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Post by rikita on Aug 26, 2011 20:27:40 GMT
so as I said, I will try to make a thread with pictures from Berlin. I think I will try to post one picture ever day (I will probably keep forgetting though, so please remind me)... First one: I will start out with various views of the Brandenburg gate (I do have a lot of those) - after all, it is the symbol of Berlin. Built from 1788 to 1791, it used to be the city gate on the route out to Brandenburg, hence the name. Later of course Berlin grew, and it was right inside the city. It ended up being right at the border between East and West Berlin, so after the wall was built, it was off-limits to people - thus the fact that you could go through it again was a big symbol for the fall of the wall, and the Brandenburg gate is now seen as a symbol of reunited Berlin.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2011 20:57:12 GMT
You bet we will remind you to post, at least I will. On December 9, 1989, I drove from Paris with my friend Ali, because we needed to see the gradual destruction of the wall (you have seen the thread here, I think).
It was almost 1000 km from Paris and we arrived maybe around 3 or 4 am. I parked right in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where where slept in the car until morning. (It was fucking cold, and about every 20 minutes I would wake up and start the motor of the car for about 3 minutes to get the heat working again.) The next day, among our activities, we visited the department store at Alexanderplatz and bought full sized East German flags (I still have mine) as well as incredibly cheap little notebooks and also some postcards. The strangest element of our purchases was that the woman selling the postcards could not understand that we wanted to actually choose the postcards instead of accepting the random selection that she wanted to give us.
That trip was one of the high points of my life.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 26, 2011 20:57:57 GMT
Hooray ~~ history & Rikita's great photos!
Fear not, we'll nag & whine to make sure you give us at least one a day.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 27, 2011 2:53:49 GMT
I remember the Brandenburg gate as being on all the standard German stamp denominations.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2011 4:51:42 GMT
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Post by rikita on Aug 27, 2011 7:25:37 GMT
Here is the next one, taken at the same night: These days the area around the Brandenburg gate is of course one of the main tourist areas, with horse carriages, dressed up people to take photos with, a lot of walking tour groups meeting up and all that. I must admit, it is a bit exhausting to pass the area whenever i have to cycle right through it...
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Post by rikita on Aug 27, 2011 17:03:41 GMT
Here is the top of the brandenburg gate from close up: It shows Victoria, goddess of vitory, with a quadriga (cart with four horses). The sculpture is five meters tall, and looking towards east, in the direction of where once the city castle was. The gate itself apparently was inspired by the Acropolis in Athens, and is built from Elbsandstein (sandstone from the Elbsandstein mountains near Dresden).
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2011 17:27:56 GMT
Has the Brandenburg gate been cleaned or renovated since 1989? I am very sorry to say that I have not seen it since then, as much as I have wanted to return to Berlin over the years. It did seem a bit more drab when I was there, and of course there was that ugly wall behind it. But your brilliantly illuminated pictures make it clear that changes have been made.
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Post by rikita on Aug 27, 2011 18:34:48 GMT
yeah... it was covered up with some plastic things for ages, so i think they were restauring it behind them...
and you should return to berlin some day, if i still am here then, i can give you a tour of the city so you see what changed and what didn't...
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Post by bjd on Aug 27, 2011 19:00:39 GMT
What I find interesting with the Brandenburg Gate is that from the front, it looks as though it stands alone, but from the back, it's part of a bunch of other buildings and doesn't really stand out.
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Post by rikita on Aug 28, 2011 14:27:46 GMT
Not far from the Brandenburg gate is the Reichstag, the Parliament building. The Reichstag is one of the most visited sights in Berlin. It was built in the late 19th century and housed first the parliament of the Kaiserreich and then that of the Weimar republic. In 1933, shortly after Hitler became Reichskanzler, fire was put to the building. While it was never cleared up who caused that fire, the Nazis took it as an excuse to attack their political opponents and push through laws that for example allowed the death penalty for what they saw as "high treason".
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Post by rikita on Aug 29, 2011 20:42:17 GMT
This view is taken from near the Brandenburg gate. After the war the building was a ruin, and in 1954 the dome on top of it was demolished, supposedly because it was in danger of falling down. Shortly after, however, it was decided to reconstruct the building - though at first it was unclear what it would be used for. The wall went by right at the East of the building, but for people from West Berlin there was a museum opened inside.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 29, 2011 22:49:29 GMT
Oh thanks, Rikita!
I've not been to Berlin yet - I've only been to the most western parts of Germany, mostly along the Rhine.
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Post by nycgirl on Aug 30, 2011 1:23:38 GMT
Very nice, keep them coming.
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Post by rikita on Aug 30, 2011 6:34:21 GMT
lagatta - you should come to berlin one day... i could give you a sight seeing tour... nycgirl - thanks! The glass dome on top of the building now is one of Berlin's most popular tourist attractions, visited by about 8000 people per day. It is 38 meters wide and 23 meters tall. It is not only a visual attraction and viewpoint over the town, but part of the energy-efficient concept of the building: It is giving light and ventilation to the assembly room.
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Post by rikita on Aug 30, 2011 19:26:42 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2011 19:45:43 GMT
Photograph straight up from the base? Did Angela Merkel take the picture?
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Post by rikita on Aug 31, 2011 6:26:03 GMT
no, the photograph is from the top, looking down. i tried to zoom in on merkel though, but she was hiding. didn't want to have her photo posted on here...
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Post by rikita on Aug 31, 2011 6:28:30 GMT
In front of the Reichstag there is this small memorial for the members of parliament that were killed during the Nazi regime. Their names are written on there.
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 31, 2011 12:24:28 GMT
In front of the Reichstag there is this small memorial for the members of parliament that were killed during the Nazi regime. Their names are written on there. That's fascinating Rikita.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 31, 2011 14:44:27 GMT
Yes, Rikita, I certainly hope to get to Berlin someday and I'd love a guided tour. Berlin is also a very cyclable city - must find a way of hiring or taking a bicycle there.
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Post by rikita on Aug 31, 2011 20:22:58 GMT
there are lots of bicycle hires here, i think average is about 10 or 15 euros per day (depending on the quality of the bike)...
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Post by rikita on Aug 31, 2011 20:24:29 GMT
Near the Reichstag are the new government buildings, that the government of Germany is in since moving here from Bonn in the 1990s...
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Post by rikita on Sept 1, 2011 6:33:24 GMT
View over the Großer Tiergarten Park from the Reichstag. The second largest park area in Berlin (with 210 hectar). A big street runs right through it: The Street of the 17th of July, in which there is the Siegessäule (victory column). The tower in the picture belongs to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (house of the cultures of the world). It is a Glockenspiel (carillon)...
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 1, 2011 7:43:22 GMT
Berlin is lucky to have Rikita, as are we!
How long has there been a settlement in what is now Berlin, please?
The government buildings are right on the water -- nice!
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Post by hwinpp on Sept 2, 2011 4:54:54 GMT
I think the first mentions are from 12xx something.
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Post by rikita on Sept 2, 2011 20:46:03 GMT
first mention is 1248 i think. berlin originally grew from the villages cölln and berlin, situated on an island on the spree river and north of the spree river. they were probably founded in the late 12th century, as a settlement of fishermen (in the case of cölln) and merchants (in the case of berlin), as the place was an important crossing of the river for some east/west trade routes... it is estimated that they got the town priviledge around 1230, which is probably around the time the st. nicholas church (will post pictures of that later on) was built in its oldest form... the oldest document mentioning berlin actually mentions cölln, berlin was first mentioned a few years later... i think the two towns united sometime in the 14th century, and later of course the incorporated more and more of the surrounding areas and villages...
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Post by rikita on Sept 2, 2011 20:51:43 GMT
Not far from the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag, down on the way to Potsdamer Platz, there is the Holocaust memorial. The official name is Denkmahl für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe). It consists of 2711 concrete slaps of stelae, of different heights but in an exact pattern (I mean, in exact rows). Some are really tall, especially towards the middle, others are smaller, and there is space to walk between them.
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Post by rikita on Sept 3, 2011 13:02:45 GMT
Just quoting from Wikipedia this time (too lazy to write my own text): "According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. A 2005 copy of the Foundation for the Memorial's official English tourist pamphlet, however, states that the design represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman did not use any symbolism."
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Post by lagatta on Sept 3, 2011 15:38:28 GMT
Actually, I very much dislike that memorial, which strikes me as a very totalitarian kind of monument with its huge, dehumanizing scale and lack of evocation of individual human beings murdered in genocide. Though the "supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason" does allude to the specifically German characteristics that made that genocide so particularly effective and murderous... I mean the accent on being methodical and precise, and I know quite a few Gernans and Austrians the Nazis would have killed for political and/or "racial" reasons who share in those values! I much prefer the Stolpersteine. www.stolpersteine.com/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StolpersteinThat is a most reasonable price for bicycle hire, as I'd like to think I could hire it for the day and be able to go to parks or a café as well as just sightsee. I have fantasies about buying a good folding bicycle, like a Brompton, but they are very expensive.
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