May Part 1: Berlin and Amsterdam

Berlin

The first weekend in May was a 3-day weekend here in Switzerland, so we tacked on an additional day and hit two spots on our bucket list.

Andy and I had not yet been to Germany at all in the 11 months we’ve been in Europe, so the capital seemed like a good place to go first. Unfortunately, Andy had to work one of the days we were there, so our primary activities were beer and the Fat Tire bike tour.

Berlin is a fascinating city for lots of reasons, but most interesting to me is its recent history. The original settlement dates back to around 1190, but the city as it is now has only been around for about 25 years. A (somewhat) brief summary courtesy of Wikipedia:

After the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, the victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin. All four Allies shared administrative responsibilities for Berlin.

However, in 1948, the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on the access routes to and from West Berlin, which lay entirely inside Soviet-controlled territory. The Berlin airlift, conducted by the three western Allies, overcame this blockade by supplying food and other supplies to the city from June 1948 to May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany and eventually included all of the American, British and French zones, excluding those three countries' zones in Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin officially remained an occupied city, but it politically was aligned with the Federal Republic of Germany despite West Berlin's geographic isolation. The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory, and East Germany proclaimed the Eastern part as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the western powers. East Berlin included most of the historic center of the city. The West German government established itself in Bonn.

In 1961, East Germany began the building of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin, and events escalated to a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany. John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" – speech in 1963 underlining the US support for the Western part of the city. Although it was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other side through strictly controlled checkpoints, for most Easterners travel to West Berlin or West Germany was prohibited by government of East Germany. In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and pressure from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November and was subsequently mostly demolished.

Berlin’s role in the Nazi regime and the recent fall of the Berlin Wall means that the city has some of the most eclectic (read: ugliest) architecture we’ve seen in Europe. First, Berlin was heavily bombed during the war, destroying many of the beautiful, traditionally European-looking buildings. These were replaced with Nazi architecture, which is extremely functional – lots of big concrete blocks. Finally, since the city’s reunification, the city has added lots of modern buildings to its skyline, including this thing:



During our bike tour, we got to see the Berlin wall, one of the few still-standing Cold War watchtowers, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, several monuments, Checkpoint Charlie, and the location of the “Führerbunker,” Hitler’s last headquarters.

Berlin Wall

Watchtower

Checkpoint Charlie

Two things that I found particularly interesting: 

1. Checkpoint Charlie was a Berlin Wall crossing point during the Cold War – it’s essentially just a place for tourists to take pictures now. What was interesting to me though were the two men posing and charging for photos standing in front of it: dressed in ill-fitting historical American military “uniforms” (costumes), smoking cigarettes, and holding American flags. The image didn’t sit well with me. 
 
2. The site of the Führerbunker is incredibly nondescript – you would certainly miss it if you didn’t know it was there. All landmarks of Nazi Germany were destroyed after the war, including the bunker, and in its place now is a parking lot with just a small information board showing a diagram of the bunker.

Amsterdam

The flight from Berlin to Amsterdam was barely an hour, so we arrived just after lunch on Friday. We spent the afternoon and evening just exploring and wandering around Amsterdam. It was apparently the first warm and sunny day of the year there, so lots of people were out and about, in parks and on restaurant patios everywhere enjoying the sunshine. For about 4 hours, we just took a lot of pictures of canals and did some solid patio sitting and people watching. 




 

The next day we took a bus to the Keukenhof, also called “the Garden of Europe.” It’s one of the world’s largest flower gardens (about 79 acres), where around 7 million bulbs are planted annually. It’s only open for about 2 months each year, and it was one of the main reasons we chose to go to Amsterdam during the beginning of May.

We walked around for about 2 hours; pretty sure Andy was bored out of his mind, but he was a good sport while I took way too many pictures, which I think speak for themselves:



 

 

And that pretty much covers it for Berlin and Amsterdam! We didn’t plan too much going into this weekend, so it was another pretty relaxed trip. 

I started to write about the next trip we took as part of this post, and quickly realized that I had way too much to say about it to combine with this one. Next post: Shaffer Swiss Spectacular 2016!