The Riechstag is one of Berlin's many amazingly restored buildings. It is a historical building that was initially the place got Germany's parliament, suffered badly in a fIre in 1933, hardly survived the 2nd world war, was partially restored in the 60s and now has only been properly rebuilt after the German reunification, completed in 1990 and now once again is the meeting place of the German parliament!
It has a large transparent glass dome which is representative of the government being transparent to the people. The dome, being accessible to the public, shows that the people are above the state and the government are working for them.... And perhaps in a sense that the people are looking down on the government...
From the tower you can see the whole of Berlin, and particularly stunning is the size and leafiness of the Tiergarten here, with the victory column seen deep within it. Bordering or within this garden are many of the other memorials we have seen including the holocaust and soviet ones. And of course the gate is close by.
And there's a restaurant up there! Quite fine dining.... Scallops and herb risotto. The butter has seeds on it!! :)
Ha!!! There ya go Wendy!
Off to the bunker tour (no photos allowed... Bunkers still technically owned by rail company).
The particular tour that I did today was focused on escape routes used during the Cold War. We heard many success and failure stories of tunnels and rescues. Most of the escapes were orchestrated by the 'free' people ln the west, who planned and dug through to the basement of houses on the east, sending messengers to gather friends and family on the east who would try to discreetly reach the tunnel and go. Pretty scary touch and go stuff. It turns out that with the speed the wall went up, thousands and thousand of couples and families were split. Because it happened on a Saturday night, there was far more separated families than usual. Many could obviously not reunite, some could through bribes, and some had the most fascinating stories of escape attempts.
The most successful tunnel was built by an engineering and a medical student and rescued around 20-30 people through a hole in the floor of an outdoor toilet just a few houses from the soviet guard posts (they couldnt just dig as far into the east as possible, too dangerous and time consuming, so most tunnels came up within just metres of the militarized zone near the wall.) This group inparticular built a few failed tunnels before this one.... doesn't matter how smart you are, navigating whilst digging a giant trench is quite difficult, especially when coming up at the wrong point could mean instead death. Anyway, there's a great story about these guys, because it was essentially a love story and due to the girlfriends suspicious activity whilst waiting to enter the tunnel on the east they were found out just as the last few people were trying to escape. There was a mad rush and they all got stuck trying to squeeze in the hole, and then the top person jumped and 'unblocked' the human plug, enabling them all to crawl to safety. But in the pursuit one of the soviets was killed supposedly by that last student who fired a gun as they crawled in. This soviet was a nice guy school teacher, so they milked this death to get all sorts of support and he became a huge wartime hero in the east. The student who had shot him felt horrible, but was safe becuase the soviets could not prosecute him from the East. Anyway, 20 years later when the wall was down, this now doctor was prepared to be taken to account for the death. But he did not get a chance to be punished for he died awaiting the trial. When the case was reopened, the autopsy results showed that his wounds were from friendly fire, definitely not from the student at all!!! So he was innocent after all, but he died not knowing this. The soviets had done well to cover this up, they clearly knew the truth, but now all of the monuments holding the soldier as a hero had to be modified or removed....
Then I got my bike and went cycling around Prezlauer Berg, the area I am staying in. Full of cute streets, quiet cafes, nice restaurants and parks. But no pictures cos on bike....
what was jules mumm fruity selling?
ReplyDeleteHorrific history- not to be forgotten.