If you have any interest in 20th-Century European history and you are in Berlin, you will be richly rewarded by a visit to the DDR Museum. (“DDR” stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or German Democratic Republic [GDR].) We spent several hours there on our last full day in Germany, and every moment was fascinating.
Museum Island
In the middle of the Spree River in Berlin there is an island where five world-class museums are located: the Altes Museum, the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum and the Pergamon. The Pergamon, the most popular, includes “The Collection of Classical Antiquities,” “The Museum of the Ancient Near East,” and “The Museum of Islamic Art.” Other museums are close by, across the river from the island.
Arrow points to Museum IslandInsel = Island
After nearly three weeks of sightseeing, unfortunately we’d had enough of world-class museums and art galleries. We did, however, wander past a few of the acclaimed buildings on our final day in Berlin – our subway stop for the DDR Museum was at Museum Island. Next time I’m there, I intend to start my sightseeing at one of the museums on the island. I was sorry that we didn’t have the perseverance this time.
The DDR Museum
The DDR Museum is located across the eastern arm of the Spree from the magnificent Berlin Cathedral. We were fortunate to visit it when we did, as two months later a huge Aquadom in the Radisson Collection Hotel, right next door to the Museum, exploded, spewing a million litres of water and 1500 fish into the lobby and the street. The DDR Museum will be closed for several months as a result of the damage from that catastrophe.
The description of the DDR Museum in my Lonely Planet guide is what attracted our interest. “This touchy-feely museum does an insightful and entertaining job of pulling back the iron curtain on daily life in socialist East Germany. You’ll learn how kids were put through collective potty training, engineers earned little more than farmers, and everyone, it seems, went on nudist holidays. A perennial crowd-pleaser among the historic objects on display is a Trabi, the tinny East German standard car – sit in it to take a virtual spin around an East Berlin neighbourhood. The more sinister sides of daily life, including the chronic supply shortages and surveillance by the Stasi (secret police), are also addressed.”
(Rather than transcribing the information from the signs that were posted near the displays and installations, I am posting photographs of some of the signs themselves – which were often as interesting as the visuals. I’ve added comments here and there where I think they may be helpful.)
Model of the Berlin Wall
Transportation
As the Lonely Planet Guide said, the Trabant, the East-German-made automobile (called “Cardboard on Wheels” in the display), was of great interest to visitors. Apparently, the East Germans were dismayed at the success of the Volkswagen that was being manufactured on the far side of the Wall, and had hoped this would compete. It did not. Most East Germans had no alternative but to purchase the “Trabi,” but they invested a good deal of time and energy on do-it-yourself repairs, and the cobbling together of home-made parts.
There is a motorcycle museum five minutes from the DDR. We didn’t visit it.
Daily Life
An immersion coil for heating water in a cup: We had these too!Gardens and holidays
Education
“Media”
Prison
An East German Apartment
A completely outfitted East German Apartment is displayed in the DDR Museum. It was very spacious, but just about everything in it was shoddily made and apparently everything broke down all the time. The East Germans became adept at repairing everything.
Alexanderplatz, Potsdamer Platz and Gendarmenmarkt
After we left Museum Island we went to Alexanderplatz to look around and enjoy some currywurst (tasty!).
Everywhere you look, there is the FernsehturmCurrywurst
Then we took the U-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz, where we visited a beautiful new shopping mall and admired a lot of buildings.
German Espionage MuseumThe Playce shopping centre
For our final evening meal in Berlin (and Germany), we took the U-Bahn up to lovely Gendarmenmarkt, where we had a lovely dinner and saw some unexpected sights that made us very glad we hadn’t just gone back to the same restaurant we’d enjoyed twice before near our hotel, as our tired feet had strongly suggested we should do.
Gendarmenmarkt SquareBerlin Concert HallFranzösischer Dom (French Cathedral)Deutscher Dom (German Cathedral)
Visiting the city of Frankfurt-am-Main while recovering from jet lag is a perfect way to start a trip to Germany. We arrived at about noon on Saturday, August 20, 2022, checked into our hotel, and had plenty of time to walk the approximately 2k to the north side of the Eiserner Steg (Iron Footbridge) for the 4 p.m. river cruise I had booked for us while still in Canada. In fact, they let us onto the 3:30 cruise as we were a bit early. So on a clear and lovely afternoon we had the best possible introduction to the city of Frankfurt – a view of its lovely skyline from the Main River, accompanied by some identification of buildings and a bit of history over the loudspeakers, in English as well as German. We were accompanied by people from all over the world, it seemed, including a few of course who were there only to arrange their beautiful selves against the skyline in a dozen different ways for the purpose of posting photos on Instagram.
We concluded our first day in Germany appropriately – eating schnitzel with Frankfurt’s famous grüne soße (green sauce) on the square in the old city (Altstadt).
European Central BankWesthafen TowerRömerberg, Frankfurt
Goethe House
On our second day in Frankfurt we began to figure out the transportation system, which is excellent but also confusing if you don’t speak German too well. I think because the whole system of underground and surface trains and buses runs so smoothly, they don’t need too many information people standing around to help those (literally) misguided tourists like us. So a few times, we had to get off a train, go back the way we came, and then set out again. Fortunately, we weren’t in any rush.
We had similar problems trying to use Google maps to walk to our destinations from the subway stops so we did lots and lots and lots of unnecessary steps. At some point, I am going to take the time to watch a YouTube video on the subject of how to go the way you WANT to go when using Google maps, rather than in the opposite or some other unrelated direction. I was glad I had bought a SIM card, given all the times I had to recheck where we were going. At times it seemed that the street signs in Frankfurt and the street names on Frankfurt maps were totally unrelated.
Our first destination was the original home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the poet/playwright/scientist etc. whose Faust (parts One and Two) many years ago permanently expanded my appreciation for the role of literature and drama in the understanding good and evil, not to mention magic and dark thoughts, and gave me an insight into one powerfully creative visionary. (I can still see and feel Goethe’s rendering of Walpurgis Night in my mind’s eye.)
Goethe’s childhood home was large, and the rooms inside it were large, as befitted the social status of his family. The museum into which the building has now been turned is as interesting in its depiction of the era it evokes as it is for what it tells us about Goethe, who lived there for about twenty years. One of the most interesting artifacts to my mind was a puppet theatre he was given as a child that was of great interest to him well into adulthood. It reminds me that what we offer children to stimulate their imaginations can have a lifelong impact. The puppet theatre isn’t much to look at, but that is probably the point of it; drawings hung nearby illustrate what can be done by a child with some ideas who has been given a glass case with a wooden floor.
Goethe’s house was lovely – one of those places that makes you think “If I just had a desk like this in a room like this and was born into a wealthy family that offered me time and space, I could have produced Great Works.” It’s not true, but it is part of the appeal of visiting the homes of creative masters.
Jüdisches Museum
After the Goethe Museum we wandered down toward the river, past Willy Brandt Plaza, and found lunch at a place on the waterfront named “MainNizzo” that had been recommended in my Lonely Planet guidebook. When you eat outside, as we did there and have done several times now, you quickly learn that there are as many wasps in Germany as there are in Canada.
Frankfurt’s “new” Jewish Museum is located in a massively renovated former Rothschild Palace (not much to see of the original interior) and it features three floors of multimedia exhibits that focus on Jewish life in Frankfurt “from the Enlightenment to the present” with a focus on such topics as everyday objects, tradition and ritual, and history and present. One cool thing that is probably common in other museums but that I hadn’t seen before is a digital card that is given to you on admission that you can then hold up near signs next to various displays in order to access additional relevant information online after you get home. Thanks to this feature, I am bringing home a recipe for apple cake (Apfelkuchen) from Anne Frank’s family (there is a whole room of information in the museum about Anne Frank and her relatives, who were from Frankfurt), a recipe for Challah for the grandkids to try out if they are interested, and several other interesting digital artifacts. I was very taken with the “Untitled” tree sculpture by Ariel Schlesinger.
There is also an “old” Jewish museum in Frankfurt. We were unable to see that one as it was closed on Monday, when we could have made time for it. But we were able walk around the very old cemetery behind it. It was badly damaged by the Nazis, but “the oldest extant tombstone dates back to 1272 – the oldest material evidence of Jewish life in Frankfurt.” Its walls are embedded with markers with the names of the many, many Frankfurt Jews whose lives were extinguished during the Holocaust. So many names.
The Film Museum
Foot-weary, we decided to cross the river and see one final museum that day. We chose the Deutsches FilmInstitut Filmmuseum partly out of the hope that it might offer us an opportunity to sit down and watch a bit of film footage. Which it did. We were short on time as well as energy by then, so we didn’t see the feature exhibition, “Rapture of the Deep: Film under Water,” which sounded intriguing. But we did see the permanent exhibitions: one on “filmic vision” and one on “filmic narration.” Both were truly interesting and contained lots of fascinating exhibits.
Costume from Run Lola RunCostume by H.R. Giger for Stuntman Eddie Powell: AlienNightmare before ChristmasFrom The Tin DrumGreen Screen Magic
Kleinemarkthalle
On our final day in Frankfurt, since the museums were closed and our batteries needed recharging, we thought we’d take it easy. We ended up walking over 12,000 steps anyway: that’s the way it goes when you are travelling.
We started at the wonderful city market, Kleinmarkthalle, which offers all the wares of any big city market and was busy with patrons buying fresh produce, meat and fish for consumption at home, and others enjoying food that looked and smelled fabulous right on the premises. Since it was late on a Monday morning, it wasn’t too busy, but I’m sure this place is packed later in the day and week. It was early enough that I was tempted but didn’t make purchases from the vast arrays of hand-made chocolates and magnificent looking baked goods. There were also lots of fresh flowers and plants for sale.
From the market we wandered over to the old Jewish cemetery (see photos above) then down to the central visible attraction of Frankfurt in the old town – the Dom Römer aka St. Bartholemew’s Church aka Kaiserdom. This church contains a lot of religious art and sculpture and even a van Dyck. Wikipedia points out that “It is the largest religious building in the city [but] despite its common English name, it has never been a true cathedral… ” and that “The present church building is the third church on the same site. Since the late 19th century, excavations have revealed buildings that can be traced back to the 7th century.”
The Van Dyck
After lunch we strolled all the way back to the Nizzo and bought a bottle of water there, then walked back through the park by the riverbank to have dinner in the same restaurant we’d eaten at the first night. We liked it because it was outside, on the square, and the food was very tasty. My pork loin was fantastiche and Arnie enjoyed his goulash.
Before dinner, we had a lovely chat with a young German woman with her cute one-and-a-half-year old in the town square in Frankfurt. (The little boy had toddled right up to me, very eager to tell me where his mama was and to practice climbing some shallow steps.) She was so happy to see Arnie and me travelling around the world at our age (“when you’re older, I mean,” she said, politely). She was at that time of life (mid-thirties, I would guess) where she felt that much as she loved her little one, she was pretty tied down and feared she’d never be able to see and do all the things she’d once dreamed of seeing and doing. She was really lovely and we had a good conversation about life and parenthood. I told her about my solo trip to India when I was 60 and that cheered her up even more.
I guess we’re just a couple of travelling inspirations with sore feet.
A dreidel!
Personal Politics
I noticed last weekend that our prime minister had “thrown cold water” on appeals from the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had been visiting Canada to appeal for help in regard to Germany’s energy crisis. I began to wonder if I should stop wearing my little Canadian pin as I travelled around Germany, which I like to do to distinguish myself from our southern neighbours. But then the next day I read that “with a grateful German leader at his side, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood firmly behind the controversial decision to export at least one natural gas turbine for a Russian-owned pipeline that is a crucial source of natural gas for Germany and other European states.” So even if he did piss off everyone except Germany, at least I felt it safe to continue to wear my pin.
Otherwise, it’s been nice to be able to ignore politics for a while.
Thanks, Frankfurt for the opportunity to visit your truly lovely city.
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