Here we are! In a few days it will be November 9, 2019, the thirtieth anniversary of that event that has been briefly defined as "the fall of the Berlin Wall" and which gave the seal to the collapse of the Soviet power system over all of Eastern Europe. On the subject books have been written, films made, journalistic inquiries produced; for our part we like to celebrate the event and the city by proposing the story of our group trip to Berlin in August 2012. The tour lasted a week, with the organization of "our" tour operator Movimondo and the Strabordo Association and the accompaniment of the excellent Michela. The movements were made partly by minibus but mostly by metro and with our own strength. Naturally the memories, after seven years, a little fade and a little overlap; we will therefore proceed in hops, trusting in the power of images and reiterating our usual assumption: to speak and illustrate only the destinations that are actually accessible in a wheelchair and that we have experienced. A website in Italian that can be useful is https://www.berlin.de/it. Let's start with a symbol of the recent history of this city, the Brandenburg Gate:
as soon as you cross the gate, the beautiful tree-lined Unter den Linden, where the military parades of the GDR took place:
two images of the monument to the victims of the Holocaust, which we talked about in January:
Another way to encounter the horror of Nazi concentration camps are the so-called stumbling blocks, metal slabs the size of a porphyry cube, embedded in the pavement, each bearing the name of a deportee with the dates of birth and death:
At this point it is time to take a look at the traces of the Wall that remained in 2012, and certainly still remain today, as a future memory of a past that should not be forgotten. Let's start with the so-called East Side Gallery, that stretch of wall that has been preserved on site, as in the days following November 9, 1989 it was "humanized" with murals by many artists from all over the world:
But also on the streets and sidewalks the traces of the Wall have been highlighted:
and we close the Wall chapter with the images of Check Point Charlie, the American checkpoint transformed into an information point for tourists:
But Berlin is a dynamic city, in full renovation, with modern buildings and skyscrapers; we went to Potsdamer Platz and went up to a panoramic skyscraper that allows you to embrace the whole city:
Berlin also has a beautiful river, the Spree; it is nice to walk along the banks of the river and its canals, to then arrive at the so-called museum island and visit the magnificent Pergamon Museum:
This is the entrance to the Pergamon Museum: today some of the museum's attractions are closed to the public, due to expansion works that will lead, by 2025/26, to the opening of a new wing. However, we show you some of the attractions that make this museum unique in the Middle East, Greece and Rome.
The Pergamon Altar:
the Gate of Miletus:
the Ishtar Gate:
We do another encounter with history at the Reichstag, the German parliament rebuilt after being in ruins due to the bombings of the last war: the futuristic glass and steel dome, designed in 1992 by the English architect Norman Foster, can be visited from the public with appropriate reservation:
And now let's stroll the streets of Berlin; the colored pipes that drain the water from the marshy subsoil and discharge it into the Spree:
the Red Town Hall:
the Cathedral:
the New Synagogue:
in the medieval quarter:
the alternative Berlin:
the terrace of the Museum of Contemporary Art:
Now let's take a trip outside the city, to Potsdam, where we find the famous Sans Souci Palace, the magnificent Rococo-style palace built by Frederick II of Prussia between 1745 and 1747:
We then allow ourselves a tour of the town of Potsdam:
And, since we do not give restaurant recommendations, we close with the image of a nice plate of pork shank and a mug of beer, as a symbol of the typical food and drink of these parts:
We hope to have offered a useful service to those seated warriors who wanted to visit Berlin, of which we have given a panoramic and certainly limited vision: to you the pleasure of new discoveries, in this hyperdynamic city, and if you want to tell us about them, we will be happy to publish them. Have a nice trip!