Berlin Vlog – Museums, Meals and More

Berlin Vlog – Museums, Meals and More

Please join me for a quick recap of my visit to Berlin. I’ll share with you the highlights of our visit. From the cool train car we rode therein that reminded me of an Agatha Christie novel to some memorable museums, both the sublime and the horrific. And of course, you know me. We’ll also look at some of the surprising and delicious food we ate. But before we go any further, I just need to ask, does this statue make my butt look fat? We didn’t make it to Oktoberfest during our month-long tour of Germany, but I did walk through this beer garden here in Berlin. A little fair was going on in the plaza right near our [Music] hotel. I had just eaten a huge meal, so I wasn’t able to enjoy a tornado potato or a nice fresh hot pretzel, unfortunately. But I did love to see how it said altern. Whatever you do, don’t eat here. It’s the worst bar in Berlin. Also, near this same plaza on one of the very busy main streets of Berlin, I saw this spectacle of grown men driving around traffic in these little tiny race cars. Please note that one of them is magenta and one of them sports the English flag. Another odd thing that I saw in the plaza by the segment of old Berlin Wall was this big white horse. It was there for a photo shoot. I think they were filming a commercial and this horse was one of the actors. These were the other actors or models filmed walking across a crosswalk of this busy street. The first couple nights we were in Berlin, we stayed at a nice Marriott hotel near Potammer Plots. You could tell it was a really nice hotel and that they were spoiling me because of my Marriott status because they gave us these awesome snacks, including of course gummy bears because Germany. We took advantage of the opportunity to get our photo taken by the stretch of old Berlin wall that was there right by the hotel. And I was fascinated to see the display which had photos of what the wall looked like decades ago when it was a symbol of the division between East and West Germany. For our final night in Berlin, we stayed at the budget brand of the Marriott family of hotels. Not only because it was cheap, but because it is magenta, obviously. There are many places to see segments of the Old Berlin Wall around the city. There is actually a wall trail that you can follow. In addition, there are reminders of the wall and its history all over Berlin, like in this railway station where I saw a wall of quotes, including the one most memorable for me as an American who lived through the 1980s, in which Ronald Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” A bit later, I will show you another part of Berlin where I saw the longest portion of the wall. I also made a trek across the city to see Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous border crossing between the former East and West Berlin during the Cold War. It was the crossing point for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. It became a symbol of Cold War tensions and was the location of a standoff between American and Soviet tanks in 1961. Even though that was before I was born, Checkpoint Charlie is a place I’ve heard about all my life, so I wanted to see it. On our first day in Berlin, we visited the Markx Engles Forum, which is a public park in the Mitta district of the city. It is named for Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, authors of the Communist Manifesto. Even though Trent had shaved his Carl Marx mustache prior to coming on this trip to Germany, we visited the statues and took some photos there. The first museum we visited was the DDR Museum located on the River Spree across from the Berlin Cathedral. We went there hoping to learn more about the former East versus West Berlin and German reunification. It is a very interactive museum with some lifestyle artifacts from life in the former East Germany, including cars, rooms inside a typical home, etc. The museum is a bit expensive and a bit small and cramped for the number of people who visit there. So, I would say if you’re curious about the DDR, you should probably choose to visit the museum, but go either at the very beginning or end of day when the crowds are lighter. The Bodha Museum is in a stunning location. The building was the idea of Crown Princess Victoria back in 1883. Construction on this Renaissance museum began in 1897 at the tip of Museum Island here in Berlin. It was supposed to be named Kaiser Friedrich Museum after the Empress Victoria’s late husband. The museum was badly damaged in World War II and was restored after the war over a few decades. In 1956, it was renamed the Bodha Museum after its creator, Wilhelm Vonboda. It has been open to the public in its current format since 2006. Here is a recap of a few of the items I enjoyed viewing in the museum. Sculpture is one of my favorite types of art, and this statue caught my eye. It depicts palace protecting an art student from envy and jealousy. Look, he was ahead of his time, guys. He’s wearing a cross body bag. This is a tabernacle from Venice from 1475. That was before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. This is from Florence in the mid400s. And I can’t tell what it’s made out of, but it looks like it’s ceramic or painted plaster. Uh, but really interesting sculpture. I think that it’s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and his disciples sleeping while he went and suffered and the angels came to his side. This cherub is in agony because it’s being eaten by this monster here. These cherubs are the four humors, but I have my own names for them. This is the lazy one. This is the sanguin one. This is the sad one, the melancholic. This section of the museum has art and architecture from the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople from about 330 to 1453 AD. It’s incredible. Now we go from the beautiful and uplifting to the truly terrible. Ian and I visited the topography of terror museum. This museum is located on the former site of the Gestapo and SS headquarters where the Nazi regime orchestrated much of its terror from 1933 to 1945. This part of Berlin around Wilhelm Straasa is now referred to as the topography of terror. It was the site of the Reich Security main office or the headquarters of the SS, the organizational center of most of the Nazi regime’s mass crimes and acts of terror. This museum is very well done, very thorough in detailing all the history starting from 1933. I highly recommend it. It’s a place to visit if you come to Berlin. It’s free admission. It would take hours to go through and read everything. There’s so much information here. Obviously, I can’t cover that all in this video, but I will just show a few images and share a few things I learned in my visit to the museum. It is heart-wrenching to see all of the racist propaganda and discrimination that happened with the Jews in Germany leading up to the police dragging 30,000 Jews off to concentration camps. Political prisoners included communists, socialists, Jews, homosexuals, and members of Christian religions such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is Hinrich Himmler on the right. He was the Reich SS leader and chief of the German police. Speaking with Friedrich Wilham Krueger who was the police leader of the east. Hinrich Himmler who is responsible for the SS and the organization of the concentration camps. There were many extermination camps in Poland. Ashvitz was the largest of these death camps and it’s estimated that the SS murdered over 1 million Jews between 1940 and 1945. The territorial expansion of German rule spread to areas all over Europe. Entire villages fell victim to German reprisal actions. This part of the museum talks about the end of the SS state and the Americans and British who were arresting the members of the Gestapo, holding them prisoners, closing down the concentration camps. And this is Hinrich Hemler himself who while being held by the British committed suicide rather than meeting his fate in the judicial system. So after 1945 this area had all of these former SS and Reich security headquarters offices just abandoned and falling apart. And this is what we have now outside the remaining segment of the Berlin Wall in the inner city with all of this historical information. And that’s where I’m going next. This is another massive museum. Really, just an open air museum here along this stretch of the Berlin Wall. I’ve seen remnants of the wall in various places around Berlin. This has got to be the largest remaining portion of the wall. The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 as a barrier to seal off East Berlin and the rest of the territory of the GDR. The wall was peacefully destroyed November 9th, 1989. I believe that’s the outer wall and this is the middle and then the inner wall. This outdoor part of the museum has displays showing photos, articles, and advertising portraying the propaganda that was leveraged as Hitler rose to power and also shows the rise to power of Hinrich Himmler in the mid30s. It’s a window into the societal changes that occurred leading up to World War II. In honor of his 50th birthday, a poster thanking Hitler. The population attributed everything positive that was happening in Germany to Hitler, but none of the negative things. Oh, this is crazy. This is a prayer for Hitler based on our father. I found it very heart-wrenching to visit this museum and read all the displays. But much like visiting the site of a former concentration camp, I think it’s important to do because it forces us all to acknowledge and remember this dark chapter in the history of Germany. I believe it’s only through remembering the horrors and tragedies from the past that we have a hope of preventing a repetition of these atrocities. And now for something completely different, let’s take a look inside the quirkiest store that we visited in Berlin. All over Germany, we notice that the traffic lights have these cute stylized red and green graphics for indicating when pedestrians should walk or wait. And in Berlin, there is a gift shop in honor of these little symbols. We had fun looking at the merch that had been developed to celebrate these traffic light people. So funny. And now to end this video on a light note, let’s talk about food. The most important meal we ate in Berlin was captured in this video in which I showed our successful quest to eat a Berliner donut in Berlin. But other than that, we enjoyed some unusual cuisine in Berlin. In our month of touring Germany, Ian and I ate way more meat than we usually do. sampling local foods like schnitzel and zauer braten and even schwvine saka and of course the hamburger and frankfurter that I also shared in the video with the Berliner in it but most of the restaurants where we ate in Berlin served only plant-based food because we were traveling with Karina who is vegan. Turns out Berlin is a hot spot for vegan cuisine and we had some absolutely delicious meals. I think my favorite was the dinner we enjoyed the first night in Berlin at Sunshine Vegan Berlin. It was a really great meal. But of course, I did manage to eat some cheesy things in Berlin, including this piece of authentic German cheesecake that my brother Allan recommended. He lived in Germany for 2 years and insisted I try the cheesecake. It was lush. We also had a bit of cheese in the carnivorous meal that we took Trent to at Heimber, my favorite new schnitle place. The schnitzel had cheese on it and the spatzilla was super cheesy. And then I have to finish with this treat that I ate at the railway station right before we left Berlin. Don’t really know what a quesading is, but I know quasa means cheese and they look like really long bread sticks with seasonings and pumpkin seeds, so I’m here for that. This quesading is dinglicious. Look at all that baked cheese. I mean, super yummy. Next portion of our German tour, we rented a car and ventured into the countryside to visit some rural villages where my ancestors once lived. That family history video will be next in this series. In the meantime, please check out these other vlogs of our European travels. Thanks so much for watching this video and do something good in the world

This video recaps our time in Berlin in September 2024. Come along as we share with you the museums we visited, the historic places we visited, and the delicious food we ate. And along the way, we’ll also share some other quirky things we saw. Thanks for joining us! Cheers! XX Dara and Ian

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:27 Biergarten and Race Cars
1:22 Berlin Wall and our Hotels
3:00 Checkpoint Charlie
3:29 Marx Engels Forum
3:51 DDR Museum
4:35 Bode Museum
6:46 Topography of Terror – Viewer Discretion Advised
11:22 German Traffic Lights
11:58 FOOD in Berlin
13:42 Preview of What’s Next!