Saturday 1 December 2001

The day starts with an elaborate breakfast buffet, a specialty of Schall und Rauch on weekends. Breakfasts can be taken until 6pm (!). After breakfast we take the S-Bahn to the East Side Gallery. That is a part of the former Berlin Wall at the Warschauerstraße, that has been saved. The wall has been painted by various artists. Unfortunately the wall looks a bit weathered and the paint is pealing off in places. Some of the art is incomprehensible. We take the subway to Strausbergerplatz. This square on Karl Marx Allee is the summum of stalinist "wedding cake architecture" of the GDR. In the 1950’s this part of the city was constructed as a model for the communist architecture. Grand, yet dull. On with the subway to Alexanderplatz. Here we have some coffee. There is a big christmas market. The former GDR department store Centrum, which virtually nothing useful for sale during the GDR day, has been taken over by the Kaufhof chain. We walk in the direction of Hackesche Höfe. This a successful renovation of a relatively small part of the former Jewish Quarter. It consist of 8 interconnected courtyards. There a quite a few antique shops and restaurants here. There is a lot of police in the streets and some streets are blocked. We later find out that this is done in connection with a demonstration by the neo-nazi party NPD and counterdemonstration and riots by left-wing radicals. We manage to keep ourselves out off the danger zone.

We take the subway to Friedrichstraße. This is elegant shopping street. Friedrichstraße underwent a metamorphosis after the reunification and the quality of the shop matches or surpasses that of for example the Tauentzienstrasse in the West (where KaDeWe is). The French department store Lafayette has opened its first store outside France on the corner of Französische straße. It is a nice building with a glass dome on top.

Then we take the subway to the Jewish Museum. This has recently been opened (september 2001). The building was designed by Libeskind, a Polish-Americans architect of Jewish descent who lives in Berlin. The construction is special with a number of crossing axes, representing an open star of David. The exhibition starts in the basement along the axes of the diaspora and the holocaust. There is also a tower of the holocaust, a garden and " the emptiness in the memory". The actual exhibition follows the history of the Jews in Germany from the middle ages until present day. The history is told by means of artefacts, photos, videos and sound recordings and interactive displays. It is a very extensive exhibition that deserves more than 3 hours of your time and leaves a big impression behind.

After the museum we return to the guest house. In the evening we dine at the restaurant Gugelhof. This is the spot famous because of the fact that chancellor Schröder took president Clinton to dinner here. It is a good restaurant, not fancy and rather pleasant, with good service. After dinner we have lovely cocktails at Café Guppi across from our guest house.

Sunday 2 december 2001

After yet another great breakfast buffet and a cappucino we take the subway to Ostbahnhof. At 12:06 our ICE train leaves for Duisburg. The journey goes without a hitch. At certain stretches of the journey the train runs at 250 km/h. In Duisburg we change to another ICE which takes us to Utrecht. We’re back home in Rotterdam around 8pm.