Final Round-up of Dresden

Hello again, and welcome back to Dresden. I know I had previously posted some of these pictures in another post without any text, but I thought I'd repost some of them with explanation and some of the new ones I took in my last couple of days in Dresden. So enjoy!

This little green walking man is called Ampelmännchen (meaning: little traffic light man). He is the symbolic person shown on traffic lights at pedestrian crossings in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR - East Germany). Prior to the German reunification in 1990, the two German states had different forms for the Ampelmännchen, with a generic human figure in West Germany, and a generally male figure wearing a hat in the east.

Since reunification he has attained cult status, and a huge amount of popularity with tourists. You can buy Ampelmännchen everything (I bought cookie cutters), and he is, well, rather cute.

This is one of the photos that I had previously posted. It is of the square just outside the Frauenkirche (Church of our lady) in Dresden.

This is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). It was built in the 18th Century, although essentially destroyed during the fire-bombing of Dresden in World War 2. The church was rebuilt in 2004 with pieces of the original building (the darker-coloured bricks).

Inside the church isn't particularly stunning, it's very... gaudy. But still worth a look if you're in the area.

Here is some classic, communist architecture for you. And in yellow, to cheer you up.

The pictures on the left, right, and below here are of a church Matt and I came across while taking the tram into town. The sign outside the church said no more than "Trinity"-something, with no other information. Obviously the church has been destroyed, whether through war or other means, but is in the process of being re-built. It was mostly locked, so I couldn't get a good peek inside, but the outside sure was stunning.

This is the market that Matt and I went to on the last day I was in Dresden. It was a lot of fun, and full of things I would've liked to buy had I had the space... or money.

All these buildings above are located along the Elbe river, along a particular stretch called Bruhl's Terrace. You can read more about Bruhl's Terrace here on Wikipedia. Safe to say that it's a lovely, picturesque area of Dresden.

Matt and I later took another walk along a different stretch of the Elbe river. There are some very impressive manor houses along the river, along with some lovely views.

This house, believe it or not, is a hotel. It's called Castle Eckberg (website here) and it's a fancy hotel you can stay in - previously a manor house. It's all modern on the inside, but pretty fancy from the outside.

Well that's it, folks. That's it for this vacation and Germany. I'm back in London now, although I'm not sure for how long now. Time is a-tickin' and hopefully the weather will hold and I'll be able to get out and see some more countryside before I'm forced to leave!

Hope you enjoyed.

Reflections in Berlin

This is my last post about Berlin, and a slightly more artistic one, I suppose. I found that on vacation this time I seemed to be extra keen on taking photos of reflections. Perhaps it was the abundance of water and the blue skies. Either way, I ended up taking a lot of reflection-type photos and I like them a lot. So I hope you will, too.

The Berliner Dom.

The band in Pariser Platz.

The building that was previously the armoury.

The band in Pariser Platz.

Berlin

Welcome to a collection of random photos I took in Berlin that didn't deserve their own blog post. So I squished them all together. Ready?

This is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The original church on the site was built in the 1890s. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. The present building, which consists of a church with an attached foyer and a separate belfry with an attached chapel, was built between 1959 and 1963. The damaged spire of the old church has been retained and its ground floor has been made into a memorial hall.

I kind of like that they didn't try to repair any of the damage done during the bombing raid. Somehow it's a better reminder than any kind of memorial.

Where would you like to go?

This is a large tower in the middle of a big roundabout. I don't have much more information than that. It's on the road that leads towards the Brandenburg Tor.

This is one of the few pictures I took while standing atop what formerly was Hitler's Secret Bunker. Of course, the bunker is underground, and not much remains of it other than rubble, because it was destroyed when they were building the buildings that now stand around it. But these little birds seemed to be enjoying their bath, and I thought that was cute.

More signs.

This is a memorial located in a large building that used to house the guards/soldiers. It's not empty except for this one statue and a hole in the ceiling letting light it. It was designed by a woman who had lost her husband and all of her sons in the war. Sad.

These are the birds (ravens?) that I shared my crackers with. They were pretty friendly and seemed to enjoy the crackers. Eventually they must have gotten full, because they started taking the crackers and burying them in the snow. So I stopped giving them out. Cheeky birds.

Flowers that someone left on a Russian war memorial just outside the Reichstag building.

This is a panorama view of the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin. If you are thinking to yourself that those two cathedrals on either side look identical, you'd be correct. Except for a few things. Such as the fact that the German cathedral is just a wee bit taller than the French one. Take that.

One of them is the French cathedral and the other is the German cathedral. Both of them were heavily damaged and/or destroyed during WW2, and not rebuilt until after reunification, so they are quite modern.

You can read more about them here.

This is a plaque on the site where the Nazis burned well over 20,000 books that were deemed 'Un-German'. The quote on the left reads:

Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen. (Where they have burned books, they will in the end burn people.) It's interesting that this particular quote was written in 1821, and it rings eerily true for WW2.

This is the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral), oddly named because Berlin has never been the seat of a Catholic Bishop. The site was consecrated in 1454, although the current structure dates from the 20th Century. My tour guide didn't like it very much, he said something about good design having thrown up all over it. It's made to look old, which is appealing, but I didn't go inside, since it's all new and it's pricey to get in.

While this may look exciting, it is simple the city hall building. I can't find much more information about it, and given that most of the city was levelled in WW2, it can't be that old. But it looks cool.

This was the last picture I took in Berlin. I snapped it on the way back to the train station, while standing in the middle of the road. Don't worry, the road was empty. The sacrifices I make for a photograph. Heh.

Reichstag Building

This is, as I'm sure you know, the Reichstag Building here in Berlin. The Reichstag was designed as a home to the parliament of the German Empire and was opened in 1894. It was used by the parliament of the German Empire until 1918, after which it was used by the Weimar Republis until 1933.

The Thrid Reich had no parliament, so the building remained empty and derelict until after German reunification.

(It was a much crappier first day - lots of fog and grey - I took many more pictures the second day).

In 1933 it was severly damaged in a fire supposedly set by Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, although he has been since posthumously pardoned for the crime.

The fire has a story behind it, too. It was an arson attack on the Reichstag building on Feb 27 1933. The fire started in the session chamber, and by the time the police and firefighters had arrived, the main chamber of Deputies was engulfed by flames. Inside the building Marinus van der Lubbe was found. He was a Dutch communist, and the fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that teh Communists were beginning a plot against the German government. Adolf Hitler, who had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany only 4 weeks before, urged the President to pass an emergency decree, suspending civil liberties. With these liberties suspended, the government instituted mass arrests of Communists, including all the parliamentary delegates. With them gone and their seats empty, the Naxis became a majority party; subsequent elections confirmed this position and thus allowed Hitler to consolidate his power.

After the WW2 and the Cold War, the building lay essentially in ruins. During the reconstruction of the building it was almost completely gutted, removing all by the outer walls. The glass dome on top of the building has also been reconstructed, giving visitors a lovely (although foggy in my case) view of Berlin.

The main hall of the parliament below and be seen from the dome, and mirrors reflect natural light into the hall. A large sun shield tracks the movement of the sun electronically and blocks direct sunlight which might glare at those beflow.

This picture is of the mirrors reflecting into the purple seats of parliament below, if you were confused.

Usually the land that spans the front of the building is grassy. In my case, it was soggy and swampy. Although in this picture you can see the glass dome better.

I like this picture because the moon is in it.

I sat in front of the Reichstag building until the sun went down on my last day, because the train station is only about a 10 minute walk from the Reichstag.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

This is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It is located in Berlin, approximately one block away from the Brandenburg Tor.

It is basically what you see here - 2711 concrete slabs of varying height, arranged along a grid on a sloping field. It was finished in 2004 and inaugurated on May 10, 2005, 50 years after the end of World War 2.

There's not much to say about the memorial itself, the designer, architect Peter Eisenman, has said very little of the point of the memorial, other than that it was designed to produce an "uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."

The site itself is deceivingly big and easy to get lost in. Unfortunately Berlin was still covered with a lot of ice and snow, making it quite difficult to walk around, and therefore I really did spend more time making sure I didn't fall over than actually thinking about the monument. Once you get to the middle of the monument, however, the blocks rise up so high that you do feel quite confused and small.

There have been some criticisms (as always) of this particular project - one main criticism spawned from the use of anti-graffiti paint on the stones. Berlin is known for its graffiti and they designers didn't want the stones to be defaced. This is all well, but unfortunately it was discovered that the company in charge of producing the anti-graffiti spray, Degussa, also produced a very different substance during WW2 - Zyklon B - a cyanide-based pesticide used in the gas chambers of exterminations camps during the Holocaust. That was an oops.

After much discussion and, I imagine, a lot of yelling, they decided to continue with the company and the anti-graffiti spray, because, as our tour guide said, it's impossible to exclude every German company that had anything to do with World War 2. So fair enough.

Either way, it's halfway between Brandenburg Tor and the site of Hitler's Secret Bunker, so do check it out.