Trips to Germany & Austria
Index and Berlin

Monday 4th September to Berlin

Up at 0455 & the owner-driven hire car came 10 minutes early. We joined him at the scheduled 0545. NOTE. We were at Heathrow at 0630, as I had hoped but there was a big 20 minute jam on the M4 spur road, which apparently happens every Monday, so we will avoid Monday starts in future. We had an English Breakfast in Est & the 'plane, a BA 757, was on time. We cached most of our 'plane meal. Our luggage was last off at Berlin - Tegel. We took a taxi to Hecker's Hotel in the Grolmannstrasse for DM25, not bad. The hotel is a four star businessplace. We walked up the Kurfurstendamm to the Memorial Church, inspected it & the dreadful phots of the bombing, then by the Budapester Str. to the Tiergarten in spots of rain & where we had lunch from our 'plane food. This is such a huge wood to find in a city centre. Then, along to the Brandenburger Tor & had a look at the Reichstag, with Norman Foster's new glass dome but there was a long queue to get in, so we went through the gate onto Under den Linden & found a café for hot chocolate, as it was rather cold. Then further East past the vast Russian Embassy to the Opera & St. Hedwig's catholic cathedral, which is entirely under a large dome & looks rather more modern than Fred the Great's time. It has a beautiful 1978 organ. I had left my brolly in the café, so dashed back & picked up Avis again at the Friedrichstrasse, where we caught the S-Bahn (with some difficulty, as nothing was clearly marked) back to the Savigny Platz for the hotel, where we had a kip. Then, we went out into the Savigny Platz for a mediocre but cheap meal. Passing on pudding, we walked West along the Kantstrasse to Kant's Café, which we had to stop in of course, for coffee & apfelstrüdel with vanilla sauce. This is a student hang-out. We went back via the Kurfurstendamm, with Avis oggling the very imaginative but very expensive women's clothes. There were very few people about.

Tuesday 5th September

We went out & bought all-day travel passes for DM8.70, then took a bus to the Potsdamer Bridge to get tickets for an all-Schönberg concert tonight in the Philharmonie. It was not open, so we examined the Potsdamer Platz, which is a huge building site. Fairly good modernist architecture but they will have to do something to give it a bit of life when it is finished. The Wall used to run through it, mucking it up before. There was a vast traffic jam, so we took the tube to the Alexanderplatz, which was a dull, soulless place & had coffee on the Karl Liebknecht Str, which is the Unter den Linden continuation. Wwe walked West to the cathedral, which is late Victorian & gross. It is opposite the DDR Parliament (Volkstag) which they do not appear to know what to do with, it being essentially a good building but now rather tatty. We took the bus to the Zoo, which seems to be the hub of the old West Berlin & had doner kebabs for lunch there, before getting the bus to the Charlottenberg palace. This is very sweet, being well-scaled which is not usually the case with German imperial architecture. We went round it & into the gardens, where a storm broke while we were under a large, waterproof tree. The gardeners were using a gadget which picked up whole small trees, roots and all, & moved them about like chess pieces. We got another bus back & had ice-creams in a Spanish café where the Uhlandstr crosses the Kurfurstendamm, just by our hotel. We had a snooze then back to the Spanish restaurant for a big tapas before getting the tube to the Potsdamer Platz. NOTE. The inspector pulled us up, as we were supposed to stamp our tickets but he showed us how, realising we were dim tourists. There were unfortuantely, plenty of tickets available for the Schönberg concert in the Philharmonie. It was the Violin Concerto, played with great gusto (especially the military march) by Christian Tetzlaff & conducted by Christian Thielemann (this was the Deutsches Oper Orchester, not the Phil). Tetzlaff played a bit of solo Bartok as an encore! The second half was Pelleas & Melisande, terrific to hear it live (Avis could not remember hearing it at all). This new hall is very modernistic bit I think the acoustics are a bit suspect.