BERLIN: YOU NEED TO GO

PURE GERMANY: Our Pee Wee Herman, “there’s no basement in the Alamo” moment in Berlin came this summer on the final day of our first trip to the German capital. We had spent the morning visiting Charlottenburg Palace, a spectacular former residence of Prussian royalty located on the western edge of the city, and then made our way to the Bundestag, or Parliament building, near the River Spree and the new Hauptbahnhof (central train station). Our plan was to visit the top of the building.

I had read that the view from the Sir Norman Foster-designed glass dome atop the official seat of government in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland was awesome. What I failed to learn beforehand was that – these days – one must request an admission time, typically two or three days in advance, so we were denied admission. Although disappointed we would not experience a new signature tourist experience of modern Berlin, given the fact that I work in Washington, D.C., with its myriad security measures, I found it surprising that we could have – had we planned better – visited the official seat of government of the largest member of the European Union with an e-mail request and our passports. Though we would not see the interior of the Bundestag on this trip, in every other respect, Berlin did not disappoint and it more than exceeded our expectations.

THE BIG, COMPLICATED CITY: Berlin is continental Europe’s largest city with more than four million residents. It’s a remarkably connected place in 2011, given that the city was divided for four decades after World War II and following its punishing defeat as the seat of Nazi power. Today, it seems (to me) utterly connected and reunited. It also appears to be a city that is obviously aware of, but not inordinately burdened by, its painful divisions and inglorious past. Berlin is a rollicking capital that does not deny its history – it marks it in unflinching ways – but it also presents the modern face of Germany and all that this rich, fascinating country offers. In the 20 years or so since Berlin resumed its position as the seat of government from Bonn, a slew of new construction that includes ministries and embassies has followed. The result is that Berlin today is an interesting, appealing and, as yet, unfinished mix of 21^st century glass and steel commercial structures alongside modern versions of stately government offices and buildings from earlier periods that either have been restored to their former glory or stand by shabbily but with potential.

It’s also a young city full of 20- and 30-somethings sitting around cafes with laptops or smartphones and – apparently – recovering from some late night revelry. Berlin was described in a recent article about the city’s entrepreneurship potential in the New York Times as a “dilettante party capital.” My spouse and I spent four days in Berlin in July with our 10-year-old son, so I can’t really speak to the level or quality of partying, but I did observe that Berlin seems to be a city in which you can easily scratch an itch, whatever it may be.

SETTLING IN TO OUR ‘HOOD: Thanks to the navigation in our rented BMW, we arrived from Thuringia state in central Germany to our destination in the heart of Berlin with ease following a three hour drive. Our home for four days was a two-bedroom apartment in the Prenzlauer Berg district, in the former East, which we rented through Brilliant Apartments, one of several apartment rental companies that operate in Berlin. Using an apartment rental service offered a great, lower cost alternative to a hotel with several key advantages: more room, a kitchen with a balcony overlooking a lovely courtyard, a fabulous location in a hip neighborhood of mostly young couples and families – straight and gay - with great shopping and dining. The nearest U-Bahn (Berlin’s Metro) station was just blocks away. An added plus was the ground floor Café Krone, which serves great coffee along with buttery and delicious chocolate croissants. And, thanks to Sandra, the wonderfully helpful manager of Brilliant Apartments, we were able to park our rental car for the duration of our visit at a nearby garage for just €26.

RAINY DAY, NO PROBLEM: Having spent four rainy days in Germany already, we awoke our first morning in Berlin to yet another day of rain. No worries. As we quickly learned, there is plenty to see and do in Berlin, both indoors and outdoors. After a late morning breakfast in our apartment, we dashed to the U-Bahn station at Eberswalder Strasse and made our way to the Potsdamer Platz. What once was a no-man’s land in divided Berlin today is a major commercial center of the city, and home to the Sony Center, a towering complex of hotels, shopping, dining and residences. Thanks to one of our son’s obsessions, we headed straight to one of the complex’s key attractions, the Lego Discovery Center. We spent the morning checking out all the amazing creations made from those tiny little bricks (e.g., the Bundestag in Legos, complete with a glass dome). Kids also get a chance to put their imagination to use and spend time creating their own Lego masterpieces. Our son enjoyed pitting his newly constructed race car against those of other junior designers.

Next up was the multi-level shopping center across the street, where we went to pick up adapters for my MacBook and our son’s DS player, and to grab lunch, where I had my first taste of wienershnitzel. Actually, it was the turkey version, the name of which sounded even funnier (to me): putenschnitzel.

As we headed outside, the rain had ended and the skies finally began to brighten, so we decided to walk towards the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s most iconic symbol. Newly refurbished, the Brandenburg Gate was built as a memorial to the military prowess of the Prussian army. Today, it’s a major tourist destination much like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, straddling a strategic location near the Bundestag to the north, the entrance to the enormous Tiergarten to the west, the Central Park of Berlin, and the Unter den Linden to the east, one of the most elegant boulevards in Europe. We also paused to respectfully walk through the plaza of more than 2700 concrete slabs that comprise the Berlin Holocaust Memorial or, as it is more descriptively named, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It’s a place where the laughter and chatter of nearby streets fades as people quietly reflect on this somber and gray place that makes the point of its existence beautifully and effectively.

ART AND HISTORY: From the Brandenburg Gate, we walked east along the Under den Linden, checking out the new embassies of the United States, Russia and France, then on to the Berliner Dom, the city’s main Protestant cathedral, before arriving at Museum Island – literally – an island in River Spree, ever inch of which is filled with the State Museums of Berlin, including the Bode Museum of Art, the New and Old National Galleries, a museum of Egyptian antiquities and, at our son’s choosing, our pick for the day. The Pergamon Museum houses a vast collection of classic antiquities from Greek and Roman civilizations, as well as collections of Near East and Islamic art. According to its website, the monumental reconstruction of archaeological building ensembles - such as the namesake Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus and the Ishtar Gate including the Processional Way of Babylon and the Mshatta Façade - has made the Pergamon world-famous.

We left the Pergamon and headed across the Spree to the reconstructed New Synagogue with its gleaming gold dome, an important symbol of the resiliency of Berlin’s Jewish community. After clearing the airport-like security, we walked to the top of the synagogue’s dome, which offers its own fine views of Berlin. The original building was set ablaze during the anti-Semitic orgy of Krystallnacht in 1938, and would have been destroyed, but for a fire brigade commander who would not sit idly by. Later, the ruined structure sat abandoned and overgrown in East Berlin, only to be restored to its former glory after reunification.

From the New Synagogue, we made our way back to our apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, scoping out the evening’s dining options on Oderberger Strasse, our home street for a few days. We settled on a café near our apartment building that served Thai, Chinese and Malaysian cuisine at outside tables with the temporary accessory of a flat-screen TV broadcasting the Women’s World Cup soccer match between France and Germany. Germany won that night and we saw no reason not to join in the home country celebrating.

Before leaving Berlin, we also managed to fit in visits to the world-famous Berlin Zoo and the Schwules Museum, which is the world’s only museum dedicated to the history of GLBT people. And, we had a final meal along the Kurfurstendamm, a posh, elegant boulevard in the former West lined with the likes of Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Berlin’s most famous retail emporium, the Kafthaus des Westens, which is abbreviated by everyone to KaDeWe.

We left Berlin wishing we had more time, but the BMW navigation was re-programmed for our next exciting stop: Munich and Bavaria.

CENTRAL GERMANY: A FIRST VISIT TO THE HEART OF EUROPE

My family and I are en route home from Munich via Philadelphia, having just spent 10 days in Germany, traveling from the center of the country, north to Berlin, and finally to Munich and Bavaria in the south. The question in my mind is why it took me so long to plan a trip to this fascinating, complex and generally amazing country. It’s not as if I was ignorant of Germany’s well-known charms and attractions; I learned of many over the years through articles and tales from friends. Somehow, though, Germany never quite made it to the top of my travel list, despite having circled the country with trips to Belgium, the Czech Republic, France and the Netherlands. Maybe, but I can’t be sure, it was because I subconsciously held some of my father’s views as a former U.S. Army soldier in Brussels at the end of World Word II.

In the end, it was the family reunion of my spouse, Raymond, which finally brought me to the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Our initial destination and the site of the reunion events would be the tiny town of Uder in the state of Thuringia, a verdant and rolling land of beech and pine forests that once was part of the DDR, the Communist half of a formerly divided Germany. Today, it lies at the geographic center of this powerful visitor destination of more than 80 million. Since even before re-unification, the few members of Raymond’s large and extended family in Uder had maintained relationships with their American relatives. When it came time to plan the bi-annual event for 2011, his German relatives offered to host and the American side of the family leapt at the chance to spend some time in part of the ancestral homeland. Meanwhile, I leapt at the chance to tag along and visit his extended family, and to use the event as a jumping off point to see some of Germany’s main highlights.

ON THE ROAD: Like millions of travelers to Germany, we arrived at the Frankfurt am Main International Airport, Europe’s busiest. Also like many arrivals, we did not venture into this city of 660,000 to explore. Instead, after being talked into upgrading our rental car to a BMW with navigation (o.k., so it didn’t take much of a sell), we started our two-hour drive north towards Uder. But, this is not to suggest that Frankfurt lacks for reasons to linger. Its reputation as one of Europe’s most important centers of banking, finance and publishing is well known, but “Mainhattan” also tempts visitors with several top-notch museums, including the Museum for Modern Art, shopping, dining and nightlife, all within several attractive neighborhoods along the River Main.

But we had a full German agenda, so we headed north from the airport and onto the autobahn where I learned my first lesson of the trip, which is that lollygagging along in the left lane on German motorways can be hazardous to your health. The posted speed “suggestion” of 130 kmh was widely ignored by an endless parade of (mostly black) BMWs, Mercedes and Audis rocketing along at well north of 100 mph. And, German drivers do NOT appreciate having to slow down for your pokey self because you plan to take a left in Peoria.

The second lesson I learned is that Germans graciously welcome one’s butchered attempts to speak German. And, with very few exceptions, locals can deftly switch to English to keep things moving and on time, another German trait I came to greatly appreciate.

Shortly after 8 a.m., we made our first stop for breakfast in the ancient and picturesque university city of Marburg. The city and university date to the 13^th Century and the town center is a hilly and twisted warren of stairs and half-timbered buildings. On the early morning of our stop, the streets were full of university students groggily in search of their first caffeine and frühstück, the German breakfast. Despite locals’ linguistic dexterity, we still were too sleep-deprived to manage any multi-lingual communication beyond pointing, but we managed to secure a “Coca Cola Light” and rhubarb Danish before getting back on the road. Less than two hours later, our navigation voice, which Raymond had managed to switch from German to English featuring a lovely British accent, delivered us to the home of his German cousins.

Over the next three days, our German hosts treated us to a wonderful event that combined family time and sightseeing along with great food and company. They also went out of their way to showcase this region’s perhaps less well-known attractions. Uder is adjacent to Heilingenstadt, an immaculate and pleasant spa town of about 18,000 at the edge of the Eichsfeld, a beautiful, hilly and pastoral region of forests, manicured fields of corn and wheat, tidy small towns and some interesting history, ancient and recent. We visited the medieval Hülfensberg Church, which is perched atop a hill overlooking rolling valleys in every direction, and which features a cross that dates to the 11th century. Nearby, we spent a sunny afternoon at the Grenzmuseum, where visitors can stand at the former border that divided East and West Germany. On this beautiful afternoon, it was sobering to consider, looking out over abandoned guard towers and a verdant strip of green, how many people had died while trying to escape this narrow band of wall, mines and fences during the 40 years that divided this nation and its people.

The next day, I accompanied my sister- and brother-in–law and their daughter to the central train station (hauptbahnhof) in Göttingen, from where our niece was headed to Frankfurt to meet friends for a night of revelry in celebration of her birthday. After seeing her off, we set out to explore the pedestrianized central square of one of Germany’s most important university cities. Established in 1737 by King George II of England, who also ruled Hannover State, the University of Göttingen, also known as Georg- August University, long has been considered one of Germany’s top universities. It boasts a record number of 44 Nobel laureates and its alumni include the “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, the Brothers Grimm and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. In fact, as the story goes, an agreement during World War II between the Allied and Axis powers spared the bombing of both Göttingen and Heidelberg, home to one of Germany’s other top schools, while a similar sparing was accorded Cambridge and Oxford. On this gloomy and cool June day, we walked past the famous statue of the Goose Girl in front the Rathaus (Town Hall), who serves an integral role in the university’s graduation tradition, which involves planting a kiss on her to symbolize another important rite of passage. The central core boasts a number of shops and restaurants and it’s a very pleasant place to spend a morning or afternoon while visiting the region.

After a final reunion event that lasted well into the early morning hours, we said goodbye to our German, American and Polish family members the next morning and made our way out of Uder and towards our next stop in this first exploration of Germany. Next up, the rollicking capital of Berlin.