More Berlin 8-28-30

A few more Berlin shots

Check out this public modern art, just kidding.  They put the pipes above ground in Berlin because there is so much construction going on in the city.  These pipes are all over the place.

This is the same Kaiser Wilhem memorial church from afar.  Although this is a little different vantage point than from the station, it's nonetheless a very strong statement.

Only 10 years ago, a wall stood where those bricks are today.  These bricks run the entire length of the city to show where the wall used to be.

Oops, Hitler got a little ahead of himself.  He moved this statue from in front of the Reichstag (remember that building?) to the middle of the huge central park in Berlin.  He thought he would have a huge victory celebration after he won WWII.  Good thing the statue never served that purpose.  By the way after the Reichstag fire, it was rebuilt, then bombed in the war where it stood empty and bombed for 40 years.  It just opened again in 95 after the German government moved back to Berlin as it's national capital.  Hitler never used the Reichstag as a political building.

Like I said, Berlin is one huge construction zone. This is Potsdamer Platz looking from West Berlin. The tall German Railway (DB) building, the lower glassy building is Sony's new European headquarters and the red building on the right is Daimler-Chrysler modeled after the Chysler building in NY.  All of these buildings went up in the last 5 years because....

Up until about 5 years ago, this was about 40 square miles of bombed out nothing.  This is the east side of Postdamer Platz and the Berlin Wall ran right through here.  After the wall came down, the German government sold the land for cheap and in came the construction towers.  In 10 years, this will be a completely different city.  Checkpoint Charlie is about 1/2 a mile to the right and the Brandeburg gate is a little ways to the right. It was were Reagan told Gorbachov to tear town the wall.  Ask a Berliner about why JFK, Berlin and Jelly donuts go hand in hand.  It's a good story.

Just to let you know that the easterners had a sense of humor.  There walk-no walk signs have these cute little men instead of our bland ones everyone in the west has.  As the west took over the east in the last decade, they started to install the new bland crosswalk signs. Well the easterners didn't like it so they got to save their little men....OK I will tell you the JFK story.  JFK visited Berlin while the wall was up and made a speech in West Berlin to try and convince the westerners that they are safe and they will be protected from the communists in the east.  JFK, trying to win some friends, ends his speech with something like "Eich en Berliner" meaning to say that I am a Berliner.  Well a Berliner is also a Jelly donut and adding the "en" basically means that he said "I am a Jelly Donut."  Well the crowd loved it, created new buttons and T-shirts with Jelly Donuts and JFK was a new hero.