Wednesday August 18th
Woke up to rain today and not too warm at all. Luckily I have my zip up rugby ball to climb into on days like this. We caught the bus and train into town and headed for the DDR museum which was an interactive museum about everyday life under a socialist dictatorship. It really showed how life had been for the people living in East Berlin and East Germany for 40 years. There were drawers to pull out and cupboards to open and everything was in English as well as German. Because it was raining it was crowded with people. I got my photo taken on a Trabbi which was the only choice of car most of the East Germans had and they sometimes had to wait up to 10 years to get one.
After lunch, Mary and Alan visited the Berliner Dom, (Berlin Cathedral). This is the largest and most lavish church in the city and was reopened in 1993 after 40 years restoration to fix the war damage. Although there has been a church on this site since 1747, this one was originally finished in 1905 after many years of planning and decision making over what style of church they would build.
After this they ended up going on a long walk to look at the only part of the city that is left to give an idea of how it would have looked in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a picturesque scene on the River Spree promenade and although it took a bit of finding it did look good with the bridges and boats tied up alongside.
They had decided to visit an outlying museum on the way home and it all seemed easy from where they were. When they got off the train they walked into the area of Schoneburg and found the street that the book said the Jugend Museum was located in. After walking in one direction for about 5 minutes they realised the numbers were getting bigger, so they retraced their steps in the other direction. Very few buildings had any sort of number. After about 10 minutes walking they picked up some numbers and found they were going up in ones not twos. So they decided to check the other side of the road, which was several lanes of traffic across, only to discover that they number up one side of the street and loop around and down the other. So they ended up walking right back beyond the other the side of where they had started out. So they now had to walk all the way back in the direction they had come from. This would have been fine had it not started to rain really heavily. By the time they reached the Jugend museum they were soaked.
They were able to get into the dry and hang up their jackets and umbrellas and put their backpacks into a locker before starting to look at the exhibits. The main exhibit was called Berlin Half and Half. It traced the story of Berlin from the time the wall went up until it fell. They were provided with a translation of all the main panels in English and it was really worth making the effort to get to as it was beautifully presented and easy to follow. When they had finished looking at that one they were offered translations of the exhibitions on the floor above and in the basement. The one on the floor above was fascinating. They had a created a series of rooms and inside each they told the story of a real person living in the district is Schonburg who was an immigrant from another culture. It was called Global Village. The last one was the enchanted rooms. Primarily for children it contained a series of themed booths containing things from the past exhibited in a bright lively way. There was a huge hands on area and lots of dressing up clothes. If it wasn’t behind glass it could be touched.
The whole museum was an educational centre for children to learn of their own history but wonderful for adults as well. They were pleased they didn’t give up trying to find it which would have been easy to do.
It was quite a walk back to the station but it had a Lidl store so they were able to stock up on food. Negotiating which way to go on the circle line was interesting, but they got on the train going in the right direction and finally got the pink line back to the bus stop.
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