The Jetpacker

Today was our first full day in Berlin, or as Jackie likes to call it, “Burrrrrrrrrlin.” We’ve traveled to some cold destinations, but Berlin might be the coldest so far.

When I called my dad to tell him it was going to be slightly below freezing today, he said “Nowhere… near… Berlin.”

We were anxious to get going today because our first stop was the most famous landmark in Germany: Brandenburg Gate.

Germany has survived a tumultuous history, and much of that history unfolded at the Brandenburg Gate.

Napoleon stole the sculpture on top of the gate. Hitler conducted rallies in front of the gate. Bombs hammered the area around the gate in WWII. The Berlin Wall divided the country right in front of the gate.

Today it’s a meeting point of guided tours, a dog-walking area, and a place for people in costume to make a few coins off easily impressed tourists.

The German parliament building, called the Reichstag, is just blocks from the gate. We knew we had to get there early because we heard about the long lines of people that wait to get in. Luckily, we only had to wait a few minutes before passing through security.

Atop the Reichstag is a giant glass dome where visitors can climb a spiral walkway to the top for a panoramic view of Berlin. Not only is it free to enter, but they give you an audio guide that talks about the German parliament and details the history of some of the surrounding buildings.

The cool thing about the audio guide is that it’s timed for a slow walk and triggered by sensors in the floor. So if we walked faster than the narration, the audio would fade out when we passed the marker and move to the next segment; if we backed up, the audio would pick up right where it left off.

Some of the historical accounts on the audio tour were a bit snooze-worthy, so we skipped over some of the lessons in favor of fun facts about nearby buildings that weren’t detailed in guidebooks.

After descending the walkway, we looked at photographs and read placards about German history that wrap around a massive mirrored funnel.

When we left, the line to get into the dome was about 200 people long. When we got there an hour earlier it was only 20.

A short walk led us to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Germany is known for pushing the boundaries of art, and this unusual memorial is no exception.

2,711 coffin-like concrete slabs are arranged like a grid over uneven terrain. The further you walk into the memorial, the taller the slabs grow and the walkways become more hilly and narrow. It’s a claustrophobic and disorienting way to remember the Jewish citizens murdered in Europe in WWII.

Beneath the memorial is an information center that lists the names of all the known Jewish Holocaust victims. Unfortunately, it was closed when we were there.

By this point we were ready to break for lunch, and right across the street from the memorial was a place called Barlin XXL Curry 37. The cartoon bear and the word “curry” sold me.

There were three options for currywurst: a small, a medium, and a double-XL. I figured that was just their clever way of saying the large is pretty big. Turns out, this thing was a formidable food challenge.

The currywurst was as long as my freakin’ arm. And I’m 6’4″.

It’s a little disconcerting knowing that I ate my arm’s length in sausage, but if I say it was an accomplishment, it’s easier to digest.

I’m almost disgusted that I finished the thing. I’m more disgusted that I didn’t get a medal or at least a certificate to document such an accomplishment.

More unusual than the two-foot long sausage slathered in ketchup and curry powder was the beer I had with it. It’s called Berliner Kindl.  Take a typical beer with a low alcohol content, mix it with flavored syrup, and you have Berliner Kindl.

I drank my beer with woodruff syrup. I have no clue what woodruff is, but it turned the beer bright green. It resembled that toxic ooze that turned four ordinary turtles into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The beer was good, but I didn’t acquire any martial arts skills in the drinking process.

It was difficult to pull my butt out of the seat after lunch, but we managed to walk to the Fuhrerbunker without setting off a minor earthquake.

Hitler’s infamous bunker was destroyed shortly after he committed suicide in it at the end of WWII; only a placard featuring a blueprint of the bunker exists today.

Apparently it wasn’t this super secure underground fortress that protected Hitler like a force field.  In actuality, the bunker couldn’t even withstand a blast that a common underground bomb shelter could.

It was a bit of a walk to the German History Museum from there, but we had to burn off lunch. The museum is housed in the Zeughaus, the oldest structure on Berlin’s major avenue, Unter den Linden. Completed in 1730, this baroque building was originally designed to store artillery.

And, wouldn’t you know, many of the galleries feature canons and guns and other weaponry used throughout German history.

The museum is quite extensive, and although we appreciate early German history, what fascinates and confuses most people is the last hundred years.

And after walking through the exhibits on WWI, WWII and the Cold War, we can’t say we’re any less confused. It makes a little more sense, but no placard or picture can tap into the German psyche of 1914 or 1933.

We were astonished to learn that Hitler came into the power under the guise of peace, yet mere weeks after becoming chancellor in 1933, he was already writing laws that persecuted Jews and ordering the construction of concentration camps. This only 15 years after Germany lost World War I. It’s something I don’t think we can ever understand.

Across the museum is Bebelplatz, a place made infamous by the book burning ceremony that was held here by Nazi youth group in 1933. Today there’s a monument featuring empty bookcases beneath a pane of glass in the ground, along with a quote by German poet Heinrich Heine that reads: “Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people.”

Nearby is St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, with its imposing dome, which had to be rebuilt after the church was completely destroyed in WWII.

Across the street we visited the Neue Wache. The building was originally designed as a guardhouse for troops of the Prince of Prussia, but today it’s a memorial for victims of war and tyranny.

There’s only one thing inside this cold, silent, empty chamber… a sculpture called Mother With Her Dead Son.

We backtracked a few stops by bus to get a quick snack at Cafe Einstein, which many people said had the best apple strudel in Berlin. They weren’t lying. The apples were soft and warm, and the layers of dough were thin and flaky like baklava. The tea was a great pick-me-up before we went to the DDR Museum.

We soon discovered that the DDR Museum was not a museum about Dance Dance Revolution, but instead the German Democratic Republic.

The exhibits show what it was like to live in communist East Germany through interactive exhibits. You open drawers to see what kids were learning, you sit in a typical living room and watch the news, you put on headphones and spy on your friends.

Yes, the DDR was so paranoid that the state police, called the Stasi, put hidden cameras and bugs everywhere to monitor citizens. But Big Brother couldn’t watch everybody.

So the Stasi turned some of its citizens into spies, forcing people to report on their friends. Sometimes these friends turned out to be political dissidents and were sent to prison. Some were even killed.

The museum takes a light-hearted approach to educating people about the DDR — from the exhibit on rebellion through nudism or the East German car driving simulation — but it’s definitely scary to think that such a society really existed.

The DDR was great, but we think somebody really needs to look into building a Dance Dance Revolution museum.

After the DDR museum, we went across the street for our first German Christmas market experience.

We walked the crowded aisles, looking at all the stalls filled with trinkets, clothes and food, and decided to have a hearty German dinner: sausage in a roll.

You’d think they would make a bun as long as the sausage, but no.  They stuff the sausage inside a measly dinner roll that’s barely able to contain the girth of this steaming hot badboy.

We already abandoned a responsible eating plan, so we capped the night with a Nutella crepe and headed back to the hotel.