Fall spin around town

Here is a "day in the life" post from Halloween:

We've gotten lucky with the Fall this year and had a wonderful weekend day to enjoy it outside. Cass took the kids down to Steglitz to the Botanical Gardens for a Halloween program while I went out for a ride in the brilliant Fall air before meeting them. On Monday she would leave for a week of work in NYC and then was flying directly to Vienna to meet with Elena for a girls weekend.

Cassandra offered that I go do a bike ride and meet them down at the park because she is an amazing person who realizes this kind of thing helps keep me sane, especially facing a week of single parenting! They were finishing up breakfast and I started out on my way.

All exiting activities from the flat include the two monkeys each grabbing onto a leg and attempting to drag down their prey. It tends to prolong the process of anything. Monkeys:

Cass took them to get haircuts. Jasper requested "sehr kurz" (very short) because this is how Manuel Neuer, the goalie for the German national team, wears it.

Down four flights of stairs to ground floor, then another dusty drop down into the very spooky and possibly-haunted basement bike room. The basement is crammed with dark door ways leading into underground rooms and tight access corridors. Various cellars sit under the footprint of our large, old construction "Altbau" building. Some doorways hold bike rooms, others are mysteriously bricked-up. Flickering lights illuminate the spaces enough to raise even more questions about the origins of certain architecture features, such as persistent archways built at regular intervals along the wall. (see picture)

 Here is where our bikes live when we expend the effort to bring them down here out of the rain in the courtyard:

What ARE those arched alcoves? One-time fireplaces? What were these rooms previously? I'm fascinated by such junk.

I head two blocks north up Gleditschstrasse by Winterfeldtplatz, ground zero for Berlin's legendary between-the-wars night life of the Weimar Republic. The home of Marlene Dietrich, Isherwood and later on, David Bowie, Schöneberg tilts towards the alternative lifestyles moment in this part of Berlin. Starting at Winterfeldtplatz, home of Berlin's longest-running neighborhood market, my route winds up under Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station and over the Landwehr Canal at Lützowplatz.

St. Mattias Church on Winterfeldtplatz, one of the few Catholic churches in the city. Largely rebuilt after sustaining bomb damage during the war it now presides over one of the most vibrant vendor markets in the city.

Once across the Landwehr I took a right to ride along the canal in the direction of Potsdamer Platz and the Berlin Philharmonic. On the way there on Sigismund Strasse sits a curious facade with lots of evident bullet damage that was never repaired. This is what much of the city used to look like, which is pretty overwhelming to contemplate.

Gemäldegalerie

I then rode by an imposing building with a double door leading into a courtyard. From the street you can see a statue of a single figure, who looks mostly naked, standing in the middle of the courtyard. Outside was a sign with the word "Widerstand" which means "resistance." Worth a look.

Memorial courtyard.

I had unexpectedly stumbled across the Bendler Block and the Memorial of German Resistance. During the war this building housed Berlin's special army detachment that took care of the capital and protected the Nazi government structures. It was the spot from which German Army officers hatched the plot to kill Hitler and where the takedown of the Nazi government was to be launched from.

The plan was to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb at his Army HQ in Poland during a military briefing, then take over the capital before anyone knew what was happening. Elements of the German Army had been planning to kill Hitler since 1940 when it was becoming obvious the direction he was about to take Germany and the world. It wasn't until 1944 that General Claus Von Stauffenberg assembled enough allies to cooperate in his plan to kill Hitler and engineer a coup. If everything went well, they would then immediately sue for peace and end the war.

The plot failed. At Wolfschanze, the Army HQ in eastern Poland, it went down like this: On July 20, 1944 Stauffenberg managed to place the briefcase bomb under the table right next to Hitler's seat a few minutes before the briefing started. Hitler had yet to arrive. With the chemical fuse already going, Stauffenberg then excused himself outside and waited for the explosion. Hitler entered the briefing room and took his seat, but in the two minutes between an aide had moved the briefcase to the other side of the table's heavy wood support leg, which deflected most of the force of the blast. 

A few others died and Hitler was injured, but he recovered quickly and then rounded up anyone that might have had anything to do with the plot. The main conspirators, including Stauffenberg, were shot for treason in this very courtyard, right about where the statue is.

"Here they died for Germany" it reads.

I knew the story of the July 20 plot and had heard about the "Bendler Block" building, but had no idea it sat just on the north side of the Landwehr Canal from our neighborhood. Once again, the surprises of history around here just continue to slap you in the face.

I continued along the Canal heading for the main government sector, which in Berlin means the massive Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate area. On the way some wonderful Fall colors greeted me:

The Reichstag Building dominates the NE end of the Tiergarten Park, Germany's big urban woodland that sits also just north of us. In July of 1990 I had stood in front of this massive building and looked up at the flags, wondering what the Germans would do with themselves now that the country was reunited. At that time the Reichstag had not been fully restored or repaired, and sat mostly empty without its shiny glass dome. But they got to work quickly.

After the war, the land in front became a vast garden as survivors struggled to grow food on any available patch of land that wasn't piled with bomb-blast rubble or debris from the fighting.

After looking over the lawn at the Reichstag, I headed north to pick up the trail of the Berlin Wall, which crossed just behind our view of the building. I crossed over the Spree River near a broad curve in the river at Reinhardtstrasse and immediately ran into some interesting S-Bahn bridges. These above-ground commuter train bridges are frequently good places to search for history marks since they largely were left as is. As long as an abutment still supports the weight of the train, there's no real reason to rebuild it. However the brick looks is how it stays. So these old bricks revealed their stories:

This blogpost makes it seem like these things are everywhere. They aren't. Germans have largely obliterated such evidence from their buildings.

The mix of graffiti art and bullet holes defines one aspect of Berlin's aesthetic. There are few cities that have this harrowing sort of thing sitting around as part of the cultural narrative. But the shock of it is what makes it alluring.

Heading north along the Nordhafen (Northport) I picked up the tell-tale double line of cobbles that marked the former route of the Berlin Wall. Throughout most of Berlin's urban core they've dug up the street, sidewalks and median strips to lay these cobbles. This is what it looks like at Potsdamer Platz:

Cobblestone line marking the former course of the Berlin Wall.

In this sector the Berlin Wall ran along the canal to the Nordhafen before cutting back towards the East at Boyenstrasse. It was here that the first "Wall" fatality occurred. Just after the Wall went up in August 1961, one Günter Litfin jumped the barrier and tried to swim across the canal to the safety of the West. Guards saw him and shot him, then dragged the body out of the water in an event captured by Western cameras.

There is a guard tower near this spot, one of the few that still exist, and it functions as a museum and memorial to Günther. It was purchased from the City after the Wall came down and is now run by his brother. In the meantime, new apartment flats have sprung up all around it as can be seen here:

The gray and white "Mauerweg" (Wall Path) signs are erected at nearly every intersection of the Berlin Wall's 91 mile perimeter around the former West Berlin enclave. The bike trail goes on the old jeep road used by the East German patrols.

Just before you arrive to the guardtower, the trail passes through the Invalidenfriedhof (Invaliden Cemetery). This is one of the city's famous old burial grounds with lots of Prussian military men and their families buried here. The Wall went straight through the cemetery! Also of interest, the cemetery was doubly screwed by history since Russian and German soldiers fought through the grounds in the desperate final days of the Battle of Berlin. People don't spend money to fix gravestones, so many of the stones have also tell-tale pock marks and scars.

Pockmarks indicate this seemed to be a popular shield to hide behind.

Still-intact Wall remnant cutting through the grounds and right on top of various graves. The Russians didn't care of course.

Now it is time to make some tracks to the Botanical Gardens.  I went back by the Reichstag and this time they had turned on the fountains.

A few kilometers later I was waiting in a massive line at the Gardens to hold our spot for the family. They took the bus and arrived in full Halloween gear. Many other children and families showed up in costume and it seems that Germans are gradually getting the hang of this distinctly-American holiday.

Organizers spread a few bales of hay across this hillside and it entertained kids for HOURS as they made piles, chucked hand-fulls at each other and rolled around in it. Sometimes going minimalist is best!

Cody works on his straw pile.

Cassandra reprises her "80's Chick" costume while sampling a baked potato .

A couple hours later we started home. The Indian Summer day continued to impress as I ran across this amazing church in Steglitz and the stretch of former railroad land at Sudgelände:

I think this was a former rail siding that they've turned into a park.

End with a selfie! Another day's explorations notched in the books!