and make it more royal. Although the outside is not spectacular, the inside was very ornately decorated. When Richard Wagner was invited here to present his operas, he refused to have them performed there, and insisted on a new opera house. Eventually they gave in, and allowed him to build his own opera house, known as the Festspielhaus, where the Richard Wagner Festival still takes place annually.

The outside of the Margravial Opera House

Inside the Margravial Opera House

Now, on to Larry's tour to Nuremberg:

Keeping with the overall WW II theme, the tour took them to some of the important sites in the Nuremberg area. While the Nazi Party was "born" in Munich, Nuremberg was its "spiritual" home where the annual Party rallies took place, and where some of the worst excesses, like the Nuremberg Racial Laws, were first passed.

In some respects, the tour took place in reverse order, with the first stop being the Palace of Justice, where the Nuremberg Trials took place. The building, and the attached prison, where the defendants were housed, still stands and are still in use to this day. Court Room 600, where the trials took place, is today a criminal court room and while it has been changed over the years, enough remains the same so as to give you a "feel" for what took place there. A picture in the outer lobby shows the court room as it appeared then, and as it appears today.

The second stop on the tour was at Zeppelin Field where the annual rallies took place. The "monumental" grandstand still stands and the balcony with the railings, the Fuerher Rostrum, is where Hitler made his speeches from. The grandstand at the time was topped, at the top behind the Rostrum, with a massive 100 foot high wreathed swastika that was blown up, in rather spectacular fashion, by the US Corps of Engineers after the war. The field area was built to hold 150,000 to 200,000 people and during the rallies antiaircraft searchlights were mounted on the structures around the field, pointing straight up, to create a "Cathedral of Light" effect for the night time meetings.

As a side note, the Zeppelin Field was so named after Graf Zeppelin landed one of his first airships there, though not the one that crashed in New Jersey in the early 1930s.

The final stop of this tour was at the Documentation Centre. As mentioned earlier, Nuremberg was the spiritual home of the movement, and the rise, life and eventual fall of Nazism are documented over 18 rooms with numerous displays of actual documents and pictures from the time, including the movie of the swastika being blown up!! Even though this stop was 90 minutes long it was impossible to do any more than scratch the surface.

We finally met again at the Sheraton Hotel at around 5:00 but there wasn't enough time to even wander around the old town, only a few minutes away. Buffet dinner, bed and bags ready for pickup at 6:30 in the morning....the only downside to organized tours!