October 18, 2023

Dateline – Berlin, Germany –

Welcome to Berlin. I am a camera. Unfortunately a far more talented writer than I used that metaphor many years ago but I will have to admit that the stories and memoirs of Christopher Isherwood of 1930s Berlin and all of the works derived from them over time have been running through my mind all day. The vamp to Wilkommen being particularly strong in my head as our train arrived at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (which looks nothing like the opening sequence to the movie version of Cabaret).

The day did not start out in Berlin. It was supposed to start out in Regensburg but low water in the Danube prevented the ship from getting that far upriver. We instead had to get up and packed and off the ship an hour earlier than planned to be transported from whatever little Danube hamlet we could dock at by bus up to Regensburg. Like Passau, I had been to Regensburg before. While Passau is a baroque town that survived World War II relatively unscathed, Regensburg is more gothic having been around since the ancient Romans. (Part of one of their gates to their fortified camp on the site still stands.). It became an important trading center in the later Middle Ages due to its proximity to the Danube and due to their having built one of the few bridges across the river (still in use 800 and some years later). Much of the town center dates from about 1350-1550 and, unlike most other German cities from that era, was pretty much untouched by World War II as it was a provincial backwater in the 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the presence of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis (who had become and remains exceedingly rich through the invention and maintenance of a reliable postal service in the Middle Ages – their current money comes from brewing).

I did a walking tour, poked my head into the cathedral (one of the towers is covered with restoration scaffolding. Tis the season I guess), and did a little shopping. (You can’t find good advent calendars in the US these days but they remain very popular in Bavaria and I was able to find an attractive selection at the bookstore on the cathedral square.). It was also a bit nippy out with temperatures in the 30s and low 40s so I found a coffee house and had a very good bowl of cream of potato soup and a large latte in order to warm up again.

Then it was time to herd the cats once more and get us to the Regensburg train station in order to catch an express for Berlin. German trains aren’t particularly luxurious and this one was 20 minutes late but it stuck to schedule and got us to central Berlin in five and a half hours after quick stops in Nurenburg, Erfurt, and Halle. Our hotel is the Adlon, famous from pre-War Berlin. Not the original, however, as it was flattened as was most of the city in the closing days of World War II but built in the 90s on what was no mans land outside of Checkpoint Charlie, just yards from the Brandenburg Gate. I can even see the sculpture on the top of the gate from my room window. It was pushing 8 pm by the time I was settled and, as we had no activities tonight, I wandered down Unter den Linden and through the general vicinity looking for something to eat. I found a little Indian place and thought it might be a nice change from schnitzel and fish. It was the blandest Indian food I’ve ever eaten. I don’t know if that’s a German thing or it was just an off night. Up tomorrow to see the city.