Berlin begins….

Of course, the best thing about arriving in Berlin was seeing our old friends.   The kids were thrilled to have friends to play with – you can see Marc, Griffin, Anne and Callie on the train.

We parked Mr. Liberty in their lovely neighborhood and took public transportation for the next 4 days.  I must say, the Berlin system is awesome.  It is fast, easy to follow and goes anywhere you want to go.  Plus, a four day pass for our whole family was only 70 euros – and we could go all over the city and the outlying areas!   We were headed for the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin (German Museum of Technology) with over 50,000 square feet of exhibit space and promised to be one of the coolest things for kids in all of Berlin.  We got off the subway and had an amazing lunch of Thai food, then headed over.  We passed a beautiful church and this neat bridge whose supports spelled out Anhalt and, on the other side, Berlin. 

The museum was easy to spot from afar since there was a giant plane perched on its roof.  This was, as you would guess, a famous plane, in fact a C-47 Skytrain which is the plane invented by the Allies to carry cargo and drop paratroopers down into war zones.  They were also used in Vietnam and there are actually a few left in service today.

The museum was immense and we spent most of our time simply exploring the train area.  They had literally hundreds of full size engines to explore, with lots of interactive things for the kids.

 

There were only 2 trains you could go under to see what they looked like.  One I can’t remember but the other was the Führerzug or Hitler’s train. André was horrified by the symbolism implied by asking people to throw themselves down under the machine of the Third Reich; our kids didn’t mind, pictured right.    I ran across the basic law of fascism when trying to find out more information about the train.

The Führerprinzip states that “the Führer's word is above all written law and that governmental policies, decisions, and offices ought to work toward the realization of this end.”

This reminded me, strongly, of the way I was taught during my brief sojourn in the Mormon Church. If I were ever to question or differ in opinion from the status quo, I was told “When the prophet speaks, the thinking is over.”   Do Mormons consider themselves fascists?????

We saw other parts of the museum, they had an amazing nautical section and we even got to see Enigma – the machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages during WWII.  We wanted to see more, especially the plane section – this place put the Smithsonian to shame!  But we wanted to have time to see the entire building dedicated to interactive stuff!  We loved the mirror section.  It was a great day.

 

Leipzig

So, Leipzig is about halfway between Nuremburg and Berlin and the site of the Battle of the Nations.  This was where Napoleon’s conquest of Europe ended (he was then sent to Elba – any one have any idea where in the world Elba is???)  We also found that Benedict Carpzov the Younger had famously stated “Living outside Leipzig means living miserably.”   Sounds like a must see kind of a place (or maybe a never see kind of a place, so you will never know what you are missing).  Fact is, the real reason for Leipzig was our pretty hard and fast policy against driving for more than about 3 theoretical hours in a row without cease-bad for the circulation, and tempers.

As usual, we got a bit lost heading into town and (also as usual) we were more than a bit over our 3 hour limit.  The thing I had really wanted to see in Leipzig was the Museum in der Runden Ecke which was the former home of the Nazi secret police.  It closes at 5, we got there a bit past 4, then we got lost and ended up parking very far away from the museum.  We walked toward it a bit, passing lovely buildings including the famous Altes Rathaus or Old City Hall, shown left, and purchasing some homemade pickles off a street vendor (at right).  YUM!  But we didn’t make it to the museum.  Oh well.

We never give up in the Dhondt family so we headed back towards the car hoping to catch a glimpse of the St. Nicholas Church, billed as the center of Germany’s peace movement.

Somehow, despite André’s normally flawless navigating, we missed the church but we did get to see something quite interesting on our way back to the car.  This (plus the pickles) was what made the Leipzig visit worthwhile. 

What we saw was Thomaskirchhof (St. Thomas Church) and, from the outside, it was rather small and not so impressive (except, perhaps for the weird white statue topped with green spikes standing nearby – I of course assumed this was yet another example of a misguided modern artist attempting to make a statement but actually just clashing with everything!).  See exterior below.  Once we entered the building I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and realized the spikey thing was just like the columns that held up the roof of the cathedral (sorry I didn’t get a better shot) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that wasn’t the cool thing about this place.  The cool thing was that this is Bach’s church.  That’s right, the one and only Johann Sebastian.  He served as cantor here for 27 years and composed about half of his works in Leipzig, trying them out on the congregation.  He is buried inside the church.  This guy is amazing.  He’s the one who brought us Ave Maria and The Toccata and Fugue in D minor.  He was the inspiration for names including Mozart (who also played in this church),  Beethoven, Chopin, Goethe, Schumann and Mendelssohn. Imagine, for a few minutes, just sitting in this church and hearing such music that ears had never heard before…  lucky bastards!

Here is Ave Maria and The Toccatta.  If you want to hear the Tocatta with an organ – (highly recommend it) go to this link  

Ave Maria with vocals?

 

 

 

 

Here they both are again – different versions – both awesome.  Have I mentioned recently that I love youtube??

So, that was Thomaskirche. 

I find I just can’t leave Leipzig, however, without one more tale.  During WWII, Thomaskirche was bombed and heavily damaged.  After the war, they restored it completely, one would have no idea it was even touched (if not for Wikipedia).  But, quite accidentally, during my research I found that Leipzig had also been home to a beautiful and famous synagogue.    It was built in 1855 and completely destroyed, razed to the ground, during Kristallnacht.  Sadly, it was never rebuilt to its former glory (or at all) after the war. I feel extremely sad about this, so sad it makes my heart feel heavy in my chest. I have to wonder why, when every other part of the town was restored, this was not…

So I close with a drawing that survived of the interior of the synagogue.  Obviously, we were unable to visit it, but I wish we could have. 

Nuremburg

We got a bit lost on the way to Nuremburg and the blinding snowstorm slowed us down a bit so we didn’t get to see much of the Nazi Party grounds (Richsparteitagsgelände--those Germans really love long, long, long, words) We did wander around a bit, tried to practice skidding out in the empty snowy parking lots without much success but then gave up on adventures for the day, heading for our bed and breakfast.

 

It was very nice and we left the next morning to go back to town and see the Toy Museum. 

I now covet this fabulous mini foos-ball game they had there called the weykick.  I did some research on it and it costs about 89 Euros for one – and it seems they are only available through mail order (how antiquated) but it was so much fun to play!

We then headed back through town to see a few of the more famous tourist destinations like the Kaiserburg Castle, St. Lorenz, St. Sebaldus and Leibfrauenkirsch (Church of our Lady)

Of course, I couldn’t resist taking photos of the amazing views and exciting shops we also strolled past:

 

 

 

The last 5 photos are of the large church at Hauptmarkt – the Church of our Lady.  We were impressed by the fact that this church looked as ancient as any other we had been in, but had, as a matter of fact, been bombed heavily during the second world war (evidenced in last photo above).  I thought it was particularly ironic since the site of this church was originally built on top of the Jewish temple the city razed to the ground after a terrible pogram.  “The church was built in the grand market, in place of the former Jewish synagogue, which was destroyed during the pogrom of 1349 (which followed an outbreak of Black Death).”  I’d think they’d maybe build a mini-temple in repentence or something after the war, but nope, they rebuilt the entire cathedral so the average visitor would never be able to tell it was not the original

But, by far, my favorite thing at the Hauptmarkt was the traditional, world famous gingerbread or  Lebkuchen.  Amazingly delicious and also, somehow, gluten free (so they said)!  I did some research and the top recipes listed under Lebkuchen were not gluten free, researched Nuremberger Lebkuchen with the same results – even gluten free Lebkuchen has rice flour listed as an ingredient so I’m not sure what the story is – but Griffin ate it and loved it and didn’t get sick so who knows?  I think I’ll just try this recipe or this one and see….. We even bought some to take along to Berlin and share with our friends.

We hit the road again and enjoyed the thrill of speed on the Autobahn.  Mr. Liberty, despite his age, flies along with the best of them and André reveled in trying to top 180 km/hr – which would be 110 miles per hour!  (This is totally legal, but not safe at all) Watch out Leipzig, here we come!

Karlsruhe

I am going to try to chronicle our great German adventure, but mostly with photos.

We left Besancon and the first city we stopped in was Karlsruhe.

On the streets of Germany there are cigarette machines – but you have to have an ID you can swipe to get the cigarettes out.  Pretty neat, huh?

I really loved the statue shown right…

It was snowing so we headed straight for the castle and spent an hour or so going through their wonderful interactive museum.  Zander especially loved it.

We had lunch at a local pub and I tried Gebratene Maultaschen: kind of like Tortellini, but much larger filled with some sort of strange cheese and green vegetable mix – it was also, fried with onions.  Yummy – but super strange!