Berlin: Taking the S-Bahn Further Out

Berlin, Germany: 5-10 November 2009

Part III

Saturday's plan was mostly to go to the Berlin Zoo. So we got on the U-Bahn and rode through the city and a large park until at last we got off at the stop we thought would be closest to the zoo. It took a moment to get our bearings and head in the right direction, plus we were distracted for a few minutes by the intriguing structure pictured to the left. I recognized it from its depiction in chocolate in the Rausch chocolatier from the night before, but that didn't help in identification. Clearly part of it used to be a church tower, but what was that modern tower next to it? And what happened to the original? It wasn't until we looked it up later that we found out it was originally built in 1895 by the son (or was it grandson?) of Kaiser Wilhelm in his memory. It was pretty much destroyed in an air raid in the Second World War and then afterwards they built the modern parts as a new belfry (the tower), a chapel (around the belfry), and a whole church (behind the ruins) so that there could still be a church on the site.

The Zoo was not only great fun for the whole family, but it was beautifully landscaped and full of baby animals as well. There were baby leopards, elephants, orangutans, and some small mammals (all the names were in German, so I'm not sure what they were other than really cute). We also saw a panda, lots of bears — including a sun bear who looked very sad (I love sun bears) — cavorting river otters (they are quite possibly my favourite animal), hippos, tigers, lions, lots of kinds of birds, grasslands animals (I also quite like giraffes - they are so odd!), monkeys, seals, and a rhino.

The South African penguins were really fun to watch because they kept making strange noises. One would raise his head up as if he was trying to eat something out of the sky and make this screechy sort of cry like an alarm. But none of the others would seem to notice and when he was done, he would waddle on like nothing happened. But then a little later, another would take up the cry. And just the way they were standing and walking around together made them seem intelligently social. The baby leopards were adorable, playing together in the pen with mom looking on, occasionally licking them.

Also adorable were the children at the playground. European children get the best playgrounds. It was like a big castle sort of thing with climbing sets around and swings of all kinds, including my favourite — it was a sea serpent! Basically it was a rope-thing made so that it was in permanent waves so you could sit on a hump or in a dip and it swung back and forward, I suppose it would be like a boat on the sea, sort of. We didn't try to play on that playground, though, because it was filled with kids and we didn't want to a) scare them off, b) make their parents nervous, or c) make complete idiots of ourselves and prove the American stereotypes correct.

We intended to be done at the Zoo in time to go even further out of the city center and check out some gardens that I thought looked interesting, but by the time we were ready to leave, it was something like 3pm. So we had a late lunch at a very crowded fast food place, found the nearby Hard Rock Café so Beverly could get a souvenir for her mom, and got on the S-Bahn (it goes further out than the U-Bahn and runs above-ground after it gets out of the city center) to try to get out to the gardens. The afternoon light was already on the wane when we arrived at our stop out in Zone B (all of the old city/city center is in Zone A). We sought out a map on the corner of two broad streets lined with sidewalks and grassy strips and soon were making our way towards the Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World). It was strange to be still officially in the city, but clearly a suburbian district. A few stores down the road and we were walking through apartment buildings interspersed with park areas and all linked by well-paved roads and broad cement sidewalks. Not at all like the mixture of streets crowded by construction and tall, close buildings, cobblestones, and old, broken sidewalks, and sudden wide plazas in the city center.

The gardens themselves were just past a meadow with a walking path running through it on which we saw a few people walking dogs or going for an evening jog. By this time, the sun was almost gone from the sky and the gardens were most definitely closed. I wasn't terribly upset because it had been a nice walk and an interesting change from the main city. But we were all hungry and so made our way back to a Lidl we had passed earlier. Lidl is a German store, but you can find it in most European countries. We even found one in Ireland at a pit stop on our way to the Inishere field trip - it is the only place in Ireland you can get pretzels. Anyway, it is a mini-grocery store, carrying just about every staple excepting produce and fresh meats. And the prices honestly are the best. We bought a bag of pasta, some sauce, and rolls to take back to the hostel and when we figured out what the cost would be if we split it evenly, it came out to 37 c. a person. I also got some jam for my breakfast muffins and Ellen and Bev got cereal for just a few more euros. I love Lidl.

We walked past a circus and went back to the station to wait for a train. When we got off the S-Bahn back at Freidrichstrasse, we ended up not going right home, despite our hunger. A rather large crowd of people was gathered, seemingly waiting for something to happen. We waited, too, and were rewarded with a video projected onto the blank wall of a building about the influence of America on the German economy immediately following the fall of the Wall. It was a little strange, but mostly in English and it kept our attention well enough that when the crowd followed a person with a megaphone at the end of the video, we followed as well. There was another video and then another, this one projected onto a support beam of a bridge. We were getting colder and colder and not all the films made sense and some were entirely in German, but we persisted and made it to the last video, projected next to a huge graffiti-ad for a workers' union (I think). Apparently these sorts of things run every now and then and this particular series happened to be on the European, especially German, economy since 1989. The project that does these things is called 'A Wall is a Screen'.

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On Sunday, we took the S-Bahn out to Schloss (Palace) Charlottenburg. It was still in Zone A, but out of the main city center. Originally, it had been actually just outside the city and so was a retreat for the royal family, but of course, cities expand and so now it is surrounded by apartments, banks, cafés, and the street that ends at its front gates is lined with a few museums, one of which we went to after our time at the palace - the Art Nouveau museum! We couldn't take pictures there, but if we had been allowed, I probably would have taken waaay too many. A lot of what was on display included furniture and dishware, but the paintings were so beautiful as well. It actually spanned art nouveau through art deco and a little beyond. Beverly and I had a bit of an argument about the status of dishes as art (I argue they are, she doesn't think so), but that is an essay for another time because now it is:

History time!

The palace was commissioned in the 1690s by Sophie Charlotte, wife of the Elector of

Brandenburg, who would in 1701 declare himself king and become King Friedrich I of Prussia. Sophie was a great patron of the arts and she was very interested in nature and her collections and gardens reflected this. Her gardens were the first in Prussia to follow in the latest fashion: the French Baroque gardens. They are very orderly, geometrical, symmetrical, and full of wide avenues and flat landscaping. This can be seen in the section of garden in the picture above. The rest of the grounds were converted to English style gardens (think of your more conventional meandering park style). In the gardens, a tea house was built (the above picture). Three stories. I guess they used it as a guest house as well, but we didn't go inside.

One of the rooms on the ground floor (the Green Room), Sophie had the outside wall set with two sets of huge windows and the interior walls covered with floor to ceiling mirrors, alternating with a rich green damask, reflecting the garden both literally and in colour. I loved that room, but could've done without the gold moulding on the ceiling. That's what you get with Baroque architecture, though - lots of gold and ornate decorative things. And mirrors. Take, for example, the room she had to display her extensive collection of china (Asian things were generally in vogue). The walls were completely covered in mirrors and all kind of ingenious little shelves and niches to show off the wares. It was pretty impressive. The chapel, too, was quite ornate. Consider: a huge gold crown held by a gold eagle on the back wall, an altar topped by cherub, drapery and cloud sculptures in the round, and a ceiling painted to be the opening of the heavens. Sophie had commissioned the chapel, but did not live to see it completed.

From the time it was begun up until the turn of the 20th century pretty much, the palace was being built, expanded, remodeled, or just re-decorated. After Sophie's death, Friedrich I named it Charlottenburg for her. Their son was Friedrich Wilhelm I, the Soldier King. His son was Friedrich II, the Great (1712-1786) and he used the upper floors as temporary accommodations while he had the New Wing built, Roccoco style (apparently the love of art skipped a generation). Friedrich Whilhelm IV (1759-1861) and his wife Elizabeth (1801-1873) had the upper floor re-done as private apartments for themselves. A lot of the palace was damaged in the World Wars, especially the upper floor, and very little of the original furniture survives, but most of the downstairs at least they have restored as best they can to what it would have been like when Sophie was there and have brought in period Baroque furniture. Upstairs is a little more sparse, but the rooms are still arranged as Friedrich Wilhelm and Elizabeth had them and there are a lot of pieces of art from the collections of the royals, from portraits to landscapes of South America.