We saw lots of these modern mascots in touristy areas of the city, and learned that the Berliner Bear dates back to 1253, where it appeared on the coat of arms.
In part we've been eager to spend time in Berlin because in 2015 it was named the vegetarian capital of the world by Saveur magazine. Kristina is posing under a restaurant ad for Samadhi Vegan. Their slogan was, "Peace in oneself, peace in the world" and we thought we would fit right in.
We quickly noticed that lots of vegan restaurants here feature Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai cuisines. Kristina ordered the spicy tofu bowl.
We visited the Bodhicharya Center and walked around their beautiful stupa.
The walls outside the center were painted with lovely phrases.
While we were visiting Berlin, Kristina's sister Debby and brother-in-law Steve were in Hawaii on a trip to celebrate their 30th anniversary. We send our love and congratulations to them.
Similar to Iceland where we saw tons of waterfalls, Debby and Steve visited waterfalls too, albeit in a much warmer climate. We liked this photo of Debby with the beautiful Hawaiian Akaka Falls.
We were surprised that Berlin has so many trees. This secluded walking path didn't feel like it was in a big city.
We crossed this branch of the River Spree on a small food bridge and stopped to enjoy the cool breeze. Berlin does get hot in the summertime.
This booth with free books reminded us of the Free Little Libraries we've seen around the world. It's been quite awhile since we've shared book recommendations on the blog and we've been reading some goodies, so we'll share three titles.
First, Yuval Harari's latest book is 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The title may be a bit misleading if you are looking for answers to the world's problems. Instead, this non-fiction book provides insights into how we think about problems and why this process itself can be problematic: The thinking mind creates narratives to understand the world and then takes these narratives to be true. Unfortunately the world, no matter how much we try, cannot be reduced to a narrative or a story. As Harari says, "If you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is. The answer isn’t a story."
Our second recommendation is David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth. This book takes some courage to read because it clearly shows our future if we don't prevent climate change. But the book didn't discourage us from acting; On the contrary, Wallace-Wells shows how the human-made crisis can be solved, if we muster the international political will.
And Richard Powers' eight interwoven fictional stories involving people and trees were some of the best we've read in years. From Goodreads,
"The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe."
We hope you'll check out these titles. We enjoyed lunch at Feel Seoul Good, a vegan Korean restaurant. Kristina ordered the vegan bibimbap and Pete ordered a kimchi rice noodle dish.
We visited the Berlinische Galerie, a modern art museum with interesting architecture by Saurerburch Hutton.
Another day we visited Museum für Fotografie, the Photography Museum, and were most interested in works by students at the Faculty of Design at the Technische Hochschule in Nürnberg. The students worked with computer generated images for a year while still preserving the central belief of László Moholy-Nagy from 1928: “Photography is the composition of light.” This is Spin 08 by Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs from 2012.
Another student in the program was Kris Scholz. His Marks and Traces, an inkjet print on linen, was a photograph that appeared to be three dimensional, painted and peeling - trust us, we looked really closely and it's a completely flat print.
We went for lunch at the Tiger Club for vegan sushi and more.
Everywhere we walked we saw construction cranes and new, modern buildings being constructed, like this Axel Springer company building.
We bought a museum pass and went to four museums on 'Museum Island', a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was the entrance to both Pergamon and Neues Museums, a combination of old and new styles.
Pergamon had reconstructed tile walls from Babylon (modern day Iraq).
Imagine if your job was to take these tile shards and form them into a coherent image.
The original tiles date to the 6th century BCE, and the museum did a good job filling in with modern tiles to recreate the walls.
Unfortunately the Pergamon altar was closed for restoration until 2024, but we saw this Roman market gate of Miletus dated to 100 BCE.
Another exhibit brought back memories of the Alhambra in Granada, which we visited with Kristina’s folks in 2015. This wooden ceiling dates to the early 14th century and was originally part of the Palacio del Partal at the Alhambra, which was given as a gift to Germany in 1891.
We didn’t even have to leave the building to visit the Neues Museum. Bombed during WWII, the museum decided to only partially rebuild and leave some of the scars from the war (in this gallery on the ceiling) visible throughout the building.
Pete makes an impressive Roman emperor! He’s got headphones on, so we could listen to the audio guide in Spanish.
Nearby on Museum Island, we checked out Deutsches Historisches, the museum of German history, for the building by IM Pei. This was part of the facade.
And this was the interior.
2019 is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is Wall Fountain, which was designed by Christoph Girot and opened in 1997.
Another day we took a cycling tour of Berlin. It was a great way to get around, and because so many people use bikes for transportation, we felt safe as we rode.
The tour took us to the WWII Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. A vast Holocaust memorial designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, there are 2,711 concrete boxes.
Walking in towards the center looked like this.
Near our Airbnb we saw these seven names, memorializing the Jews who lived in this building before being taken and murdered in concentration camps. We learned these plaques are throughout Germany.
Another day we visited Jüdisches Museum, the Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind. This was the front of the new, modern wing of the museum.
Here’s another view of the exterior, this time from the rear of the building.
Inside the building is divided into three axes, all with slanted floors. This photo shows the axis of the Holocaust, which includes a few personal objects of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.
The Garden of Exile was also built with a slanted floor, making us feel disoriented as we walked. The 49 concrete boxes in the garden were topped with olive trees, the symbol of hope.
When we looked up, this is what we saw.
This is a photo of the Shalekhet exhibit, which was filled with 10,000 metal faces to remember the victims of WWII. Shalekhet means fallen leaves. The exhibit was located in one of the building 'voids', the narrow rooms that come to a point with walls extending three floors up. The museum was very moving and well done.
From the main garden we could see the new Libeskind building on the left and the original building with its new glass courtyard on the right.
At the end of the garden was this sculpture of a snake, representing the temptation of Adam and Eve.
We walked past the beautiful old post office.
And we passed by the new Jewish synagogue, but didn’t go inside.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, built in 1890, was heavily bombed during WWII. The damaged building was turned into the Hall of Remembrance. On the right we saw the new church.
The stained glass interior of the new church was gorgeous.
We visited Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, the Berlin Wall Memorial. It includes a watch tower like the one where east Germans were surveilled to prevent escapes. The museum does a good job of teaching about how ordinary peoples’ lives were negatively impacted by the wall.
In the museum learned about the Protestant Church of the Reconciliation. The original church was located in the 'death strip', an area very close to the Wall where people were not allowed to go. The church's parishioners couldn’t attend services after the Wall was erected, so the east German leaders eventually decided to destroy it in 1985. After reunification, the land was returned to the church and the Chapel of Reconciliation, shown below, was built. The original cross, bent during the destruction of the church was hidden away for 15 years before being reinstalled on site.
This is a closer look at the exterior of the chapel. It was dedicated in 2000.
Built of rammed earth, the curved walls were pleasing to us.
The Berlin Wall, erected in only one day in 1961, used to stand here. Pete is in front of a reconstructed but accurate version of the Wall, with its high height and curved top to prevent people from climbing over it.
This graphic mural depicts the living city of Berlin as a slab of meat. It is being cut by the Wall, shown as a knife labeled 1961-1989, the years the Wall separated east from west. The piece was designed by Marcus Haas and built with the help of the art group Xi-Design and artists Size Two and Mario Mankey.
We spotted this Obey mural, Rose Shackle/Make Art Not War from 2014.
Pete read about this mural Elephant Playing with a Balloon by Jadore Tong, aka S.Y.R.U.S. Across the bottom and made to look tags there were the words peace, unity, love and wisdom, and the elephant has the words empathy and playfulness on it.
We noticed this man touching up the mural to remove paint that had been sprayed on the mural. Surprisingly in Berlin, which is known for its street art, there seems doesn’t seem to be the usual code of respect to prevent vandalization of the works of art.
Nearby we checked out a smaller mural of an octopus that looked to be entitled Friend.
Speaking of friends, we were very happy that our friends Connie and Günter joined us for a weekend in Berlin. We met them in Patagonia on a cycling tour in 2017 and they had visited us in Portland last July.
The next day the four of us we went sightseeing. Here we are at the Neptune Fountain.
The Fountain dates to 1891. It was partially destroyed during WWII, but rebuilt in the 70's. The four women statues surrounding the fountain originally symbolized the rivers Rhein, Elbe, Oder and Weichsel.
After coffee we walked along the River Spree down to the Berlin Cathedral. The building dates to 1893 but it too was bombed in WWII. West Germany paid to restore the Cathedral in the 80's, even though it was located in East Berlin.
We took a selfie in front of the Brandenburg Gate before walking through. The gate is a modern symbol of unity and peace.
Günter suggested we visit the Charlottenburg Palace so we hopped on a bus to get there.
There we learned about Queen Sofie Charlotte who commissioned the palace in the late 17th century. She only lived to be 36 years old, but she surrounded herself with philosophers and musicians and was herself very well educated.
We went for dinner at Vibes, a Vietnamese restaurant that served meat, fish and vegetarian dishes, so everyone could eat what they wanted.
We still had a little room for dessert so we stopped at Hokey Pokey on the way back to our Airbnb. Kristina is holding her grapefruit sorbet and Pete’s cassis sorbet.
We saw this striking black and white graffiti mural of rats climbing up a building, and learned it was by the Belgian artist Roa. Apparently he mostly paints black and white murals of biologically correct, local animals.
We also saw Dedicated to by Various&Gould that features a Russian worker following her own rainbow. There's more info about it on the Street Art Berlin website.
Nearby was Jump In by Victor Ash. Street Art Berlin wrote,
"Living in a problematic world with climate changes and injustices, Ash wants to encourage with this image to plunge in, to have the courage to act, to do something for change, to jump in cold water, as Germans say."
Connie and Günter told us about the Berlin Höfe, courtyards in the center of apartment and retail building complexes. They took us to visit one, which was really pleasant. The porcelain shop in the hof had installed some sculpture in the courtyard and Günter posed next to Frédérick Chopin.
Our lunch stop was at Cat Tuong, a vegan Vietnamese restaurant. Connie ordered the spring rolls.
We shared the mango salad, made spicy with Thai chilies.
Together we had a fun weekend! We made plans to meet in Düsseldorf where Günter and Connie live.
We took the train from Berlin to Düsseldorf. We noticed the cool manhole covers there.
Günter suggested we walk along the Rhine, which we enjoyed.
While Connie and Günter worked, we explored Düsseldorf. We checked out the outside of this Daniel Libeskind building, Kö-Bogen, which was completed in 2013.
Connie told us about an Ai Weiwei exhibit so we happily checked it out. We had seen a powerful exhibition on Alcatraz Island in 2015, so we were eager to see more. This is Sunflower Seeds from 2010. From the exhibition catalogue,
"A political interpretation suggests itself, since propaganda images often depicted Mao Zedong (Chairman of the ruling Communist Party of China from 1943 - 1976) as the sun. Just as the sunflower aligns itself with the sun, so too should the Chinese people align themselves with their Great Chairman."
Comprised of 60 million hand-painted porcelain seeds, we were amazed at how realistic they looked.
Around the 650 square meter sunflower seeds sculpture were lego images of the Chinese Zodiac. Kristina posed with the dragon, the year she was born.
Here's a close up of I.O.U. Wallpaper, which was juxtaposed with Sunflower Seeds. In 2011Ai Weiwei was arrested in Beijing and detained without charges for 81 days. After his release, he was fined the equivalent of 1.7 million euros, which he needed to pay before being allowed to file a complaint for his detention. 13,719 people donated money to the artist and he issued promissory notes to each person, which were all eventually repaid. We liked the IOUs that had lots of stamps on them.
The most monumental piece in the show was Straight. Reminding us of coffins, the piece was a moving tribute to the more than five thousand students who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. From the catalog,
Straight consists of 164 tons of reinforcing steel, which Ai Weiwei recovered from the rubble of the collapsed buildings... In an elaborate process over a period of three years, the bars were cleared of concrete remains and straightened...Altough the bars appear once again factory-new and "healed," the story and memory of the dead children are forever connect to them. The Straightening cannot be associated with healing or forgetting. The enormous amount of material is a massive reminder of the catastrophe and the suspicion that recklessness, irresponsibility, and corruption were the reasons behind the collapse of the school buildings."
We stayed with Connie and Günter in their lovely flat. Günter made delicious espresso drinks and spoiled us with oat milk cappuccinos.
Connie is a prolific reader, and she has many of the same fiction books we have read over the years. Their living room was a comfortable place to hang out.
Günter has played the piano since he was a child. He typically plays in the mornings, which was a pleasure for us to hear. Connie is learning the cello, but she wasn't ready to play for us.
While staying with them we celebrated Connie's birthday. They hosted a party in their flat.
Günter surprised Connie with some presents he had hidden inside an old shoe box of his.
Here Connie is showing her new San Francisco Biciamo cap, jersey and socks that were gifts from us. Looking on were her friends Conrad (right) and Luisa.
The next day Connie modeled her new Biciamo gear as we got ready to go for a ride.
We also had to make sure that Günter was also properly attired. Here they are in front of their building.
Günter led us from their apartment through the streets of Düsseldorf to route along the Rhine.
Connie was looking very sporty in her new jersey.
Once we got beyond the limits of the city we continued along a bike path that wound through fields and small towns and villages. Although it was cloudy, we didn't have any rain that day.
Those Biciamo San Francisco socks look great on Günter.
After about 60 kilometers or so, we headed back across the Rhine towards the apartment.
The bridge provided a nice view of the older parts of central Düsseldorf along the river.
And then we rode back through the streets of Düsseldorf.
Although the route was relatively flat, we still had worked up an appetite.
And we decided to satisfy it with an after-ride ice cream treat!
The next day Connie took us to Cologne, where she grew up and went to university. It was fun to walk through the cobblestone streets and squares.
Of course we had to visit the Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which was built between the 12th and 14th centuries.
The most interesting thing for us about the cathedral was the Gerhart Richter stained glass with its simple geometric pattern using the same colors as the traditional stained glass inside.
We spotted some fun artwork as we walked around Cologne.
And Connie told us about Thomas Baumgärtel, aka banana sprayer when she saw it on a gallery window. We recognized Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground banana influence, and were impressed that bananas like these appear on 4,000 museums and galleries worldwide.
Connie is a Mickey Mouse fan, so when she saw Banana Mickey, she bought it.
We spent lots of time with our friends Connie and Günter, and we especially enjoyed hanging out on their deck. We found Germany really interesting and easy to travel in, and we hope to return.
Next we fly back to the US to start a two month meditation retreat on Hawaii. Thanks for reading and following our travels! At this point we’re not sure when we’ll post our next blog.
