Ich Gehe Zum Bahnhof

"Ich gehe zum Bahnhof" is one of the expressions I have managed to retain from the two years of college German I took 55 years ago. I can also tell you what my name is, in German, and count as high as 100. Over the years I have done some immersion Spanish and am currently on day 260 of Duolingo French, but neither of those comes as readily as the German. Oh well. Ich gehe zum Bahnhof.

Berlin's Hauptbahnhof is notable architecturally as well as otherwise and is little more than half a mile away. There are five levels, three of which accommodate trains of whatever sort. Berliners call it a shopping mall with trains. I think of it as a Crystal Palace with trains and shoppes.

Approaching from Invalidenstrasse

Unsuccessful pano

Sculpture within

Busy Sunday afternoon

Compare Monet's Gare St. Lazare; up on level 5

Very large but helpful model down in level 1

There are perhaps 50 or more stores/shops, including 24-hour
grocery and pharmacy, with big names like MediaMarkt and
Decathlon, and at least 20 bakeries

Outside, next door, the Berlin Cube

River Spree waterfront, Reichstag in the background

View of Hauptbahnhof from the river park

Museum Insel And Environs

One of Berlin's more interesting features is Museum Island, an island in the middle of the Spree, right downtown, on which are located numerous museums, including five of the biggies. A 19th century Prussian idea. Our plan was for another lite day, walking via the old Jewish Quarter to the Spree and the Island, taking in one of the less demanding museums, and then walking back on another part of the Unter den Linden. Maybe have a snack along the way. It worked out exactly as planned except that the museum we had chosen seemed more apt for another day, or perhaps another life. 

Central synagogue, now a museum mostly; closed
to visitors

Berlin version of The Globe

Top of the Bode Museum

Interior of the Bode Museum big room (free admission): one of
the Friedrichs; asked to name a Prussian king, Friedrich is always
a good bet (just like Mary for cathedrals and Louis for French kings)

Cork accessories in an arts and crafts market

The Old National Gallery; maybe next time; or when we're more
interested in 18th-19th century German painting

The New Museum, which we'll do later, along with the Pergamon

Berlin's cathedral...19th century...has not stood the test of time

In another arts and crafts market (it was Sunday), the best currywurst
ever so far

The Neue Wache building on Unter den Linden

With Kathe Kollwitz' Pieta, a memorial to "victims of war and
tyranny" 

One of the Humboldts, outside their university 

Frederick the Great overseeing it all..."God favors the larger armies"

Gardeners working under the Linden

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

It was just a few blocks beyond KaDeWe, and we needed to stop at the MediaMarkt on the way, so we visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Briefly, the church was built at the close of the 19th century to celebrate Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and Kaiser of the Reich, placed on a small square in the middle of a boulevard. British bombs* wrecked it the night of November 23rd, 1943, and it stayed wrecked for some years after the war. Eventually a replacement church was built nearby, but the wreck, now mostly the spire and narthex were cleaned up and left as a memorial to war losses. There are of course similar memorials in Coventry and elsewhere. Inside the narthex are the remains of some interesting mosaics as well as historical displays and models.

As it appeared before...sort of neo-Gothic

Helpful model of before

After the war

As we saw it

Mosaics, reconstructed from the rubble; mostly about the Kaiser

Model of the current area, memorial, and the octagonal new church

Interior of the new church; Chartres blue blocks

*The British mostly did night bombing, the Americans insisting on the more accurate (so it was argued) but costly day-light "precision" bombing. 

And Now For Something Completely Different: KaDeWe

Enough Vergangenheitsbewaltigung already. The next day, September 9th, we took the underground, and surface too, to Schoeneberg, the big former West Berlin shopping area, to visit KaDeWe, Berlin's and Germany's largest and most famous department store. KaDeWe is Kaufhaus des Westens: Germans understandably are fond of contractions and acronyms and the whole brevity thing. It has been known as KaDeWe since its opening in 1907. Originally Jewish-owned, it was Aryanized by the Nazis, ruined by bombs in 1943, and then rebuilt as one of the showpieces of Germany's reconstruction after the war. It is now owned by a conglomerate based in Bangkok. Sic transit, Gloria. We had an extended look around, modestly stimulated the local economy, then headed for the food court upstairs.

KaDeWe from Tauentzienstrasse; not sure what all the lavender
pipes are about? Homage to Bowellism? 

Approaching from the station

The very famous Naturisten am Brunnen

Ubiquitous city "sculpture"

In the toy department, Lord Voldemort and Vicki

And here, I am receiving The Force from Harry Poppins

Adjacent to the toy department is the KaDeWe Outlet Store, to
which we naturally gravitated...of course I was tempted by the
50% off Abito Leisure Slacks, but at €1,460 (you can round that
off at $1,500) I thought they were just a bit out of my price range
(Vicki did buy another small travel bag) 

Now we are in the kitchen department, examining the latest in
small appliances

For tubing on the Rhine

The food hall seemed to us rather more focused on sit-down dining
than selling fine and exotic foods; no comparison with the Galeries
Lafayette nor Bon Marche; our lunch/snack was at the tapas
bar, jamon and a quiche Lorraine...

The ham (Cinco Jotas) was so good we decided buy some to take
home

And while the guy was slicing it off this leg, I got to sample the
sherry, the wine, and then some great Spanish brandy

Nice department store, but not up to les grands magasins nor even
Harrod's