Berlin - The Topography of Terror

Far left: ramp for the dome of the Reichstag.

Above: the dome of the Reichstag

Left: German flag over the Reichstag.

Berlin's history is made up of the Nazi era and the Soviet era. I have tried to give a picture of the Soviet occupation and the Wall. Now I want to talk about the Nazi era, when the Nazi's came to power in the late 1930's, when they cleared the city of the Jewish inhapitants, and what the city of Berlin has done to remember and regret.

The Reichstag, a beautiful building in the 1900's, was a great threat to Hitler, so it mysteriously burned to the ground in the 1930's. Hitler never stepped inside of the building, though it was the seat of the German government. It was a heap of ruins for decades. During the time of Soviet occupation of Berlin, the West German government was located in Bon, Germany. With the reunification of Germany in 1990, the government was moved back to Berlin from Bon. The government needed a place for government rule, so they restored the original building, the Reichstag.

After lots of arguing and planning, they chose a design and agreed with British architect, Norman Foster, that the building needed a dome. He designed and built a glass dome to sit on top of the Reichstag, and now it is the center of tourism in the city. After we passed through the security, we took an elevator to the top of the building and then started walking up the ramp to the top of the dome. We could see the whole city as we walked round and round, and when we reached the top, we went outside to see the expanse of the city. This ramp is so big and wide that one does not get closed in or nervous about the height of the dome. I think that the dome looks down to the parliament hall below, so one can see the German government at work from above. The dome is really a wonderful addition to the building.

Near the Checkpoint Charlie is a museum and open area named the Topography of Terror. This actual city block, where this open-air museum is located, housed the actual government building in which the Nazi's planned and carried out their eradication of the Jews and other undesirables of the German Reich. There are several plexiglass poster boards which trace the Nazi grab of the government and its bureaucratic establishment of agencies specifically designed to strip the Jewish people of their businesses, their homes, their money, and then to send them to Poland or somewhere east for eventual imprisonment and death. It is very scary that all of this Nazi work was carefully planned and set out in documents.

The Germans are very good bureaucrats, I guess, so when the Nazis were in power, they made sure that they set up appropriate agencies and kept very detailed records of what they were doing. All of these preparations for killing more than six million people were carefully documented. That is the scary part of this whole exhibition. The Nazis were very systematic at what they were doing and how they carried out the orders of Hitler and his henchmen.

It takes a long while to see all of the museum that describes the Nazi era because there is so much to look at and think about. Touring this musem is not like visiting one which exhibits artifacts of a people: bowls and jewelry and sculpture, etc. This is a museum set up to try to explain the stripping of possessions, the expulsion to foreign lands and the eventual killing of millions of people, for the simple reason that they were Jewish. It really takes your breath away to look at the photos of the Nazis in charge, because they look like us. I am not sure if the German people will ever understand how they let such a man as Hitler take over and eventually ruin the lives of so many people.

The museum tries to explain the inability of the German government that was in power before Hitler to overcome the hardships of the first World War, and then the stock market crash of 1929, which forced even more Germans to be out of work and penniless. The people wanted stability and someone to help them feel good about themselves, and Hitler was the man that stepped in and took care of them. Once he started his reign of terror, I guess they just couldn't stop him.

Another site to see is the Jewish memorial near the Brandenburg Gate, called the Memorial to the Holocaust. Berlin wanted to build something as a memorial, but it took several years to come up with an appropriate symbol. What they built is quite impressive: it is a full city block of about 2000 plain, grey concrete coffins above the ground. Each one is different from the next; some very tall, some short. No markings on them at all. There is an underground museum which documents stories of many Jews from Berlin who were imprisioned in the well known concentration camps and then later killed. The memorial speaks for itself; as you look out on the huge expanse of stone coffins you try to take in the amount of destruction of so many people. Then when you go to the museum, you see individual people and descriptions of their lives. The six million have faces, and they looked like ordinary, happy people with their families and friends. These sights are hard to take in and understand.

I will turn to happier sights of Berlin in my next post. Stay tuned!

Berlin - The Wall

Top photo: Atrium at the Sony Center at Potsdammer Platz.

Middle photo: the bricks marking where the Berlin Wall existed throughout the city.

Bottom photo: A view of the Bradenburg Gate.

Berlin's history about the Berlin Wall is still very much a part of the city sights. Our first stop was to visit Potsdammer Platz, where the vibrancy of Guilded Age Berlin had been thriving. We found many photos of the square back in the early 1900's, where tram traffic moved back and forth, where people streamed across the streets, and where large buildings held many stores, cafes and hotels.

We bought photos of this area after the Allied bombing completely destroyed it. Then the Wall went up right through this area about twenty years later. Now, twenty years after the Wall came down, Potsdamer Platz is again a hugely vibrant area, with brand new buildings that rise many stories in the air, where there are several luxury hotels surrounding the square, and where shops and restaurants are full of shoppers and visitors.

Sony has built a huge theater there, within the confines of a beautiful atrium, with light shows, cafes, places to explore and much more.

There is a brand new arcade, which is like a mall. The stores are wonderful, everything you could ever want to buy. It has lots of places to eat and sculpture throughout the arcade, and even a huge grocery store to get supplies on the way home. We loved to go in there for a bratwurst and a croissant (Jack the bratwurst and me the croissant). There were several very good restaurants that we frequented for lunch and dinner. There were also the chain restaurants, as in Tony Roma, all around the arcade.

There was a live theater at the end of the block, near the Sony theater. In the front of the Platz, there was always some kind of demo on selling something or giving away goodies.

Across the street from the Platz are huge new buildings where businesses are housed - everything from Price Waterhouse to DHL, and not all businesses are American. There are several European logos to be seen there.

Through all of this was the ever-present rememberance of the Wall - a brick line on the sidewalk that was the demarcation of the British and the Soviet sector. The brick line runs down the street, all the way to the Brandenburg Gate.

Just on the edge of the Platz is a remnant of the Wall, and then we saw how tall this thing was. It is well over six feet tall, so there is no way to see over it except to get a ladder or stand on someone's shoulders. Thick and ugly it was. I was shocked. Of course it was covered in graffiti over its ugly concrete gray facade.

We walked down to the Brandenburg Gate - all restored now to its former glory. We also have photos of the Gate at the time of the Wall, and the area was a wasteland. Right inside the gate stands the newly restored American embassy. The Adalon hotel, a luxury hotel before WWII but destroyed during the Allied bombing and neglected during the Soviet occupation, is now fully restored to its beauty and, I am sure, its high prices for a room.

The new British embassy is right around the corner, and the Russian embassy is down the street. The French embassy is also in the vicinty.

The Brandenburg Gate draws hundreds of visitors almost everyday, taking photos and buying souvenirs from the hawkers.

Not far from the Brandenburg Gate is probably the most famous checkpoint of the Berlin Wall era - Checkpoint Charlie, separating the American from the Soviet occupation areas. All around the area are big poster boards, showing photgraphs of what it was like in 1961, when the Wall went up. Down the street they have saved one whole block of the Wall, with all of the grafitti all over it. They have also saved a block in the neighborhood to what it looked like in the twenty years of the Soviet occupation: completely barren, with weeds and pieces of concrete strewn about - probably a building was there and it was torn down by the Soviets for security purposes. They had to be able to see everywhere to make sure that noone was sneaking over the Wall.

It was hard to take all of this in, especially since all of terror and hardship of a people happened during one's lifetime. We walked around and saw local people who probably lived all through this, and we wondered what kind of stories they could tell.

This area of Checkpoint Charlie is a huge tourist draw - tour buses always driving up and down the streets, and knots of people reading the information on the wall and snapping photos. Jack was at this very checkpoint back in the early 60's. His dad, who was in the military, was sent to this area when the Wall went up, and so the Luehrs family moved to Germany for three years. Jack, his mom and his brother Bruce had visited eastern Berlin one cold afternoon, and he said it was spooky, with all of the security measures and the Soviet soldiers everywhere. He said when they entered, their passports were taken from them until they returned back through the checkpoint.

The whole Soviet sector of the city is now trying to revive or regain its former stature. Rich places, like the Stadt Mitte and the area near the Brandenburg Gate, are already back to normal, with thriving shopping, eating, luxury hotels and apartments. The concert house is now a thing of beauty and the churches on the Gendharme square are magnificent.

Other neigborhoods, especially those east of Alexander Platz, deep in the Soviet sector, are still trying to restore themselves. They were the working class neigborhoods of Berlin before the War and the Wall, so they are trying to maintain that image while being a vibrant and safe area to live. We visited the neighborhood way up north in the city, where they have a Saturday market, and walked around, after enjoying a bratwurst and a beer. The place was full of young families, parents walking the strollers, others playing in the children's playground. Some of the apartment buildings had seen better times, but others, right next to them, were newly painted and regenerated.

I thought that Berlin would try to eradicate the remnants of the Wall, but they celebrate its demise and how they eventually overcame the Soviet control. And they want others to see how it was and how they have bounced back in such a short period of time to become the great city that it used to be.

Berlin - Museums

There are at least nine museums that are a must to visit in Berlin. The first five are co-located in what is known as Museum Island. This cluster of five museums was the gem in the golden age of Berlin, at the start of the 20th century. Then all kinds of things happened to them: the Nazis confiscated a lot of the art as "degenerate art". Then the air poundings of the Allies destroyed the buildings. When the Soviets took over after the War, they actually took a lot of the paintings and sculpture to Russia for awhile.

When the Soviets decided to restore some of the museums, they returned a lot of the art. And since reunification of Germany, the museums have been completely restored, one by one, so they are in their previous glory. Their history is, in itself, an amazing one.

Museum 1: our first stop was the Pergamon museum, which houses not only the Pergamon altar, but a Roman facade from the western coast of Turkey, and the gates of Ishtar. To have these three magnificent pieces of ancient sculpture in the same city is breathtaking, but to have them in the same museum is really unbelievable. We had studied the Pergamon altar in one of our first art history classes that we took at Southern Methodist University several years ago. I never thought I would be in Berlin to see this gorgeous piece of work, but here I was, standing in front of it, taking in the larger than life figures.

This altar was designed and constructed in the 200 BC era, during Greece's Hellinistic Age, later than the 400 BC Golden Age of Athens when the Parthenon was constructed. It was located on the western coast of what is now Turkey,though it was all Greece until about the 1930's AD. It is not far south from the city of Troy, right on the coast. When Jack and I went to Turkey in 2008 we visited the site, which is now called Bergama. The ruins of the great city are still there, and we walked all around the site, climbing down and then up where the amphitheatre ruins are, and standing on the site where the Pergamon altar was built.

German archaeologists had gotten permission from the Ottoman Empire sultan to do excavating, and I guess part of the bargain was to take most of what was found. The altar is huge; think of a mansion with stairs that look like about three stories high. The relief figures are all around the altar and up the inside of the altar steps. In Art History speak, these relief figures are different from the classical figures of the Parthenon: they are much more emotionally expressive; their arms and legs show bulging muscles and straining poses. The scenes depict the fight between the gods and the satyrs, so the whole scene is of frowning and desperate men and women, determined to be the victor over the other.

The altar stairway is huge; and this was just one of the altars of the grouping. Again, one wonders about having Greek sculpture in Berlin, but the Germans saved the ruins from complete degredation. Since we had been to the windswept coast of Turkey we only had to imagine how all of this fit together. We visited the museum and this room a couple more times before we left Berlin.

The other rooms in the museum were just as fantastic - the facade of a Roman library and the Ishtar gates. They also had many other relics of the past: burial stele and sarphogagi and burial statues. We wandered through the rooms, just awe-struck at the age and the beauty of these pieces.

Museum 2: the next museum to visit was the New Museum. We wanted to see the head of Nefertiti. We knew that the city was working on restoring these museums to their former glory, but part of that restoration was the changing scene of the venues of certain collections. The Egyptian collection had been housed in several different places. The guide books told us the collection was now housed in the Old Museum, so off we went. However, we found out as we got there that the collection was now in the New Museum! Fortunately, all of these museums are in walking distance of each other, so we turned around and entered the New Museum.

We have seen a lot of Egyptian artifacts in many museums, but this one held the head of Nefertiti, so we went looking for her. The museum saved a special room for her, a circular room at one of the corners of an upper floor. This piece was made as a model for sculptures throughout the Egyptian country, since she was the wife of the Pharoah Amenhotep IQ, who changed his name to Akenaten. It was painted and in seemingly perfect condition. Her eyes are made of jewels, but one of them is missing, so when I looked at the statue straight on, it was a bit distorted because of the one missing eye. But the shape of the head and the neck made it a gorgeous piece of work. We stood there, taking it in, when a guard came up to us and started telling us about the head and why the German government had this piece. He said that the Egyptians really didn't want it because it was only a model made of some kind of plaster,not the usual marble or stone. It had literally been passed around for many years but the German government felt that it was a beautiful rendition of a very famous wife of one of the most powerful Pharoahs, so they wanted to give it a special place in their museum. This head draws many visitors to Berlin.

Museum 3: the Bode museum is another gorgeous building on the island, one that was designed and built by Bode, a rich German industrialist, at the beginning of the 20th century. The building, also destroyed during WWII, had just been completely restored. It is a beautiful Baroque building, with huge rooms, 30 foot ceilings, and marble staircases. The art in this building is not much to speak of - mostly 18th German scenes, but the building itself is just exquisite.

Museum 4: the Alte Museum is another beautiful building on the opposite side of the island. It is not a large museum, but its rooms are huge and beautiful. It houses mostly sculptures, which are copies of the famous Greek and Roman ones. We didn't see many new pieces, but strolling through the building was an experience in itself.

Museum 5: the Painting Gallery is across the street from the New Museum. It is probably the least monumental of the museums but it is impressive in and of itself. Most of the art here is German, not too memorable, but they have two whole rooms of David Caspar Friedrich, a German artist living from 1748-1850. We were introduced to his art in our art history survey class. He paints mostly dark, wintry scenes of mountains, lakes, trees, etc. The subject matter is not important in itself; it represents the futility of life and the darkness of getting to the end of it. A lot of his work is kind of spooky, but the detail is good. Artists didn't start going out into the scenery itself to paint until Monat and the Impressionists - in the early 20th century, so one has to believe that all of his nature is by memory.

We went to about five other musuems, located all over Berlin. We visited the art gallery near Potsdamer Platz. We had to return to this museum more than once. There is so much art one cannot take in everything in one afternoon. It has a fabulous collection of all famous artists from every era. We saw Rafael, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, some Spanish artists, all of the Impressionists and even some British art.

The modern art is located in two different places: one museum designed by Mies van der Rohe is near Potsdamer Platz in his signature minimalist building. Since the whole building is glass, the art is located in the underground portion of the building. There was another modern art museum, in a former Hamburger train station, near the Hauptbahnhof. The building was the usual Renaissance/Baroque design, but once we got inside, it really looked like a railway station - huge, and I mean huge, open spaces where the modern art could be set up. A lot of modern art tends to be gigantic, so this was the place for it. We also went upstairs and the building in the back stretched at least a mile and half, with rooms full of the weirdest stuff you have ever seen. Some of the German modern artists were very odd - I am thinking Beuys and even Raushenberg (though he was born in Port Arthur Texas). Anway, these rooms could hold huge displays. We had three semesters of modern art at SMU but still, some of this stuff is really weird. There is an exhibit at the Ft Worth modern art museum, a film that shows a man digging a post hole. It just loops and loops - well, I found a similar film in this museum. Either it was the same artist, or someone copied from someone.

We went to the photography museum that is dedicated to the Helmut Newton. This museum was very interesting; it had a lot of his memorabilia and all of his photographs he had taken, for the covers of magazines and for his own shows. His wife was also a photographer, so lots of her photos are on display also.

Let's see, what other museums. We went to the ethnology museum; German archaeologists loved to go to places like Bali and Mexico and islands of South America and sponsor digs. They evidently made arrangements with the host government to take some findings. The display of Mexico was about the Mayan ruins. They were beautifully displayed. The museum also had huge boats from islands I had never heard of - it was a great museum, and one that takes a long time to wander through. Really, if we had the time, we could have spent a few days there.

The museums dedicated to the history of Berlin I will describe in another post.

Berlin - Transportation

The first thing to learn about Berlin is the transportation system, unless you have a private driver who can take you everywhere. I love subways, so I was looking forward to learning all about it. The first thing I learned is that the subway system - the Ubahn - is not an "it". There are two systems which are separate but meet in certain stations.

I was used to the Paris metro, which I thought was confusing enough. But that one is pretty simple, compared to the Berlin system. In Berlin each line is numbered, and the signs direct you by the numbers only. Then I had to learn the destinations of each line, which is similar to other subway systems; they are named by the end of the line. So first we had to learn the numbers and then the names of the lines to figure out which direction to head.


Since we were going to be in Berlin for several weeks, we decided to buy a monthly pass. In the little station near our hotel we punched in our requests - these machines are also in English - and got a card, saying that our money was lost in the machine and we would have to go to some address to redeem it - no subway ticket, just a voucher. Of course we had no idea where in Berlin this addres was, so we were very frustrated.

We had already learned that there are not always information booths in every station, so we must have asked which station to go; I can't remember now. Anyway, we rode the U2 toward Pankow to Alexanderplatz to find the subway information booth to find out what happened to our money and get a monthly pass.

It was there that we found out there were two companies running the U and the S. Jack did his best to communicate our dilemna, but the BVG man just directed us to another office where we could buy tickets from a real live person. So we trudged up steps and down steps, trying to stay out of the way of the streaming people going this way and that. The signs are clear if you know what you are looking for. We found the ticket office and Jack waited in line to find out about the ticket and where to go to redeem our voucher. The amount for the monthly tickets was 100 euro, so we couldn't just forget about the money.

While he was in the office I was over in the corner, trying to make out the map that the BVG man had given me. A young woman stopped and asked if I needed help. In English? I asked. Of course, she said. She explained the two systems, one literally on top of the other and how to read the routes, etc. She was very helpful and I thanked her profusely. By that time, Jack had the tickets and the directions to the BVG office.

In Paris and London there are machines to enter the metro, where one pushes in the ticket and it pops out on the other side and the gate opens to let you through. In Berlin there are none of those things. We are supposed to carry around our tickets but everyone just enters the subway station and goes to the cars. There are subway police who ride the rails and check tickets, and there are signs on every car, saying that if you don't have a ticket you will be fined 40 euro. It is nice not to have those machines to walk through - the traffic runs more smoothly. Are the Germans more trustworthy to buy the tickets? I wondered at the philosophy of each country.

We learned a lot that day about the system, since we had to report to an office in some god-forsaken part of Berlin - somewhere we never went again. It was way on the east side of town, in a huge office building, near the Soviet TV tower, that I remember. The people were very nice and returned our money. I noticed a few days later in our little local U station that the machine where we had lost our money had a sign saying "out of order".

I carried our monthly tickets in a safe place in my purse during the whole month and only once did we meet a subway policeman - on a Sunday - and he found someone who did not have a ticket and was escorted off the train and made to pay the 40 euro. Since a day ticket is about 6 euro, it is worth it to pay for the ticket.

We were going to be in Berlin for the first week of October, which meant we needed a weekly ticket after September. I persuaded Jack for us to go back to Alexanderplatz to buy the weekly ticket at our leisure, and then when the first of October rolled around, we could stamp it in the machine, to show when we started using it.

On October 1, we went to the subway station for our daily field trip and I remembered that we had to stamp the ticket. We got on the train, enjoying the sights, when we were aware that there were subway police checking tickets. The woman checking our tickets, I swear, was disappointed that we had it stamped correctly! I guess we just looked like dumb tourists who did not know the ropes.

The two sets of subways are very efficient and always on time and, during the week, coming every few minutes. On Sundays the trains do not run as often. One Sunday we noticed all kinds of subway police, with German shepherd dogs. They were riding the rails that day because one of the German soccer teams was playing and all the fans were riding subway out to the olympic stadium.

Once we understood the signs - and the long German street signs end mostly in "strasse" so you just read the first part of the sign - we were able to navigate everywhere we wanted to go. The stations themselves are huge - in Paris everyone just gets off the train and goes out or goes to the connecting train - but here the stations are very long and there are shops to buy snacks and papers and postcards or to eat lunch or buy magazines. The stations that connect the U and the S are huge, and we had to be careful to follow the signs to go up or down or around. We had to know where we were going before we read the signs so we knew what to look for. One time we got on the wrong train because I did not know the name of the destination. By the time I pulled out my subway map and studied it, we were at the next station so we hopped off and tried again.

The next big step in learning how to get around Berlin was to figure out where we wanted to go and then figure how to get there. We had museums, places of interest and neigborhoods on our list of required visiting, so the first thing to do was to get a detailed map which had the U stations superimposed to make our journeys easier. We soon learned that it would be necessary to walk a long way once we arrived at the appropriate subway destination. There is just a lot of walking in Berlin, no matter how good the public transportation is. We really were not prepared for how long the blocks were, but I think we got used to them and accepted the walks as good exercise.

The U2 was our primary U bahn that we rode during our two week stay at our first hotel. This hotel was more or less in the middle of the city, so it was connected to most of the tourist sights that we were interested in. It was a horizontal, east/west line, and the S line looped around the city and then headed out to the suberbs. When we stayed in the eastern part of the city, we had a more complicated route to get around, since the U5 ended at Alexanderplatz, so we had to transfer to the U2 or the S. Traveling around Berlin is just long and complicated because it is such a huge city. Now I need to talk about what we saw - unbelievable history in the city and they are still working on construction projects all over the city to build it up to its former glory.

Berlin Part 1 a short history

August 30 came and it was time to visit Berlin. I have wanted to see this city for many years, since the Wall was torn down. I really did not know what to expect, except a lot of new buildings where the old ones had existed. I wondered how the eastern part of the city would be like twenty years after the Soviets had disappeared. There were so many things to learn about the city and I was ready.

I have tried to organize the topics of this city: the geography, the subway systems, the places of interest, the museums, the Nazi history, the Soviet history, the neigborhoods, the shopping, the restaurants and bars, the music, the new buildings, and the people. Those are 12 topics that I would have to hit upon to give anyone a feel for the city. Was I up to it??? I wasn't sure. But here goes.

Berlin has been the center of German history for about four hundred years. Bismark was from these parts, and when Germany actually became a country, the city of Berlin was chosen to be its capital. Along with the political business of the city came the social activity; as a result wonderful hotels and restaurants and museums and concert halls thrived here.

The German government directed the WWI activities from here, and Berlin was especially hit hard when the Germans capitulated. The Weimar government tried desperately to gain control in the 1920's, but government after government failed and chaos reigned - just in time for Hitler to step in and create some kind of stability. The people of Berlin were so worn down and aching for something to work that they embraced Hitler and his ideas - until they realized that maybe his ideas were not all that great. But it was too late, and they just went along with him and kept their mouths shut.

When the war started they thought it was a good idea and were all for it for years, until the Allies started getting their act together and making some progress, and the Soviets were inching their way west to control Germany. Then the Allies started bombing Berlin - and other places - to smithereens. Berliners were really suffering and needed help, so after the Allies destroyed Berlin they started the airdrops to save the people from completely starving to death.

Then relations with the Soviets became so bad that they built the Wall and the cold war started. Berliners overnight were separated from friends and families; the situation continued for almost thirty years until the Wall miraculously came down. From that time on Berlin has worked to become one city again, with brand new buildings, restoration of old buildings as they looked in former years, rebuilding of subway systems, etc. The restoration that started about twenty years ago is still very much underway all over the city. There is a vibrancy in the city which can be felt today.

We wanted to feel it all and investigate as much of the city as possible. We weren't sure how long to stay but decided on about five weeks. We have only one week left and we feel the loss of having to leave already. We have seen and experienced so much and everyday is full of exploring, looking, studying, feeling and photographing. In the following entries I will try to describe what we have seen and what we have felt about this big city.

Gottingen/Magdeburg Germany

We decided to stay in Gottingen an extra week so Jack could get to the doctor and even to a specialist. It turned out that the second set of pills that his doctor gave him worked and Jack was able to sleep at night. His head was not stopped up anymore. Miracle. I don't know what the doctor gave him, but they were probably some kind of steriod, don't you think? Anyway, he did not have to go to the other doctor and we had a few more days to relax or to drive through the countryside. We did a little of both.

Jack found some great- looking beer mugs to send to his beer-drinking buddies in Dallas. We found a Mailbox store - UPS - in Gottingen, so he went from bar to bar, checking out the glasses and deciding on three nice ones. He spent a small fortune sending them to Texas, but the reactions of his friends were great, so he was satisfied with his effort. And all of that beer drinking was fun too, as we checked out different beer glasses.

We finally got back to Wartburg. We had gone there a couple of weeks before to see Luther house and Back house, but we still needed to see the castle. Fortunately we picked a beautiful day to travel. We got there in record time, parked at the bottom of the hill with the rest of the tourists, and trudged up to the castle. This place has been here since about the 1200's, as a castle for German princes when they were carefully guarding their territories from each other. The castle has been restored and only guided tours are allowed. We waited for one in Engish. It was pretty interesting; it was more fun to look out the windows to see the extraordinary views from all sides. You can just imagine the enemy sneaking through the forest, trying to overcome the defenses of the castle. Even now the land around the castle is dense forest - I wondered how cold it would be in the winter with the layers of snow on the trees.

In the 1500's, after Luther pinned up his 99 objections to the Pope, he was a hunted man. He was told to explain himself and then he was excommunicated, which meant that any bounty hunter could go after him for a price. One of the German princes took him into his care and gave him a room in this castle as a hideout. While he was there, Luther translated the New Testament from the Greek to German, so he kept himself busy while he was being protected.

The castle has a large meeting room where they have concerts and other get-togethers to this day. (I will have to add photos at a later time; I am not at my notebook computer but at an internet cafe. Sometimes these hotels where we stay have wireless, but it is very expensive to use it).

A few days later we drove to a preserved Benedictine monastery west of Gottingen, near the little town of Munden. This monastery has been preserved also, which I find interesting since most of the catholic churches were turned into protestant churches in Germany. But these monasteries are usually out in the country in beautiful settings. This particular monastery is still very beautiful and the chapel is restored very faithfully.

The town of Munden is really a touristy town, with lots of restaurants and lots of tourists. The setting is just gorgeous, near the river and next to a forest. We had a great lunch there and enjoyed walking around the town and even getting some postcards. We have really been very lucky with the weather also - blue skies and lofty clouds and in the 60 degree range.

After more than a week in Gottingen we were ready to move onto our next stop, Magdeburg. This town is not far from Berlin, so it was deep in east Germany, so we were very interested in how the town would feel.

It turns out that this town was bombed extensively by the Americans, so there was nothing much left of its former buildings. We saw photos of the main street back in the early 20th century. It was a beautiful city, with tall baroque-type buildings lining its main streets. Everyone of them were destroyed by Allied bombings. Now those same streets had huge modern offices and new stores. The tram system ran in the middle of the street, with auto and bike traffic on either side. The downtown looks newer than many American cities, with very nice stores and cafes, bars and restaurants.

The large hotel where we stayed was also a focal point for a lot of parties and celebrations. One Sunday we came in from a drive out in the country to see the lobby filled with couples dancing to the music of someone, like Lawrence Welk maybe. There was not a person younger than 65, and they all seemed to be having a great time.

We visited the churches that the city had restored; they were huge and beautiful once upon a time. They have spent quite a bit of money making these churches look as they did before the war.

We made a trip to Wittenburg to see the church where Luther pinned his 95 objections to the pope, back in 1519. Wittenburg is a nice little town which now has tour bus after tour bus descending on it everyday. I was amazed that so many American tour groups come to visit this town. So many of these tours are church groups, headed by their minister who schedule times to preach in this church that Luther made famous. I saw one tour bus that had a sign in its window: Reformation Tour. I guess Protestant groups think this church is their beginning, so they want to step foot inside and savor the history. The Catholic church does not give so much attention to all of this, and why should they? It was just the beginning of the end of Roman Catholic domination in the world.

The town itself has adjusted to its famous place in history by outfitting itself with lots of restaurants, bars, hotels and cafes, parking areas and souvernir shops. This particular day one of the art galleries was selling plastic molds of Luther - about four feet tall. The gallery had filled the entire platz with about 800 of these Luthers, some red, some green, some blue. I will have to include the photo I took of these guys in my next post.

Seriously, the church where Luther started the reformation was indeed quite impressive. He was probably an earnest young man who was horrified at all of the richness and decadence that he witnessed when he visited Rome, the seat of the mother church. And he also heard from the German princes who were disgusted at so much of their money going to Rome to build St. Peter's. It wasn't a coincidence that he was protected by a German prince when he got into trouble with the Pope and had to hide out later. I am so glad to see the church where the Reformation started.

I guess we were ready to see the big city, Berlin. We turned in our car in Magdeburg and then took the train to the Haupbonhof. Oh, my goodness. This city is huge! More later on what we found during our five weeks there.

Jever, Germany Aug 2 - 6, 2010

Here we were in northern Germany, and guess what? It looked like Holland! Of course, it did, since it was part of the flat country on the border of the North Sea. We had no trouble finding the little town of Jever, and the hotel was on the main drag, so we drove right up to it. The owner was there to guide us to the parking area in back of the hotel. But oh my gosh, she nor her husband spoke a word of English. Right away Jack had to use his German, which is very good, by the way. But immediately he had to think German. He had bought a handy little dictionary, and it was by his side from that time on.

We walked into the small town to find a restaurant and some schnitzel! I was looking forward to eating schnitzel and pomme frites, so we found a typical place and had a nice meal. We walked around the shopping area; everything was shut down for the evening, so we could just look into the windows.

Our hotel was a very nice one; it looked like a huge family home, with beautiful furniture and accessories. Our room was a little one in the back. It was very adequate and comfortable and we had a good night's sleep. We reported to breakfast in the morning in the dining room; this breakfast came as part of the fee. It was a big dining room, with about ten tables, so we met all of the other hotel guests. I don't think a single one of them spoke English, but they were very friendly. I couldn't imagine why people would come to stay in this small town; but I think it was just a jumping off point for more outdoor activities, like hiking or biking.

Our first assignment here in Jever was to find the small town of Sandel where the Luehrs family came from sometime in the early 1800's. Jack had visited there with his family back in the 60's when they lived in Germany. Cliff, Jack's dad, had driven up there to find his relatives' graves before they had to report to Bremerhaven and the military ship that would take them back to the States.

Jack remembered it as a wind-swept, desolate place. As we drove through the countryside, we did not see that kind of scenery. These small towns had pretty little houses, lush green countryside and very good roads. It looked like Germany was very prosperous, at least in this part of the country. There were rolling hills, filled with corn or wheat, or dairy cows munching on the grass. Everything looked so peaceful and pleasant. I have included some photos of the cows, the land full of crops, and the dozens of modern wind mills. Many of the dairy barns had solar panels installed on their roofs. At least in this part of Germany the people seemed to be well off, though they probably worked very hard in the fields.

We drove to Sandel and found the church; no Luehrs there. We found a maintenance man and asked him about the name, etc. He said he had never heard of that name. We began to study the map. Jack had remembered that his dad always said Sande, not Sandel. Sande was another small town, not far from where we were but closer to the harbor. We drove over to Sande and found another church. Lo and behold, we were in the right place. There were lots of Luehrs in the church cemetery. The name Luehrs in German is really Luhrs, with an umlaut on the "u". We spent the next several minutes taking photos of the different headstones. I was so glad that we found this church; I think Jack was glad that he was able to trace his relative, though we wandered why they moved from this beautiful country to Michigan, many years ago.

We found that the church was open. Jack remembers that his dad found a Wilhelm Luehrs name on the list of those from this parish who had died in WWII. Cliff's first name was William. Sure enough we found the plaque and the name. The fact that there was a William Luehrs fighting against a William Luehrs in the Second World War was very sad indeed, but I am sure that this example was one of millions throughout the world.

We took several more photos the spot - I even found a woman named Cornelisen buried there. My maiden name is Cornelison, so similar that I had to take a photo of that grave also.

The next couple of days we traveled the coastline of northern Germany, someplace I never expected to see. It is really like Holland, especially the windmills and the low, flat countryside. We drove to the North Sea; there were lots of people spending their last days of their holiday biking, hiking, camping and just enjoying the scenery. When we got to the sea I was shocked - there was no sea! It was mud flats everywhere. The North Sea is so tidal that it literally disappears. Then I realized how the Dutch and the Germans were able to claim so much land and hold back the sea because of the intermittant disappearance of the water.

We spent about five days in this area and then we were heading south and east to Hameln, the city of the Pied Piper fame. I spent my last hours studying the map and marking a plan to get there. I planned to get a better map as soon as we got to a bigger city.

Jack was experiencing an allergic-type problem: his nose was completely stopped up and he could not breathe. I thought he was allergic to something in the air or the cool, rainy weather, and I insisted that he take some of my allergy medicine. But none of that seemed to help. We were just in Jever for a few days, but he was really suffering and wondered if he could stay in this kind of atmosphere. He was very discouraged and wondered if we should just head back to Dallas, if he was going to be in such pain.

We decided to skip Hameln and go directly to Gottingen to see if we could find a doctor.