S. Worthen | Weblog

G. and J. are friends from Toronto, spending the fall in Germany for degree-related research purposes. We went to visit them two weekends ago in Berlin while they're conveniently located on the same side of the ocean as we are. Of course, since we stayed in a Scottish hotel while in Paris, it made perfect sense to stay in an Italian hotel while in Germany. Through luck more than planning, we ended up staying by Friedrichstrasse, right in the heart of East Berlin, where most of the touristy things are.

The Soviet side of Berlin preserved the old, war-damaged buildings, while the American side was prone to pulling down the ruins and starting again. This is why the buildings most steeped in history - the touristy ones - are mostly located in the eastern part of the city. For shopping, we went westwards.

( Saturday...new holocaust memorial, medieval churches, the Sony Center, and lots of food-and-warmth breaks... )

( Sunday...Schloss Charlottenburg, Jewish Museum, die Zwölf Apostel... )

( Monday...the Reichstag... )

( Monday...lunch at a Christmas market... )

( Monday...the KaDeWe food floor... )

Berlin is a vibrant city, full of new buildings and scaffolding and painstakingly-restored structures. We ate well, it was inexpensive by the standards of places we've been seeing lately, and G. and J. were superb hosts in a city they have lived in for all of a few weeks. I'd like to see still more of it some day.