Our European Holiday - Berlin day 3 & 4

 For other signs from around the world please check Tom's blog

Day 3

We started our day with a visit to the Jewish Museum in the suburb of Kreuzberg. The 3500 sqmt ( 38,000 square feet) building, opened in 2001, is the largest Jewish Museum in Europe, and presents the history and culture of Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages to today.

The fragmented design of the building by Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind is intended to symbolize the extermination of the Jewish culture in Germany.

The Jewish museum building

Aerial view of the Jewish Museum (photo from net)

 Fallen leaves - more than 10 thousand "faces" with open mouths made with iron plates cover the floor of the ground floor void.

Jewish superstars - Sigmund Freud, Leonard Cohen, Albert Einstein, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Golda Meir, Charlie Chaplin...

Where did the Jewish could emigrate to?

After the visit we had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant, then it was time to catch the underground to Hallesches Tor to visit the East side gallery - Berlin's open-air gallery, which is reached via the Oberbaum Bridge (Oberbaumbrücke), a double-deck bridge crossing Berlin's River Spree, which is considered one of the city's landmarks. It links Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, former boroughs that were divided by the Berlin Wall.

The pedestrian area on the side of the bridge. Last photo the bridge from afar

From the bridge I spotted Molecule Man, a 30mt high (100 feet) statue designed by American artist Jonathan Borofsky. The aluminium sculpture of 3 men leaning into each other in a circle, symbolizes the coming together of the districts of Kreuzberg, Treptow and Friedrichschain.

The East Side Gallery was fantastic as expected - at just over 1,3km long, it's the longest continuous section of the former Berlin wall still in existence. Immediately after the fall of the wall, 118 artists from 21 countries began painting it and the gallery was officially opened in September 1990 and has now protected memorial status.

Outside a pub just before the East Side Gallery

As we looked at the murals we noticed a row of Trabants (East German cars) driving by slowly - cardboard cars as they were known then...

     

Across the road is the Mercedes Benz Arena, a sports and musical venue. In the square where it was located there were a lot of cafes/restaurants and we sat down for a drink and some sweet therapy.

 

In the square of the Mercedes Benz arena, I came across this very clever sign - Love/Hate which on the other side could be read as Hate/Love.

Love/Hate sign and the Mercedes Benz Arena in the background

After our short rest we caught a bus to the Mitte district to visit the DDR Museum by the River Spree, just across from the Berlin Cathedral (Dom).

It was for us the best museum we visited in Berlin, and we learned a lot about life in the former East Germany.

                   

Inside map of the DDR Museum

The inside of a typical East German apartment

An office from a Stasi employee

Trabi jokes :)

3 Girls and a Boy - Outside the museum the life-sized statues by German sculptor Wilfried Fitzenreiter  sit on the wall over the River Spree, across from the Cathedral.

We had an early light dinner at a restaurant not far from the Museum before walking back for about 20 min to our hotel to pack our bags and have an early night, as we would have to get up at 3am the next day for our flight to Lisbon.

Ham and egg on toast, Curry wurst with chips and salad with Pretzel(?)

This next statue was seen next to the Friedrichstrasse railway station, probably on our first day walking around Berlin and it's a very moving statue. Called the Trains to life/trains to death, it commemorates the Kindertransport Memorial (children’s transport) rescue mission that began nine months prior to the outbreak of World War II. Through this effort about  10.000 mainly Jewish children were able to escape from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland and taken in by British families. 

The 4 boys and 3 girls, five of them looking in one direction and two in the opposite direction, reflecting the contrasting fates of the children.

This statue as well as others by the same sculptor in London, Hook of Holland and Vienna, was designed by artist Frank Meisler who himself was one of the lucky kids rescued by this mission in 1939.

 

Trains to Life, Trains to Death

Other signs seen in Berlin:

Time for Taiwan, might have been seen in front of the Taiwanese embassy

We love Berlin

Day 4

We woke up at 3am, the taxi picked us up at 4am and we reached the airport shortly after 4,30am. Our flight to Lisbon was at 7am, but with airport delays we thought it best to be there a little bit earlier and we were almost the first ones in the queue.

We loved our short visit to Berlin and I wish we could have spent more time there, as there was still so much we wanted to see, but we also had to spend time with family in Portugal.

The sun rising on the horizon as seen from the airport

Coffee shop - Last chance to taste Berlin - Lego man, BER that stands for Berlin airport, and tower of Jägermeister, a herbal liqueur made in Braunschweig.