MORE BERLIN

It was off to dinner and we had chosen the oldest restaurnat in Berlin.  It opened in 1621 and Napoleon is believed to have dined here.  Good enough for Napoleon, good enough for us!

                                 

I ordered beer because in Germany you drink beer.  I think I've had my fill of beer now.  Back to wine for me.

Just a little bread served with lard and bacon bits.  Spread it on your bread and add a little salt - delicious!  Well, maybe not too delicious.  I don't thibk I'm going to serve it at my next dinner party.

Interesting though, very interesting.

I had read reviews that said the pig knuckles were the best ever so I that's what I ordered.  Sharon had a German meatball dinner.  Well, I have to say the pig knuckle was gigiantic ( sure hoped I liked it )  and it was delicious, for real.  I almost forgot to take a picture of it.  I don't want to forget how big it was.  The people next to us also ordered the pig knuckles and theirs made mine look small.

They had a little back garden eating area as well which looked lovely but since I'm always cold we ate inside.

We weren't quite ready to goback to the hotel yet so we found a little cafe/bar close to the hotel and enjoyed a glass of wine and looked out at the beautiful view of the square close to our hotel which I started the blog with.  Everything looks lovely at nght and it was a beauitful evening.

                                      

The next day we got up and went back to the little cafe and had a very nice breakfast before walking to the Topography of Terror.  We had plans to see three things that day - The Topography of Terror, The palace of Tears, and the German-Russian Museum.  The Concierge looked askance at us when we asked for directions to that museum.  He very surprised because I guess he gets few requests for directions to that site.  We thought it would be interesting because it's where the Nazi's surrendered to the Russians.  

One of the things I should mention is that so many of the sites are free.  Amazing in this day and age.

Anyway we walked to our first destination but got side tracked and went to a museum dealing with the secret police agency of the former German Democratic Republic ( East Germany).  The Stasi was one of the most hated and feared institutions of the East German communist state.  Much of what we saw was in German - documents and such but  the exhibit did feature stories of people, mostly young men and women who had been taken in my the Stasi for questioning and some were imprisioned and others let go and some even were sent to the West to keep them from continuing to make trouble in the East.  Within East Germany it sought to infiltrate every institution of society and every aspect of daily life including even intimate personal and familial relationships.  It accompolished this goal both through it's official apparatus and through a vast network of informants and unofficial collaborators who spied on and denounced colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even family members.  By 1989 the Stasi relied on 500,000 to 2,000,000 collaborators as well as 100,000regular employees, and it maintained files on approximately 6,000,000 East German citizens - more than a third of the population.

Any way we moved on, and on our way to the Topography of Terror Museum we say this cute little cars.Turns out is was a tour group and as we walked further we saw the little business.  Shucks, this would have been so much more fun than the "on and off" bus tour.  

                                

I saw a magenta convertiable and I would have looked so cool driving it.  I think Sharon would have liked the multi colored one.  It would have gone so well with her green shirt.  Next time.  Just for your info, the car was made in East Germany and some say it's the car that gave Communism a bad name. " The Trabant was a  hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness(actually the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wool").  It was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle a " people's car" as if the people didn't hae enough to worry about.  "Trabants smoked like an Iraqui oil fire, when they ran at all and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or tun signals.  But history has been kind to the Trabi.  Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell, which made it a kind of automotive liberator.  Once across the border, the non-too- sentimental Ostdeutschlanders immediately abandoned their cars.  Ich bin Junk!"

It has made it on the list of 50 worst cars of all time.  Who cares about all that stuff?  It's just sooooooo cute!

Well onto the museum.

We entered here and approached this first exhib starting at the end.  It was an exhibit on Warsaw and Poland and it's distruction by the Germans.  It starts with a colored silent film which shows a city uterly and totally destroyed by bombs and tanks and people.  It makes a statement.  Hilter had told his minions to destroy Poland completely.  It had always been a problem for the Germans and he wanted to see that it never would be again for him or any generation to come.  He hadn't thought the Polish had any thing of value in their country but when he found out they did have national treasures and personal wealth he took that first and than had his military bomb buildings and destroy anything and everything.  They did this and every cuntry let it happen.  Then when the war was over the powers that be let Russia annex Poland.  The posters told the story of Poland's and particularly Warsaw's utter   and total destruction and the will of the people to rally and rebuild.  

                          

Between 1933 and 1945, the central institutions of Nazi persecutions and terror were located on the grounds of this musem.  Since 1987, the permanent exhibition has informed the public about this historic site.  The new documentation Center and the redesigned historic grounds were opened in May 2010.  The focus of the exhibition is the SS and police in the third Reich as well as the crimes they perpetrated throughout Europe.  

We were at the museum for a number of hours, reading and standing.  By the time we left we were hungry, tired and emotionaly exhausted.  We found a quite place to eat and rest and decided that perhaps we didn't have the energy to see the other sites on our list.  It was already around 4:00.  Thus we walked home stopped to have some coffee and and decided we needed to go into the little chocolate shopp we had been passing each day.

                             

                          

I really wanted to buy the frog, who knows he might be a prince, but Sharon told me it was too big to fit in my suitcase.  Now I'll never know if was prince.  I certainly wasn't going to kiss it in public.

Now it was time to rest for just a bit before going out.  We hadn't made any dinner plans but asked the concierge for a recommendation close by.  He sent us to a wonderful French restaurant and we ate outside in a charming couryard. 

I had a saddle of deer in a grapefruit sauce.  It was tres bien!

That ended our trip to Berlin.  

I want to thank all of you who watchedf Deliverance Creek and got back to me with some feedback.    They had over 2 million viewers but the network has decided not to pick it up.  I'm so disappointed for Chris but he tells me that his appearance in it has been opening a lot of doors so hopefully one door closes and another one opens.  He has a guest appearance on The Sons of Anarachy in October and is in the new Spongbob movie starring Antoniio Banderas which will come out in February.