Sailing into History

Having enjoyed our visits to Crete last September and Istanbul the year before, we wanted this year to continue exploring Mediterranean landscape and history.  The Spouse – being much better informed about such things – insisted that the place to go was coastal Turkey, with its wealth of ancient Greek and Roman cities.  That sounded good to me, but neither of us felt quite adventurous enough to consider traveling around Anatolia on our own.  On the other hand, bus tours didn’t appeal (for one thing, Turkey is big) and those large Mediterranean cruise liners made only cursory stops at one or two of the sites we were interested in.

After spending some time searching online, I discovered another option that seemed promising:  a British company, Peter Sommer Travels, which specializes in tours to archaeological sites in Turkey, Greece and Italy, many using two-masted Turkish sailboats known as gulets.  They run small groups of 12-14, with expert guides.  After drooling over the list of offerings, we finally settled on a one-week tour called “Cruising to Ephesus.”  It would begin in the resort city of Bodrum on the western coast of Turkey and gradually move northward toward the city of Kuşadasi, visiting archaeological sites at Myndos, Iasos, Labraunda, Didyma, Miletus and Priene, before concluding at Ephesus, one of Turkey’s most famous ancient cities.  Along the way, the brochure promised a quiet sea cruise, “pretty rocky coves perfect for swimming, relaxing, and fine dining.”  Sounded good to us, even though we’d never thought of ourselves as “cruise people.”

And so we rose very early one Saturday morning in September to catch a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul, thence to connect with another to Bodrum.  I occupied myself during both flights in reading a history of ancient Turkey recommended in our tour packet.   Our hosts sent a driver to meet us at the big new international airport outside Bodrum – a luxury I could certainly get used to – and the ship began to back out of its slip in the harbor almost as soon as we walked up the gangway. 

Kayhan II – Our Home for the Week

Thus began our introduction to life aboard a ship, albeit a smallish one, 34 meters (110 feet) long.  We were greeted by Cem, the tour manager.  (It is pronounced “Gem,” which is entirely appropriate, because he is one.)  We took a few minutes to explore our cabin – small, but comfortable and well-appointed – before hastening to the deck to watch the action as we left the harbor.   

The five-man Turkish crew included the captain, a cook and three young men who handled everything from waiting on table to racing out ahead of the ship in a zodiac boat whenever we entered or left harbor or tied up in some isolated cove.

And we met our shipmates – five other couples, three from Australia and two from Great Britain, and  Cathie, our guide, with an Oxford Ph.D. in Greek and Roman sculpture and the art and archaeology of ancient Anatolia.  We soon realized that we had landed among an interesting and congenial group with which to spend a week. It included a barrister (whatever the Australian equivalent of a Queen’s Counsel is), a British geologist, a Tasmanian construction contractor, a retired teacher and engineer, and several business people.  Obviously we shared an interest in archaeology and adventurous travel.  But above all, they had what we have observed to be that wonderful quality in Brits (and now we extend it to Aussies) – a gift for lively conversation.

As we sailed Cem and Cathie laid out the plans for the coming week: each day would involve a visit to an archaeological site, but there would be ample time for swimming and snorkeling off the boat and for relaxing while the boat motored from place to place.  We joked that we weren’t sure that we could keep up with the killing pace.  Once the ship reached a cove a little way outside Bodrun the crew let down anchor, tied up on some large rocks, and lowered steps on both sides of the ship so we could take a quick swim before dinner.  Now, I’m not all that big on swimming, but the idea of a refreshing dip in the clear blue Mediterranean after a long day of travel did sound appealing.  We scrambled below deck to change into our suits and then carefully descended the stairs to the water before making a last plunge, immediately noting that it was cooler than we’d expected.  But it was the beginning of a lovely routine that often included taking our snorkels out for a spin to explore the rocks and sea life along the shoreline. 

After a suitable period for happy hour, dinner was served at a long table in the middle of the deck with just enough spaces for the 14 of us.  And we were introduced to another routine of the week – sumptuous Turkish meals, platters loaded with fresh vegetables and fruit, local cheeses and wines, grilled meat and fresh fish, with generous dollops of yogurt, garlic, tomato sauces and herbs and spices.  Rarely if ever was anything left on the platters at the end of the meal.  Somehow we all felt encouraged to take seconds because everything was obviously so good for us!  The young sailor-waiters were also wonderfully attentive about refilling our glasses with local red and white wines.  As we ate and chatted comfortably we watched the first of many beautiful sunsets; after dinner we walked to the bow of the ship to search for the few stars that weren’t obscured by the waxing moon.

On Sunday, after breakfast – freshly-squeezed orange juice, coffee or tea, sliced peaches, apples, pears and watermelon, tomatoes, cheese and olives, yogurt and jams, fresh bread, scrambled eggs – we had time for another swim before the ship left the cove and sailed around the peninsula to Gümüşlük, a pretty village in a sheltered harbor.  This was the ancient fortified harbor of Myndos – noted as the place where Cassius fled with his naval forces after the assassination of Julius Caesar. 

Perhaps coincidentally – but probably not, given Peter Sommers’ exquisite attention to detail, our week began with visits to some of the smaller, less well excavated archaeological sites and gradually grew in size and sophistication during the week, culminating in our visit to the gloriously restored city of Ephesus.  Many of the places we would see had first been settled during the Bronze Age by Anatolian peoples, which fell under the rule of the Persian Empire.  A Persian governor named Mausolus in the 4^th century BC built up many of the cities in the region, which were later further expanded by Greek and Roman settler/conquerors.  (Mausolus is remembered for a massive memorial building constructed for him in Halicarnassus, now Bodrum, known as the Mausoleum, and hence the name for a massive burial memorial.)

We disembarked from the ship into a charming small resort town that was refreshingly unsophisticated after Bodrum, lined by pretty outdoor restaurants, some lit by large gaily decorated gourds.  Many displayed tempting piles of fresh fish, though we later learned that these had been imported from elsewhere because of restrictions on the severely depleted fisheries in the immediate region. 

Cathie led us first up a rough farm lane bound by stone walls, over which we had to clamber in order to see the ruins of an early Christian church.  She introduced us to a concept that would play an important role in our tours – spoliation, or the reuse of the materials of ancient buildings in later constructions.  We had already seen much of this in Istanbul, and it was an important reason for the disappearance of so many ancient structures.  She pointed out that although this “recycling” was destructive, it could also reflect later peoples’ pride in and desire to show off their ancient heritage.

We walked across a narrow isthmus to the other side the port where Cathie showed us the bare outlines of ruins of the ancient town that had only begun to be explored.  Then he hiked to the top of a hill overlooking the port for a good view of fortifications that had been excavated during the summer.  We returned to the boat for another excellent evening meal (lamb, I think); later many of us took a moonlit stroll along the harbor.

On Monday we again headed north to Iasos, a pretty little harbor that had in ancient times boasted a thriving port known for its fish.  We docked and walked a little way past the present village to the agora, the center of the Greek and later Roman settlement.   

Here archaeological work was more advanced and we could see a space known as a Bouleuterion, essentially a council room where local leaders met and  early plays and concerts were held.  Then we hiked up a dry stony hillside, past ruins of a temple to Artemis, a Hellenization of the Anatolian fertility goddess, and a theater.   

At the top stood ruins of a medieval castle with several examples of spolia.  On the other side of the hill, with a wonderful ocean view, we saw excavations of several private residences, some with impressive mosaics.  In the evening Cem took us out for an excellent dinner at one of the two local restaurants. 

At the beginning of the evening Cem warned us that we had a long day in store tomorrow; breakfast would be pushed ahead to make sure that we boarded our shuttle promptly at 9:00.  We proved to be a conscientious group and dutifully assembled at the small bus that awaited us on shore and headed inland through farmland and pine-covered hillsides.  Our first stop was the temple of Zeus at Euromus.   

As always, Cathie provided excellent context for what we were seeing, down to the wealth of information to be gathered from dedicatory inscriptions on temple columns, especially about donors who had paid for construction.  It had rained briefly overnight, and the early morning light and the freshness of the air in the surrounding olive grove combined to evoke a sense of timelessness.

Back in the van, we climbed steep mountain roads, glad that someone else was doing the driving.  About an hour later we reached Labraunda, the region’s most famous sacred shrine to Zeus.  When we arrived we were met by Olivier, a French-born archeologist who had directed this summer’s excavations of the site, and a colleague of Cathie’s.  They were wrapping up work for the season on the site and so he had time to give us a personal tour, a special treat.   

He was especially and understandably proud of several important finds.  There was evidence that the site had been a shrine in the Bronze Age, but then had been expanded successively over later ages, including work by our old friend Mausolus and his brother.  Much later, Byzantine Christians had constructed a church on the margins of the site, perhaps in an attempt at evangelization. 

We drove back down the winding mountain road to the inland town of Milas, where Cem had arranged for us to have a delicious lunch of grilled meat and vegetables at a small neighborhood café – where we’d never have thought to stop if we were on our but which was wonderful.  We were surrounded by life in a normal – i.e. non-tourist – market town.  Cafés were filled by older men playing something that looked like cribbage and drinking raki.  It was in fact market day, and after lunch we strolled down to the huge marketplace, with hundreds of stalls selling local produce and everything else imaginable.  We weren’t much interested in shopping, but it was fascinating to walk around and see townspeople going about their daily lives.  Eventually we all met up again and were driven back to the ship, tired but pleased with our long day’s outing.

We were rewarded on Wednesday with a morning to relax before we sailed further north to the booming resort town of Altinkum (Turkish for golden beach).  The ship anchored a little way from shore and we climbed down into the zodiac boat to be shuttled ashore, where we were met by the same bus and driver from the day before.  We again drove inland through lush farmland covered with large fields of ripening cotton to the site of ancient Miletus.   

It had been a thriving port city until the river beside which it was built silted up – leaving it literally high and dry – and producing the fertile farmland over which we had just traveled.  Just last January the Spouse and I had seen a massive market gate from Miletus that had been excavated by German archaeologists and taken back and reassembled in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.  Here we viewed the vast Roman theater, wide agoras and massive Roman baths, before taking a break with cups of hot, thick Turkish tea.

We retraced our steps to the site closer to the present coast of the Hellenistic temple of Apollo at Didyma.  Though by this time we had seen many temples, we were all awed by its massive dimensions, obvious even though most of the huge columns still lay in pieces surrounding the temple base.  One of our colleagues, who is in the business of large-scale construction projects in Tasmania, was particularly impressed by the sheer size and weight of the marble used in the foundations.  I was struck by the huge Medusa heads that had been part of the architraves.  We were there at the end of the day, as visitors trickled away and the light began to wane, which made everything that much more atmospheric.

Thursday brought another impressive inland city, Priene, whose 4^th century BC streets, temples and public buildings were especially well-preserved.

Afterwards, we sailed away from the busy resort area to a peninsula that was part of a nature preserve, and anchored in a beautiful remote harbor.  

In the morning we could see some of the wild horses that inhabit the area grazing on the hillside.

Our last day was full of perfect examples of what made the trip such a pleasure.  First, we had a long sail along the wild Mediterranean coast, then we anchored off a beautiful cove for a last swim.  Later in the afternoon we sailed into the harbor of Kuşadasi and transferred to another bus for the drive to Ephesus.  

After having had most of the sites to ourselves up to this point, we were a bit apprehensive when we saw three massive cruise ships in the harbor and the large parking lot for buses on the outskirts of Ephesus.  And in fact as we entered the large “archaeological park” the place was bustling with numerous tour groups and individual visitors, who fill the narrow stone street of the recreated city.  

But Cathie pointed out that this was a good illustration of what streets would have been like in the 1^st century AD days when Saint Paul walked there – a port city crowded with people from all over the Mediterranean.  Archaeologists from Austria had been at work at the site for over a century, excavating and re-creating much of the ancient city, though much is still covered.  (Their best finds are exhibited by the Ephesus Museum in Vienna, which we somehow missed during our visit earlier this summer – guess we’ll have to go back.)

Moreover, Cem and Cathie had planned everything to minimize the downside of crowding.  We arrived at about 4:00 pm, as the heat of the day was waning and the cruise visitors had returned to their ships.  At the end of the first street we ducked into an indoor space where archaeologists were painstakingly uncovering and restoring a series of large terraced houses.  Because of the small extra charge there were few other visitors so we had the breath-taking wall paintings and mosaics to ourselves.

By the time we re-entered the streets most visitors had gone and the ancient ruins were bathed in a golden evening light.  We were amused by a public latrine and awed by the massive gateway and the theater.  There, Cathie related the story from Acts in the New Testament in which Ephesian artisans rioted against the early Christians, whom they saw as a threat to their business of making votive models of Artemis.

Back to the ship for our last evening together, which included a clever speech by our resident barrister presenting our tips to the crew and a lively round of Quizzo conducted by Cathie with questions drawn from our travels.  Diplomatically, the teams – Aussies vs. Brits and Yanks – tied, and we shared the prize wine bottle amongst ourselves.

Saturday, our final day, was mainly a travel day.  Most of our fellow travelers were going to spend some time in Istanbul but we would continue all the way home so The Spouse could return to work the following Monday.  We clambered into our last shuttle to take us to the airport at Izmir, where most of us were booked into the same flight to Istanbul.  So we said our farewells after disembarking from our plane in Istanbul, already nostalgic about our wonderful week together, when we saw Turkey as the ancient Greeks had, from the deck of a ship.

Recycling the Swiss Way

And now—ta-da! – the blog entry you have all been waiting for, wherein I lay out everything there is to know about recycling in Switzerland.

 

No, that’s wrong – Switzerland is so decentralized and diverse that it is difficult to say anything so definitively about the nation as a whole.  Recycling is a cantonal matter, so I can really only speak to my experiences here in canton Zug.

I can say that recycling is an important matter in all Switzerland.  For one thing, there isn’t much land to waste on landfill.  Even more, because the ground is porous, drainage from landfills would quickly pollute its pristine lakes.  Consequently, since 2000 all garbage that isn’t recycled is incinerated and the energy produced converted into electricity.  Nationwide about 40% of solid waste is recycled.  To encourage recycling, many cantons require payment of a fee for each garbage bag used.

As it turns out, Zug, my home canton, is the recycling capital of Switzerland.  It pioneered the establishment of what are called Ökihöfe, or recycling centers.  (“Öko” is the equivalent of our prefix “eco” as in ecology; a hof is a yard or courtyard.)  To these centers in each of the canton’s towns come residents in impressive numbers to dispose of their goods – not only used paper, bottles and cans, as is common in the US, but many forms of plastic, old metal, textiles, etc. – even broken crockery.

I have long been an enthusiastic recycler.   When Pennsylvania instituted recycling for glass, cans and paper back in the ‘90’s, I was delighted even though it meant extra work to separate out recyclables and remember the correct times when each would be picked up.  More recently, even in Philadelphia recycling was made easier by allowing residents to throw all recyclables into the same bin.  What has impressed me about Zug is the effort that residents are willing to make to separate their materials and then transport them to recycling centers.

It’s undeniable that people are committed to the idea of recycling, but there’s an added incentive: regular garbage will only be picked up if it is in special plastic bags sold by the canton.  I use a 35 liter bag, which I buy at the local supermarket for 29 Swiss francs for a roll of ten, or 2.90 apiece.  Larger and smaller sizes are available, priced accordingly. 

And there are many ways to recycle.  Residential neighborhoods have banks of bins for glass bottles, plastic drink bottles (PET), and cans, and you can put out newsprint on certain days of the week, as long as they are carefully tied up in bundles with string.  You can also keep organic material separate from your other garbage and deposit it in green containers for composting.  Each town and village in the canton has its own Ökihof, which accepts different categories of things.

   

The towns of Zug and Cham have an Ökibus that circulates on a set schedule, and Baar has its own Rösslitram, or horse-drawn wagon, where one can drop off items.

But my choice is the Ökihof in Zug, near the main train station.  Here one can dispose of practically anything, including any type of plastic.  Think of how much of our garbage today is made up of plastic packaging and you will understand the appeal.   

There are also bins for unwanted CDs, batteries, espresso machine capsules, and even the corks from wine bottles.   There is also a Brockenhaus (Thrift Shop) where you can donate unwanted but still usable goods.

For expats, the first trip to Zug’s Ökihof is something of a rite of passage.  Like many things about living in Switzerland its orderliness and punctiliousness can provoke anxiety, so it is good to go the first time with an old hand to show you how it’s done.

First, if you drive, there is likely to be a wait to get into the center, especially on the weekend.   As I sit in a line of cars with my motor running, I feel terribly un-ecological as I watch the numbers of people bringing in their stuff in the baskets of their bicycles or on foot.  To assuage my guilt I volunteered to do the recycling for my rowing club, which generally entails lugging large plastic crates of empty beer and wine bottles, so a car is definitely required.  The center is so popular that it recently began restricting use to residents of canton Zug; neighboring cantons are beginning to organize their own.

When you finally find a place to park, you can then begin carrying in your stuff, which has ideally been pre-sorted into appropriate categories and stored in separate bags.  This saves time but also avoids those awkward moments when you dump something into the wrong bin and the worker fishes it out and hands it back to you with a disapproving look.  (Other expats have told stories of their shame at another local center when a worker upbraided them loudly in Swiss-German, one reason why I stick to the Zug center.)

Most of the staff are genial, but the gentleman in charge of collecting karton, or cardboard, is a joy to meet every time I go.  With a broad smile, he greets everyone in a German that is heavily inflected with Jamaican.  For many Zug residents, a trip to the Ökihof is a social occasion, and one sometimes has to navigate clusters of chatting friends.  I have even run into friends and acquaintances on occasion.

When I have finally emptied all my bags and bins I feel terribly virtuous.  And often I proceed to complete the cycle by stopping at a supermarket on my way home and refilling the bags with more stuff.

A Few Days in Berlin

When The Spouse raised the possibility of visiting Berlin in connection with a business conference, I jumped at the chance.  After all, Berlin is currently the Hot City of Europe, famous for its lively arts and music scene and generally convivial lifestyle.  (I didn’t take into account that, conversely, Berlin in January can be a Very Cold City – but one can’t ask too many questions when the trip is being subsidized.)

Aside from knowing that Berlin was the capital of Germany before World War II, resumed that role after reunification in 1990, and is the site of the famous Brandenburg Gate, I had few preconceptions.  So, The Spouse and I set out via Swiss Air one Saturday morning – love those little chocolate bars they hand out.  We arrived at Tegel Airport, located in the former West Berlin.  It was supposed to have been superseded by now by a new airport, but its construction is way behind schedule.  Tegel is deliciously retro;  I read a while ago that its hexagonal shape was designed in the carefree pre-terrorism 1970s, with the idea of minimizing distance between automobile and airplane.  Even now each gate has its own check-in counter, but the idea of stepping out of one’s car or taxi and directly into the plane has been overridden by the need for security areas and lounges for long pre-boarding waits. 

Tegel was an appropriate introduction to our Berlin visit.  However modern it is – and there are building cranes where ever one looks in Berlin – it still seems to be in a bit of a time warp.   

For one thing, despite Tegel’s automobile-centric design, Berlin missed being made over in the service of automobile traffic.  It has an extensive and excellent public transportation system made up of trams, buses, S-Bahns and U-Bahns (mainly underground trains: S-Bahns make more frequent stops).   At Tegel we purchased 7-day passes for the entire system for 28 Euros each (we were only going to be there 5 days, but that was the cheapest rate) and climbed onto a bus to the center of the city.  Unfortunately, our progress from there was complicated by a huge construction project to rebuild an S-Bahn station that effectively cut the line in half, but eventually we made our way to our hotel in the heart of former East Berlin.

I couldn’t be sure, but our hotel – a fine, 4-star conference hotel – seemed to have originally been some kind of Communist-era apartment complex, a sturdy concrete structure forming a maze of hallways and rooms that must have faced interior courtyards.  The façade has been recently resurfaced with something expensive, but the building had the solid, stolid look of Soviet era construction.  Our room looked across Leipziger Strasse to the Bulgarian embassy. 

For our first evening in Berlin I had booked tickets to see a production of Tosca by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, so after settling into the hotel we ventured to the neighborhood of Charlottenburg, in the former West Berlin.  The Spouse and I like classical music of all kinds, but during our stay in Switzerland our experiences have been limited by busy schedules and the fact that live concerts are very expensive.  Prices in Berlin seemed much more reasonable.  Plus, this production featured the fine Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel in the role of Scarpia.

We located the nearest U-Bahn (subway) stop just around the corner from our hotel, and armed with our passes just stepped onto the appropriate train to take us west.  It’s amazing how much more smoothly things go when the system has no turnstiles and other means of restricting access.  Everyone is assumed to have a proper pass; if you are caught without one in the infrequent, random checks you pay a hefty fine.

The Deutsche Oper is one of two major opera houses in Berlin; the other, the Staatsoper, is in the cultural center in the former East Berlin, its 18^th century classical design having been preserved through numerous reconstructions.  The Deutsche Oper, on the other hand, was completely redesigned after it was destroyed in an RAF raid in 1943.  Opening in 1961, the building embodies the austere modernism of that period.  We arrived after dark but the starkness carries over into the interior.  The theater was completely unadorned, faced with a light-colored wood throughout, prompting The Spouse to comment that it reminded him of a very large high school auditorium.  Nonetheless, we had excellent seats and thoroughly enjoyed the performance, despite the fact that the demanding audience was clearly not happy with the work of the tenor playing Cavaradossi.

The schedule for Sunday had long before been set: we were going to the Pergamonmuseum, one of the world’s great museums of ancient history.  As the careful reader will have noticed, ancient history is one of our favorite topics at the moment.  To ensure that we would have all the time we wanted there, I had even reserved tickets online for the 10:00 am opening. 

Despite the bone-chilling cold we decided to walk from our hotel, enabling us to see some of the city’s grand public spaces, such as the Gendarmenmarkt and the grand avenue Unter den Linden, passing the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Staatsoper, currently closed for reconstruction.  We eventually came to the Museum Island, site of a number of major cultural institutions, comparable to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.   Nearly all boasted a similarly monumental classical design.  In fact, all the architecture we passed was traditional.  And because most of these buildings presumably were damaged in World War II, the East Germans seemed to have chosen to recreate the original buildings, while the West Germans preferred to replace theirs with modern styles. 

Now, however, Museum Island is undergoing major reconstruction in which its five major institutions will be joined by subterranean passageways.  They will eventually be united by a huge cultural centre known as the Humboldt-Forum that will have a historical façade over a modern interior.  At the moment, it is a massive construction site surrounded by wooden walls, which reinforce one’s sense of disorientation.

The Pergamon is home to the famed Pergamon Altar, a large shrine built in the 2^nd century BC in the Greek city of Pergamon in present-day Turkey.  Around its sides ran a frieze depicting an epic battle between the gods and the giants – in which the victory of the gods ensured the establishment of order over chaos (assuming you were allied with the gods…).  The museum was built in 1930 to house the shrine, which had been excavated by German archaeologists.  We knew that it was A Really Big Deal, in terms of ancient history, but what we weren’t prepared for was the sheer fascination of the friezes as works of art.  The Spouse explained that they embodied the exuberance of 2^nd Century Hellenism.  It was a Who’s Who of Greek culture, with every major and minor god grappling with a varied host of grotesque giants, many with serpent tails instead of legs.  I hadn’t brought my good camera, but I tried to capture some of the many depictions of heroic goddesses.

We happily spent several hours examining the friezes and another series in a colonnaded courtyard at the top of the shrine depicting the life of the city’s mythical founder, Telephos, with episodes seemingly copied from the lives of Oedipus, Moses, and other heroes.  Eventually we moved on to other treasures contained in the museum, the ornately decorated Market Gate of Miletus, a Roman trading city in Turkey and the jaw-dropping Ishtar Gate, part of the fortifications of 6^th Century Babylonian ruler King Nebuchadnezzar II.  Eventually, though, we realized that if we were not going to drop from exhaustion we would have to stop for lunch, and because of construction we were going to have to leave the museum to get it.  Perhaps because of the many construction projects or bad planning, there simply weren’t many places to rest and eat in the area, but eventually we found a pleasant Italian restaurant off the island. 

Afterward we visited the Altes Museum, another of the Museum Island complex.  Built in the early 19^th Century as the Koenigliches Museum to house the art collection of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III, it followed classical models exactly.  In the 1950s it was reconstructed following the original designs.  Today it features excellent displays of Greek, Etruscan and Roman art and archaeological objects, though were disappointed not find the Minoan material that our guidebook promised.  After an exhaustive day on the Island, we were happy to find our way back to the hotel via a U-Bahn line.

Monday we decided to see a wider range of Berlin’s sights and especially its neighborhoods.  We started by heading to the Brandenberg Gate.  To get there, we walked west on Unter den Linden through a more commercial area.  Here there must have been more extensive war damage for all the buildings dated from the post-war period.  We were interested to see a massive blocky office building bearing a sign for its chief occupant, Aeroflot, the Russian airline.  To its west dominating the avenue was the massive Embassy of the Russian Federation, which clearly had been the home of the Soviet Union before 1989.  But then we reached the square to the east of the Brandenberg Gate.  There, facing each other across the square, were modern embassies for Britain, France and the United States, all clearly newly built since 1989.

Walking through the gate we saw the Reichstag building, now the home of the German parliament or Bundestag.   Recently restored with a modern glass dome, it seemed an excellent symbol of the nation’s efforts to balance old and new.  It is surrounded by spanking new Federal buildings – I think one’s reaction to them depends on his feelings about modern architecture…

We hopped on the U-Bahn and traveled north to an area known as the Scheunenviertel (Barn Quarter), a more traditional residential and commercial area that formed the northern boundary of old East Berlin.  Emerging from a neighborhood of apartment buildings we came to an open area that seemed to be waste land until we realized that it was the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, or memorial to the Berlin Wall.   

Where the Wall has been destroyed almost everywhere else in Berlin, a large swath was preserved here, complete with guard towers, ditches and the open “death strip” that were perfected over time to maintain the control of the Communist regime.  We found it sobering and oddly moving, especially in light of the fact that its history largely coincided with our own lives.   Later, looking at aerial footage taken just after the fall of the regime, it occurred to me that I had been thinking of the Wall as something that divided East and West Berlin.  Actually, it enclosed West Berlin – but it was the East Berliners who were the prisoners, while West Berliners could enter and leave via certain check-points and travel to West Germany on designated highways.  Just another example of the paradoxical nature of the time.

Afterward we found our way to the commercial heart of the neighborhood, full of stylish boutiques, art-house cinemas, restaurants and nightclubs.  The Hackesche Höfe is a beautifully restored early 20th century building complex with fascinating Jugenstil courtyards.  We happened on a terrific old-World style café. The Oxymoron Restaurant, where we had such a great lunch that we returned the following evening for dinner.  Later we hopped back on the U-Bahn to explore Kreuzberg, another happening neighborhood where artsy hipsters live in the midst of longtime Muslim immigrant communities.  A few days later we returned to the neighborhood for an excellent dinner at Defne, a Turkish restaurant that exuded comfort and authenticity – and reminded us of how much we had loved eating out in Istanbul.

The conference that was our ostensible reason for the visit began on Tuesday, putting an end to The Spouse’s touring, but I still had several more days to explore.  I traveled west via bus to Potsdamer Platz, an area that was center of Weimar Republic nightlife, then leveled by the war and cut in half by the Wall.  Since the ‘90s it has been rebuilt as a vast business and commercial center with lots of gleaming

skyscrapers and indoor shopping malls – that largely left me cold.  It is also home to the new concert hall of the Berlin Philharmonic, not a favorite either, although I gather that the acoustics are fantastic.  But the Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery) is a stunning collection and I happily spent 8 hours working my way through masterpieces of Western art from the 13^th through the 18^th centuries.

My last day, when I had hoped to take more photographs, was cold (again) and rainy, so I contented myself with using my pass to visit other areas of the city by bus.  I look forward to a return visit this summer, when I will be taking an intensive two-week course in German, and when I hope the weather will be more comfortable.