Blog Revisited Jan 2011

It is January 24, 2011, and I am finally getting back to working on my blog! Besides enjoying Christmas month in Vienna, I really couldn't work too much on the blog because I have been working on plans for the rest of our trip.

Jack had some idea of where to go, but we have revised our ideas several times, which was fortunate for us. First, we were going to spend the winter in north Africa, as we did back in 2008 by visiting Morocco, Egypt and then onto Turkey. We gave up that idea for the one of just visiting Italy - going south, even to Sicily. I wanted to spend Christmas in Rome, but Jack got it into his head that Vienna would be a beautiful place for Christmas.

We were seriously thinking of going to Tunisia - and we would have been caught up in their terrible troubles right now! We would have either been unable to get there, or we would have been there and not been able to get out. Either way, we are very glad we decided not to visit that country at this time.

Sicily is also having troubles with its volcano, so we are glad that we did not venture down there this time. And Vienna in December is fabulous. Its beauty, its Christmas markets and all of the celebrations and decorations and extra musical programs are not to be missed. Sure, it was cold there, but we were prepared, and we survived. We were very glad to spend that month in Vienna. We are already talking about going there in the spring some year.

However, it was hard to find places to stay for over a week in Vienna at that time of year, because, as we found out first hand, there are lots of tourists who come to Vienna at that time to celebrate Christmas and New Year's. During the month we were there, we had to book three different hotels.

But before Vienna, we decided to visit Krakow after Berlin. At the time, we did not have a decent map - I made sure to buy one of Europe as soon as we got to Krakow - so I really didn't realize how far east we were going from Berlin. The long train ride to Krakow was really an experience - I will go into detail about that in my Krakow blog - and once we got there I was really appalled. We had come from Germany, which is a country that is not only new - we had bombed it to pieces during the second world war - but it is thriving. The stores, the restaurants, the hotels are all prosperous. Poland, on the other hand, is still very poor. Jack had to remind me over and over that noone helped Poland after the war, and they are still struggling to be a good member of the European Union.

Jack also said that we should go to Prague. Everyone talks about going there, so since we are in the "neigborhood", we should stop there for a few days. That train ride was going to be just about seven hours from Krakow, with a stop or two. We still had time before December, so I said - well, why don't we jog over to Budapest? It is supposed to be beautiful and we have time and it is not too far...

Another long train ride from Prague to Budapest! We were glad to have seen that city, but finally we were going to get to Vienna. That train ride was not too bad, only about three hours.

We had a month there to think about the next part of our journey, but the problem was, that Jack was so taken by Vienna that he really didn't want to think about going anywhere else! He did mention that we should go to Salzburg, and then I had to figure out, train-schedule wise- how to get to Italy. It is not easy, because of the mountains. The train rides are hours long. I did not want to take another train ride that lasted ten or twelve hours, with several changes, so I decided that we would have to spend a few days here and there before we actually got to our destination.

It was an easy hop from Salzburg to Munich, and Jack wanted to stay in Munich several days. That sounded good to me too, until I started investigating the prices of hotels. Way too expensive for our budget. I wasn't sure why the jump in prices, but it probably was the ski season and businesses got back to work after December. Maybe a lot of business travelers to Munich. I don't know, but we could only afford to stay about five days in Munich before the hotel rates hiked way up.

Jack was not happy with that, but I stood firm. I still had to get from Munich to Bologna, Italy - Munich's trains wind around and catch up with the Italy trains, but there was only an overnight train to Bologna. So I said we are going to have to stay in Milan a few nights. He didn't like that either - Milan is a huge city, but other than that it has little to offer. We had already seen the duomo, the galleria and La Scala. Again, I insisted that we stay there to break up the trip.

We did and had a good time, though the pollution there is horrible, and my allergies kicked in those days. We had a good three days, but we were ready for Bologna.

We had already planned to spend a couple of months in Italy and then head back up through Germany to Belgium. Belgium is a small country like Holland, but we spent three months in Holland, so maybe we could find things to see in that amount of time also. Wrong! First of all, there were nine cities in Holland that we visited. There are only four in Belgium that might be interesting. We don't think there is as much art as in Holland, either. Basically, I had an extra month to work with.

We had already decided that we would sail to New York on the Queen Mary 2 in late June. I had checked airline prices from Paris to Dallas and from London to Dallas, and they were outrageous! And the press and TV was full of the horror stories about full body scans and pat downs, etc. Not only are you humiliated when you try to get on these planes, but then you are squeezed into a tiny seat, with no food or water for hours. And you pay extraordinary amounts for this? What is the point? We had the time; we were not going to step foot in an airport.

I checked the schedules for the QM2 and discovered that it goes from Southampton to New York in late June. They don't take reservations online, so we had to ask our travel agent, Paul of Salisbury, as Jack calls him, to handle all the arrangements. We met him back in summer of 2007, when we were in Salisbury, England, and he had designed and handled our trip through Morocco, Egypt and Turkey. We had kept up correspondence with him, and he was more than happy to help us with trip arrangements for the QE2. Since it leaves from Southampton, we can look forward to seeing him again as we pick up our travel tickets, etc.

So, since we knew the end date of our trip, I had to work out the details of meshing where we were and where we would be until June 24. It turned out to be sort of complicated.

Krakow November 2010

Above: a faded building in Krakow; the Wawel cathedral in central Krakow. Left, detail of the cathedral.

We had spent three months in Germany, so we were forced to move on to another country. We could stay in a European country for three months without a visa; hence, the three-month rule.

We wanted to visit Krakow, but boy, oh boy, the train ride was going to be nine hours! We looked at the map and saw that from Berlin to Krakow was a huge space. We decided to come back to Berlin for a couple of nights, because we would have had to come back to Berlin anyway from Dresden to catch the train east. We stayed at StadMitte because there are so many restaurants around there and very easy to get around.

The day we were leaving was November 3, the day after the mid-term elections in the US. Of course, on a travel day, I woke up about 5:00 am and turned on CNN - it was only about 11:00 pm there, and not many elections had even been decided. But it looked like the Democrats were losing the House badly. We watched the news as long as we could, but we had to leave in order to catch the 9:30 train at the Berlin Hauptbanhof.

We left for the train station about 8:00; had a quick breakfast at the train station and went to sit at the track. Jack and I have differences of opinion about catching the train: I like to get there early and scope the place out and figure out the ropes, etc. He would rather get there just before the train is ready to pull of the station (I exaggerate a little) but he does not like to wait. But I won out for this train.

It was going to be a long ride, but we had first class tickets and we did not have to change trains. So far so good. However, an announcement came over the loud speaker that our train was going to be one half hour late due to an accident... The half hour turned into an hour, then into two hours! Then it announced something - in German, of course - that we did not catch. The lady also waiting there said that they just cancelled the train, but they apologized for any inconvenience.

Jack went up to the information booth or the reservation booth - I am not sure - to find out what our options were. I stayed with the luggage. He came back with the news that there was another train leaving in about half hour to Warsaw, and then we could change trains there to Krakow. But no first class left on that train. The lady gave Jack some paperwork to send into Deutchebon to get our money back on our first class tickets. I carried all this stuff around for a couple of months but Jack said he was not going to fill it out - all in German - so to just throw it away.

We dragged our bags upstairs - they fortunately have escalators - and found the train to Warsaw. We took second class seats, stuffed our bags somewhere and settled down for the five hour train ride.

The second thing to go wrong was that this train was half hour late in leaving the station; our connection in Warsaw to Krakow gave us only a half hour, so already we had missed the connection. Of course, I worried about this all across eastern Germany and into Poland.

We did get in about six o'clock pm, too late to catch the other train to Krakow. When I tried to ask the conductor before we reached the station about which track we were coming in on, he could not answer me because he could not speak English, and I, of course, did not have a word of Polish. There was a young man who translated to me and he said that they have no idea what track they are coming in on and they have no idea which track is the train for Krakow...

We got there and dragged our bags into the station to see if there was another train to Krakow that night. I was struck by the condition of the train station. It was undergoing reconstruction, but the existing station was very old and in very bad shape and overrun by people trying to catch trains. We found a lady in a little booth selling tickets. She did not speak English and Poland does not use the euro. Fortunately I was standing next to an ATM machine so we got some Polish money and Jack went back to try to find out about a train.

There was a train to Krakow in about an hour. He bought tickets and we set out to find the track for this train. Somehow we found it and we stood there until the train came in. We happened to notice a couple also waiting for the train, and I recognized them from the station in Berlin earlier that morning. We ended up sitting with them in a compartment all the way from Warsaw to Krakow. We talked to them - they were Dutch and the woman had good English - about where they lived and where they were going, etc. In the meantime, the train was barreling down the tracks - it never stopped until we got to Krakow. It was pitch black so we could not see any of the countryside we were racing through.

We finally got to the Krakow station, which was also under construction, somehow found a cab, even though it was close to midnight, and got to our hotel. I looked up and saw the castle lit up and thought at least we are in a good location. I had picked this hotel because it was near the castle, but sometimes the distances are not as close as the advertisement would have you believe.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for the night, so we had to go to bed hungry. But the hotel room was great; the bed was comfortable and it was quiet. The next morning the shower was hot and roomy and the breakfast, which was included in the room, was fabulous. I had nothing but praise for this hotel.

Next morning we got a map and walked to the square, about a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. I was really not prepared for Krakow. I had spent too much time in Germany, which is thriving, new and energizing. Krakow is none of those things. I will save the details in the next edition.

Dresden October 2010

Part of the palace in Dresden; the Zwinger palace and a statue of Emperor Augustus.

We left Leipzig reluctantly, that Monday morning, October 18. We walked to the train station, which was right across the street, dragging our bags behind us, had our usual breakfast and then boarded the train to Dresden about 11:00am. It was a fairly short ride to Dresden, just a couple of hours. We were staying at an NH in Dresden, but I wasn't sure how close to the old town we were.

It turned out that we were nowhere near the old town. We were in an area out in the boonies, in among car showrooms and repair shops. What an rundown area! It was interesting,though, because the apartment buildings lining the streets were being renovated piece by piece. Old, rundown, grey apartment buildings were being transformed into newly stuccoed, painted ones. It reminded us that Dresden was part of the old East Germany, and renovations from the Soviet-style block apartments were less than twenty years old.

The NH hotel - a Spanish chain in which we have stayed several times - was a very nice one, but so far out from town. We figured that this area had enough space for big tour buses to be parked, so tours used this hotel to house their groups. Indeed, there were several tour groups staying at this hotel while we were there.

We checked in and found out that a tram straight into town was just "up the street, a few minutes walk". We were suspicious of these directions " just a few minutes walk", because the walk was usually at least ten minutes duration. However, we unpacked and walked up to the tram stop. It was not too bad, I must say, but at least a ten minute walk in good weather.

We bought a week tram ticket at the stop and waited for the #3 tram. Sure enough, it was only a few minute wait and then we were on our way. The ride into town was really a nice ride, and it took us over the river Elbe with a magnificent view of the city: the opera house, the castle, the churches. It was really worth the inconvenience of being so far from the city to be able to see this view everytime we rode the tram.

We got off where we thought it might be the way to the old town, and made our way through restaurants, cafes, shops and more churches. We came to the square and lo and behold, there was another NH hotel, right at the edge of the square. "Why didn't we stay at this NH hotel?" Jack wanted to know??? I didn't know either, except that maybe it was more expensive than our hotel? I would have to check it out. In the meantime, we spotted an arcade, which is a shopping mall, and made our way toward it. We also spotted a bankomat, for future reference for cash. We were off to a good start.

The arcade was a three-story glass building, with everything imaginable inside: stores, restaurants, grocery stores, drug stores and even a post office. There were stores outside the arcade also, the upscale stores we had seen in Berlin and in Leipzig. This place was thriving. We found a food court in the lower level, full of places to eat. Jack spotted a good bratwurst stand and we ate there almost every day. So did everyone else; it was always full of people, either taking a break from shopping or starting their day with a hot cup of coffee and a bratwurst roll or a plate full of fried potatoes and schnitzel.

I had heard about Dresden all my life; what a beautiful city it was and how it was burned to the ground by the Allied bombing, mostly in hopes that the German people would be so disheartened that they would press their government to stop fighting. That didn't work, so the whole city was destroyed. Then after the war, the Soviets took over and they didn't much like the Germans either, so they did not try to restore the city at all. They just threw up some cheap housing and probably some factories and didn't worry about the old town. It wasn't until Germany was reunited in 1990 that West Germany started pouring in millions of German marks into Dresden, to restore its beautiful churches, opera house, palaces, etc. So all of the reconstruction was really less than twenty years old. What was surprising though, was that the buildings looked old and worn out. It turns out that the stone they used for the restoration is loaded with some kind of chemical which turns black with just a bit of air reaching it. So the buildings looked like they needed cleaning, and they were really pretty new.

There were photographs all over the city, showing the total destruction of the city, the mounds of bombed-out buildings and the half buried churches, etc. But now the city was recovering and

tourists were coming back to the city. We figured out that there are many West German tourists coming to Dresden now, to see how the city has renovated itself. There are lots of Europeans coming to this city and enjoying its beautiful sites and museums.

We made our way to the tourist information center, because we wanted to see what music programs there were in the ten days that we were in the town. We immediately bought tickets to the opera and to a ballet, and we also found out that Kurt Masur, the famous German director, was going to direct a Mozart at the St Nicolas Church, so we wanted to hear that. We also bought tickets to the Messiah at that church. We wanted to hear the music, but we also wanted to visit the the opera house and the church where the concerts were to be held.

We were not disappointed; the opera house is just beautiful. I brought my camera the second time we visited to get a chance to capture the beauty of the building. The first concert was Giselle, the ballet. It was a modern approach to this classic ballet, but it was very beautiful and we enjoyed it.

The second visit to the opera house was to see Rossini's "The Girl from Algiers". I looked it up on the computer so we would know the story. It is a story about a beautiful girl who is kidnapped by a Turkish shiek who wants a younger woman for his harem. But the girl works hard to bring her boyfriend to the palace to rescue her, and sure enough, she tricks the Turkish sheik and she escapes with her boyfriend after some shennanigans. It is a light-hearted comedy and it was fun to watch. The leading tenor, the boyfriend, is a Mexican from Vera Cruz, so I felt like we had a neighbor in the cast. His voice was beautiful and he was really expressive, and the crowd loved him. I think he got the biggest applause of all the singers.

When we left the opera house, we just had to cross the street and wait a few minutes for the tram to take us to our hotel. What an easy way to get back and forth to these downtown venues.

During our stay they were working on the tram lines so several times the trams were rerouted into the city. So we got to see different views of the city and really got to know our way around. We also had to find the stamp store to find some old covers, so we investigated new trams for the ride. As we rode the new rides, we would be on the lookout for interesting places to eat or other sites that we wanted to come back and investigate.

A big draw for the city is the Zwinger Palace, a complex of buildings, connected by a beautiful garden. This was the place where the royalty lived, and they have restored it to its former splendor. The days we were there were sunny and bright, so we were able to get some good photographs.

One of the most interesting collections we saw there was the China collection. In the late 1600's the Dutch and the English had established themselves as sea traders, and they brought back beautiful porcelain and jade from China. These pieces were very costly and therefore very popular with the aristocracy and rich middle class. Many of these pieces are shown in one of the wings of the Zwinger palace, and they were unbelievably beautiful.

There were many shipwrecks during those years, so much of the porcelain was lost. That gave the German emperor Augustus the idea to start his own porcelain factory. So, about the year 1702, the German factory of Meissen was established. He hired local pottery artists, who passed down the craft year after year. They gradually designed their own "china" and it became more and more beautiful and precious. Now it is just as expensive and exquisite as the original china.

We took the train to the Meissen factory, right outside Dresden, and took the tour of the factory. They have artists showing how they make the porcelain and how they decorate it. The job looks very tedious and no room for errors. Their showroom had many examples of their work for sale, from dishware to tea services to elaborate decorative pieces like clocks and lamp bases, etc. We bought a few small cups for some friends, and I picked out a small plate for myself.

Later on, in stores in Dresden and in Vienna, we saw the Meissen porcelain in the window, with pieces that were worth thousands of dollars.

Our time in Dresden went much too quickly, and before we knew it, we were packing our bags and boarding the train back to Berlin for a couple of days before we left for Krakow. Dresden is a beautiful city and it is great to see it in its former glory and so many visitors there to enjoy it once again. I would recommend a visit to Dresden to anyone who wants to see a beautiful part of Germany.

Leipzig October 2010

Bach, his gravestone, and the Rathhaus in Leipzig.

October 7, 2010, we were on our way to Leipzig. We spent more than a month in Berlin, and I think we were ready for a new adventure. Leipzig was only an hour away, and our first class seats on the train were perfect. We actually stopped in Wittenberg, the home of Luther and his 95 objections pinned on the wall of the Schloss Church. We leaned out to see the huge bell tower of the church and remember our day in Wittenberg a couple of months earlier.

We got to Leipzig at 1:30pm and hopped a cab to take us to the Novotel Hotel. The journey was all of about two minutes - the hotel was right across the street from the bahnhof! We did not realize it at the time. The cabbie was fine with the short ride. There were several hotels in a row just across the huge street in front of the train station. We found out that Leipzig was the publishing center of the medieval world and had conventions galore in those days. It is still a center for conventions; hence the row of huge hotels so close to the train station.

We settled in to our hotel room and then took a stroll around the city. This was a far cry from Berlin, for we were in the middle of everything: shops, restaurants, churches, opera house and concert house. We were loving it, mainly because it was hard to make our way around the city of Berlin. Here, everything was in walking distance. We were in heaven.

Leipzig was completely demolished by the Allies in the second world war also, so all of the buildings that we investigated were restored to their former beauty. It looked like an old town, but it was really just about twenty years old. It was part of the Soviet bloc from the 40's to the 90's, and only since Germany was reunited was it returned to its former glory.

We learned that the revolution to end the separation of east and west Germany actually began here in Leipzig. They had meetings in the St. Nicholas church in the square every Wednesday, until they meetings were broken up. Finally, the people of Leipzig met in the square in front of the opera house and demanded that they be set free. Protests then started all over Germany and the wall came down, etc. It must have been so exciting in Leipzig to be the start of the peaceful revolution and the reunification of Germany.

We strolled down the pedestrian area of Leipzig and found dozens of great stores and places to eat. It was a great first day and we were excited to explore for our short ten days that we would be here.

We wanted to make sure to attend as many concerts as possible here - so the next day we went to the Gewandhaus to get tickets. That night they were performing Hindemith and Bruckner - two composers we were not that familiar with but we were willing to hear them. As I mentioned before, the orchestra worked themselves to death on these two pieces! The night was wonderful, and the music was glorious. We had great seats and tried to soak up the pieces as much as possible. They were modern pieces, so to speak, so they used every instrument in the orchestra, which was fun to watch. After the concert, it was an easy walk back to our hotel.

Saturday was devoted to discovering Thomas Kirche, the church where Bach was choir master for over twenty years, in the 1700's. To think that this church was still here and still vigorous in the community was just unbelievable. We happened onto a choir concert - the St. Thomas choir was not in town at the time, but they had a German choir performing that afternoon, so we stayed to hear them.

The church itself is not that imposing, though it stands majestically in a square all by itself. The German choir actually sang what is known as an English evensong, with some hymns and some psalms. They were really good, and the Rutter, the Stanford and the psalm were excellent. I was really impressed.

There were lots of restaurants all around Leipzig, so we tried several of them. The Indian restaurant was good and very close to our hotel. On Sunday we attended a string quartet concert at the Gewandhaus, in one of the smaller concert halls. These guys: first, second violin, viola and cello, worked away at some beautiful Beethoven. Again, we had great seats and were able to see their communication and their enjoyment of the pieces. It was a wonderful morning.

The weather in Leipzig was getting colder, but it was very sunny there. I began to realize that I needed a coat to get through the winter, so I went in one of the big department stores they have there and bought a coat. Jack had tracked down a stamp store to pick out something for our friend Rick, so we met at the pub across from the St Thomas Church, supposedly where Bach used to frequent. It is a very comfortable little bar, and it has great pastries as well. We ended up there many times during our stay in Leipzig.

We found a great breakfast place not far from the hotel. I was never sure what the name was, but it had a huge elephant over the entrance of the cafe, so that is what I called it. We went there on Oct 12, Jack's birthday, and splurged with a champagne breakfast. That evening we had a great dinner at one of the restaurants, Augustus House.

Later on in the evening we watched CNN as it mentioned that the Chilean miners would be rescued the next day, the middle of the evening for us. We watched Euro News for hours during the night, as they were covering the entire rescue live. What excitement as each one was pulled to the surface. It is one of my most moving memories of 2010. I wrote each of their names down in my notebook and watched their families wait to see them in the capsule.

The next day we visited the photography/modern art museum; it is a very interesting building in the middle of one of the squares - very modern and about five stories high. Inside, there are probably only about three stories, because each one was huge. A lot of times modern art needs huge spaces, and they have built this museum to house big exhibits. With so much modern art, the building is really the star and the so-called art is either weird or boring.

We found a great place to eat breakfast - don't laugh: in the train station. They have made the bottom two floors of the train station a beautiful mall, with stores and restaurants and cafes. The upper most floor is for the trains. Jack loves his bratwirst in the morning, and I am satisfied with a roll and a cup of coffee, so everyday but Sunday we marched across the street and had our breakfast. On Saturday morning we wanted to buy our train ticket for Dresden, so we went up to the higher level. We immediately noticed that there were dozens of policemen - everywhere. We got our tickets and our breakfast and walked back to the hotel. At this point, there were dozens of police vans parked in front of the train station. They had closed the streets around our hotel and lined up van after van along the street. We asked the hotel people and they said that the neo-Nazi groups had staged a demonstration for Leipzig, so the police were out in full force. They even had police forces and vans from Berlin for crowd control. They were not allowed to have a parade, just give speeches at the stand that was set up for them. All day long we heard the droning of the speeches, and lots of people milling about. Fortunately for the city, it rained heavily all day, so maybe that also helped with crowd control.

During this time the Texas Rangers were playing the Yankees in the American League Series to get the honor of going to the World Series. I got up early everymorning to get the score. Jack's cousin Marg, who is a big sports fan and watched each of the games, gave me a rundown of what had happened the night before. The Yankees always intimidated their opponents, but I was hopeful that the Rangers would be able to hold on.

One of the most enjoyable things we did was visit the Bach museum, right across the way from his church. It had just been renovated and it was beautiful. Besides being able to listen to any of his compositions on headphones, in a nice area with comfortable chairs, we learned a lot about the man himself. It turned out that he was quite a musicologist and traced a lot of the pieces that his family had written and transcribed them for posterity. He also did an extensive family tree and worked out the family history for many generations.

Our last day in Leipzig was one to just enjoy the city; we had breakfast at our Elephant House and then walked around to take in the sights once more. I had always heard of this city but never thought I would ever get here. It seemed so far east in Germany, maybe old and hard to get to. I never dreamed it was so pretty and so vibrant, and the people so friendly and warm. It was one of my favorite cities. Tomorrow we would travel to Dresden and experience its beauty, but today I was very happy in Leipzig.

Berlin and Leipzig - Music

German flag atop the Reichstag. Old Prussian Guard House that is now a peace memorial on Unter den Linden Strasse.

I decided to combine the music we heard in Berlin with the Leipzig music.

On Sunday morning at 11:00 we went to the Berlin Concerthouse in the Stadmitte area of town to hear the Carl Emmanuel Bach chamber orchestra. Jack had gotten great tickets, and we were seated on the first row! This concert house is beautiful - smallish but decked out in the beautiful red velvet seats with twinkling lights everywhere. The downstairs was full of people that morning, ready to hear some Bach and Mozart.

The chamber group marched in right at the appointed time and stood for the whole concert. The official name of the group is the Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra, with Hartmut Haenchen as the director. There were two musicians on each part: two first violins, two seconds, two violas, a cello and a bass violin. For some of the pieces there was help from some woodwinds.

The first piece they played was a modern take on Bach: ArvoPart Collage on B-A-C-H. It was fun and weird, but then they got down to business with a J.S. Bach (1685-1750) cantata, a W.F. Bach (1710-1784) symphony in dminor, a J.C. Bach (1735-1782) symphony in gminor. What a treat and they all enjoyed what they were doing so much.

Then the featured soloist came out: Karl Leister, clarinettist. They played a Mozart clarinett concerto, with the famous adagio movement. I am sure everyone would recognize the beautiful piece, even if they didn't know the name of it. I recalled that in the movie "Out of Africa" this adagio was heard on the little phonograph that Dennis gave Karen.

Because of the structure of the concerto, we could not clap for this movement - we have to sit there and only clap at the end of the whole piece. I noticed that German audiences do not jump to their feet so much at the end of the piece as the Dallas audiences do, but they continue to clap and clap and give several calls for the musicians. That is what happened at the end of this concerto. So the group gave us an encore. And the encore was this adagio movement of the Mozart - it was even more beautiful than the first time. This time we clapped up a storm. I thought what a wonderful thing this director did by playing this movement again and giving us an opportunity to clap especially for it. Maybe they do that all of the time, but I had never witnessed that before.

The next concert we went to was at the Berlin philharmonic, near Potsdammer Platz. We ate an early dinner at the arcade, then walked over to the concert hall with everyone else. I mentioned before that the hall was really a strange one - very modern but the orchestra is almost in the round. Our seats were perfect - almost like box seats - up a little high and to the right and not behind anyone. We could see the director's face as he turned to the cellos, so we were not exactly behind him. The acoustics were very good.

We heard two pieces that night. The first was from an opera: "Juliette" by Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). The Mezzo soprano was Juliette and most of the singing. The Tenor was also a featured singer. It was a beautiful set of pieces, quite modern, so all of the orchestra was put to work.

The second piece was Antonin Dvorak's Symphony nr. 7 in dminor. This piece was fantastic, and the entire orchestra worked hard on it. It had everything - so much to watch besides listening to the music. When it was over, the audience again clapped and clapped, not standing but great appreciation for the musicians. Even when it looked like the evening was over and the musicians were gathering their stuff and heading out, as we were, some people kept clapping until the director came out again, for another call. The audience certainly knew what they were doing.

During the intermission, we went downstairs and had a glass of wine. We noticed that most of the audience was made up of older people, but there were some young people mixed in also. We wondered if young people had given up on classical music, but not in this town.

When we got to Leipzig, the first thing we did was to get some tickets to concerts. The first one we picked was the Gewandhaus orchestra, with director Herbert Blomstedt. They were playing Paul Hindemith's Symphony " Mathis der Maler". This piece was a musical tribute to one of Grunewald's paintings on the Crucifixon. If you know the artist, you know that his paintings are usually very stark and bloody. And this piece was very descriptive. There was every conceivable kind of instrument playing, including all kinds of percussion.

The second piece was a Bruckner. Mind you, we probably would have preferred some Bach or Mozart, but we were only in Leipzig about ten days, so our choices were numbered. Anyway, this Brukner, one of his romantic symphonies, was a beauty. And again, every musician in the orchestra was playing almost all of the time. It was quite a treat.

Another concert we went to in Leipzig was to hear the Leipziger Stringquartet. Just four guys, one on a part. This concert was in a smaller chamber, and we had great seats again, in the front row. We could see how they communicated with each other and who the leader was, and how much they enjoyed what they were playing. They played all Beethoven that morning, and they worked hard on every movement of every piece. They were wonderful.

We also went to an organ concert at the great hall in Leipzig. They have a Schuke organ at the Gewandhaus. The organist was Michael Schonheit. He played Bach, of course, and Mendelssohn. The Bach was my favorite. The organist was very good, and we really enjoyed the concert.

I have tried to give a picture of Berlin by describing topics instead of a chronolgy. I hope I have given a flavor of the city. We never could figure out whether we liked the city or not. It is so huge and has so many neigborhoods that are different from each other, it is hard to describe Berlin as one city. It has gone through a century of defining history and it is still trying to get its bearings as a unified city once again. I would recommend anyone to visit there, but have at least a couple of weeks there to really get a feel for the city. Seeing all of the sights is one thing, just letting the city's atmosphere sink in is another.

Berlin - its buildings

Photos: far left - Bauhaus museum.

Middle: Mexico embassy in Berlin.

Right: Soviet TV tower,showing the Pope's revenge of the cross made by sunlight hitting the tower.

Berlin has many beautiful buildings, some restored to their original, and some completely new. I would like to describe some of these buildings and their significance to the city.

The first "building" I should show is the TV tower that the Soviets built in the eastern sector of the city. This tower is so huge that really, no matter where you are in the city, you can catch a glimpse of it. It is located on square known as Alexander Platz, a huge area with stores, eating areas and parks, and of course, the Ubahn station named for the Platz. I am not sure how lively it was during the Soviet era, but now it is full of people and places to shop and eat.

The TV Tower is really huge when you get close to it. It is a very tall tower, with a silver ball near the top. I think they actually had a restaurant in that silver ball once upon a time. The weird thing is that when the sun hits the ball, a silver cross appears on the ball. Everyone thinks that is pretty funny, since the communist's did not believe there was a God. Having the symbol of Christianity show up on their magnificent TV tower was very ironic. It is called the Pope's revenge.

I have already talked about the Reichstag, but this building is really a standout, and the glass dome makes it a must see for tourists. Museum Island is also a wonderful place to visit just for the buildings. There is also a Gendarme Marked square, located in Stadt Mitte. During Napoleon's time, the square housed the French army. Now it is a beautiful square, with the Concerthouse of Berlin, with the French Hugenot Church on one side, and the Lutheran Church on the other.

Berlin is full of shops and department stores, but the most famous one in KaDeVe, a huge department store in the Western part of Berlin. This department store has been in existence since the mid 1800's. We visited it and it is almost as good as Harrod's Department Store in London. Its nine floors are full of wonderful merchandize and boutique departments. On the top floor is the food market. Everything is up here: wine, sushi, desserts, meats, vegetables, pastries, exotic food from everywhere. Every area has a little bar where you can savor the food that is on sale there. It is beautifully done, and it was teeming with people the afternoon we were there. We poked around and looked at all of the displays, perfectly situated and lavishly decorated. Of course, Jack preferred to eat at the brotwirst stand outside, but we had a great time looking at everything in the store.

There is an area behind Potsdammer Platz where the national picture gallery is located. This building is a wonderful place to exhibit their rich collection of fine art. The building itself, on the outside, is a disappointment. Too much concrete and not enough greenery in front of the building. It is very near the Concert House of Berlin. This building is nondescript on the outside, and we were not sure if we liked the inside either. The orchestra is almost in the round, with seats running up and around the orchestra. Not so sure about the acoustics either.

Another building that is very interesting is the Bauhaus museum. The original Bauhaus school is now in Deshau, a small town west of Berlin. This school of design was very popular in the 1920's, with famous architects in charge, like Mies Van der Rohe, Gropius, and Corbusier. But the Nazi's considered their creations as degenerate and closed the school. Now Berlin has the museum of many of the works from that era. We had studied the architecture in our art history class, but the school also designed furniture, china, weavings and various other things for the home. The museum building itself is typical of a Bauhaus creation, very sleek and modern.

While we were in that part of the city, south of the Tier Garten, we walked around to see the many embassies. The "big guys" of America, Britain, Russia and France, had their embassies near the Brandenburg gate, but the rest of the world had its embassies down the road, in this more beautiful are. We saw about 20 different embassies, and the countries went all out to design the building as part of their culture. The Egyptian embassy was very beautiful, as well as the Spanish one and the Italian. The Mexican embassy was especially lovely. I have a photo of that one.

There is a famous street connecting the Brandenburg Gate area to the Stadt Mitte. It is called Unter den Linden. The King of Prussia planted numerous Linden trees down the street. They were removed decades later when the street became one of the most traveled, so that tram lines could be laid. It still is a very wide, beautiful street, with huge, baroque buildings on either side. One of the most famous was the Prussian guard house,designed by Schinkel. It is now a museum of peace.

There are hundreds of other buildings that are significant in some way, but I picked out a few to describe and give a flavor of Berlin.

Berlin - Photos of the Topography of Terror

Far left: Grey coffins row at Jewish memorial.

Left: Jole at the top of the Reichstag dome, overlooking Berlin.

Below: outside musuem of the Topography of Terror. Behind the posters is a portion of the Berlin Wall.

This area housed the German building that the Nazi's used to plan and carry out the expulsion of the Jews, in Berlin and coming from all over Europe.

There is also a museum, to the left of the photo, that further explains the actions of the Nazi's and how they systematically rounded up and sent the Jews away to concentration camps.

The photo of the Jewish memorial is hard to explain. The city block is full of the concrete coffins, representing the six million Jews that were killed. This walkway is only one of the narrow paths through the rows of coffins. People can walk through this, I guess to feel the magnitude of how large this exhibit is, and there are only 2000 coffins.