London to Berlin

London to Berlin – Tuesday 28^th June

Hayden cooks us scrambled eggs for breakfast as he and Elisse prepare to go into town for free haircuts. They are planning to christen the barbeque tonight and storms are forecast.

We have kept the car to drive to Luton airport for our flight to Berlin.

British motorways are notoriously large parking lots, so we are concerned about the timing. It turns out to be a good run (far worse if we were travelling into London) on the M4, M25 and M1 and we are in Luton in good time.

Mark treats us to a phone call – we talk to Dotty and Kate whilst we are waiting for our flight.

The flight to Berlin is uneventful; it is my first on a discount airline. I can handle the no frills style, after all getting there is what matters.

The immigration officials in Berlin certainly haven’t learnt customer service skills. Somehow we end up at the back of the queue and we get to watch their behaviour. They have short hair and tight, short-sleeved shirts. Their mannerism is aggressive. You almost expect a gun to be pointed to you. I was very pleased to ‘pass immigration’.

We take a taxi to our hotel – Lindner am Kufurstendamm, and we are certainly in the middle of town. After booking in we wander around to get our bearings, browse in the KaDeWe department store and sit in the afternoon sun to enjoy a beer/wine in the middle of Willem Kirche square.

The Kufurstendamm looks grotier than I remember. I don’t like the stalls around the old church and there seems to be a lot of people loitering, wasting time, etc.

We find a Berlin-style restaurant. I have beef olives, red cabbage and potato, Bruce has a Weisswurst. Ummm, good food!

Berlin and the Bauhaus – Wednesday 29^th June

We have come to Berlin to see the Bauhaus, so after a careful study of the map we walk there. My feet are not so good so it is slow going.

The building is amazing. Waves on the roof, curved walkways and wooden blocks on the floor. The exhibition is ‘Colourful’ and describes how the Bauhaus researched, studied and used colour, particularly in their architecture. The black ad white photos of the period hide the colour that was used. We see combinations of dark and light colours, feature walls or ceilings, even sections of a wall and ceiling featured in another colour.

Newton defined the colour prism and the colour wheel, Goethe (the German writer) studied how we visualise colour. Between them they defined colour, its meanings and the relationship it has, ie colours to colours, transitions from light to dark, what colour is and how the eye sees it, colours of the spectrum, what primary colours are and how they are used in print and display.

The Bauhaus extended all this, especially exploring the balance of colour and how it can be used to create moods and harmony in life. Their exhibition shows all this.

Bruce buys a book and a colour wheel.

We walk through the Tiergarten. They are setting up for the Live Aid concert, one of many in Europe over the next weekend – it will be huge. We walk down to the Brandenburg Gate. It is a tourist hotspot and there is a lot of information there about its restoration. We both take photos.

We wander up Unter den Linden, Berlin’s famous boulevard which has come to life again. My memories are of an austere road, without any kind of life. Now it is lined with trees and full of shops and cafés. We stop for Küchen und Kaffee (make that wine) and watch the world go by and forget the plastic bag containing Bruce’s Bauhaus book and our ‘Let’s Go Western Europe’ book. Bugger!

We’d taken a taxi back to the Kufurstendamm, so we ask the hotel to call the café and check for the bag – they can’t get through. So we take the S-bahn back to the cafe, but the books have gone. Bugger, bugger! To add to our ‘down day’, Bruce has e-mails from Jill asking him for another version of next year’s curriculum.

It’s a nice dinner, Bruce has ½ duck and dumpling in a brown sauce with rotkuhl (red cabbage), I have a ‘small meal’ of pork and roasted potatoes and cabbage – very nice.

Berlin – Thursday 30^th June

We spend the morning sorting out Bruce’s work for RMIT – it is a two-man job, cutting and pasting the curriculum into a new format. Gives my blistered feet a rest.

After that we take a 1½ hour city tour on a double decker bus – it is a good tour and we get a better understanding of Berlin. It is a poor city – €60 billion in debt! Apartments are expensive, corporations are spending big money but the infrastructure needs a lot of work. There are gas/water/sewerage pipes along the road that rise up and over intersections and down again, a bit like the ‘pipes’ screen saver in Microsoft Windows.

I have seen cafes along the Spree near Friedrichstraße, so after returning to the Bauhaus to replace the lost book we find a café for Küchen und Kaffee (make that wine). We are foreigners and choose wrongly but what an experience – two Berlin specialties, probably more suitable for supper:

‘Arme Ritter’ mit Apfelkompot – die Lieblingsnachtfisch der Berliner Gören aus der Arme-Leute-Küche (French toast of French bread with stewed apples and cream)
Berliner Kartoffelpuffer – drei Stück Kartoffelpuffer mit Apfelmus (mashed potato pancakes with pureed apple)

We share 0.5l of Riesling – now we need a walk!

We walk along the Spree, past the Berliner Dom, museums, and other buildings that are being restored.

More viewing and more photos. Old buildings awaiting restoration, new, impressive commercial buildings. This is East Berlin and there is still a lot of work to do.

We are now competent U-bahn and S-bahn travellers and starting to understand Berlin – must be time to move on.

After a rest at the hotel we head out for dinner. This is a cosmopolitan city and we struggle to find a German restaurant – there is Indian, Chinese, Asian, Thai, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese but no German! The one we find is quiet but the staff are bright and chirpy and rely on our German as much as we rely on their English.

Bruce has pork and vegetables and I have tuna and vegetables, both served with grated potatoes – must try those at home!