The Netherlands 2012

My father and step-mother came to visit during Oscar's spring break in April.  We scheduled a three-day trip to the Netherlands.  Of course we went to the Keukenhof (3rd year in a row).  The weather forecast called for rain each day we were there but it never rained once.  On the day we went to the Keukenhof, the sunlight helped me get some great photos.  My dad brought his fancy Canon 7D camera so I got to use that for the photos.

A day trip to Strasbourg

In 1977, my father was employed as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Institut de Chimie, Université Louis-Pasteur in Strasbourg, France.  Strasbourg subsequently became the city of my birth.  When my father came to visit in April, he said he wanted to see the city again.  It was only a two hour drive from Wiesbaden so we drove there and back on the same day.  We visited the Strasbourg Cathedral (from 1647 to 1874 it was the world's tallest building), walked around the Grand Island (in 1988 it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site), had lunch at a French restaurant, and stopped at a pastry shop for desert as we walked back to the parking garage.

Schloss Heidelberg

My brother and his girlfriend flew into Warsaw a few weeks ago and have been touring Europe.  I picked them up at the train station here in Wiesbaden on Friday.  They are staying with us until they fly home on Wednesday.  Yesterday we drove to Heidelberg for a day trip to its famous castle.  The day was overcast but I didn't think it would rain so I suggested that we should leave the umbrellas in the car.  Naturally, it started raining after we had been walking around the castle for about an hour.  We got a bit wet but were not soaked.  Oscar used the rain as an opportunity to spike up his hair.

Separation of powers

Tina got home from her adults-only trip to Bavaria on Tuesday afternoon.  On Thursday, she left again -- this time to the States for four weeks (mostly with her parents in Las Vegas).  Calvin and Sara went with her but Oscar stayed in Germany with me (he still has two more weeks of school).  We looked at getting tickets after Oscar was out of school but leaving a few weeks later would have cost a lot more money.  So Oscar and I are by ourselves in Germany until the evening of July 6th.

Berlin City Tour and Legoland Discovery Center

On our second day in Berlin we bought tickets for a hop-on / hop-off city bus tour.

Potsdamer Platz
The first place we got off the bus was Potsdamer Platz.  This part of Berlin is named after the city of Potsdam (25 km to the south west) because it marked the point where an old (think 1700s) road to Potsdam passed through Berlin's city wall (not the Berlin Wall -- that would come much later).  Initially Potsdamer Platz was just a minor intersection of rural thoroughfares; that began to change when the Potsdamer Bahnhof (train station) opened in 1835.

In 1871, Berlin became the capital of the new German Empire.  Positioned firmly in the center of a rapidly-growing metropolis (Berlin was the 4th-largest city in the world in 1900), Postdamer Platz became a place for hotels, department stores, theatres, dance halls, restaurants, and more.  By the 1920s, Potsdamer Platz was internationally known as the center of Berlin -- it had become the busiest traffic center in all of Europe and the heart of Berlin's nightlife (similar to Piccadilly Circus in London or Times Square in New York).

Unfortunately, proximity to government buildings meant that Potsdamer Platz was almost completely destroyed during the World War II bombing raids of Berlin.  After the war, the Berlin Wall divided Potsdamer Platz in two, creating a desolate wasteland in what had once been an economic center of Berlin.  This 1986 photo (borrowed from Wikipedia) shows No Man's Land between the Outer Wall (foreground) and Inner Wall (background) with East Berlin in the distance.

Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects and has again become an economic center of Berlin.  Seeing the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel immediately adjacent to the former location of the Wall really underscored this point for me.

Also at Potsamer Platz: the European headquarters for Sony and the corporate headquarters for Deutsche Bahn (photo from Wikipedia).

We stopped for some photos at a section of the Wall that still exists in its original place.

My cousin Diane and her husband Jason and their son Ian were visiting Germany to buy a new BMW from the factory in Munich.  After picking up the car, they stayed with us for a few days and joined us on this trip to Berlin.

A double-brick line traces the former path of the Wall...

Legoland Discovery Center at Sony Center
After looking at the Wall, we walked to Sony Center (less than five minutes) to visit Legoland Discovery Center.  It was expensive (I would say overpriced but I'm not sure Tina shares this opinion) but the boys liked it.  Admission times are staggered throughout the day (you will not be admitted before the admission time printed on your ticket) but once you are in, you can stay until closing.  The catch is that you cannot leave and come back.  We had an 11AM admission time and the boys were hungry almost immediately.  If I had known about the no pass-out policy, we probably would have eaten first.  We could have purchased hot dogs from the on-site food service but we got the boys to hold out until 12:30-ish so we could find a nicer place to eat.

 

Do not underestimate the popularity of Dirk Nowitski...

We ate lunch at an Australian restaurant at Sony Center...

 ...and then hopped back on the bus.

Checkpoint Charlie
The next place we got off the bus was Checkpoint Charlie.  It was crowded.  We stopped at McDonald's to use the bathroom.  I would not have been able to write any of these sentences 25 years ago.

 The Checkpoint Charlie museum (we did not go inside) is across the street from McDonald's.

Photos from the bus
I do not know what these places are.  We saw them from the bus...

Brandenburg Gate
The next place we got off the bus was the Brandenburg Gate.

The bus drove us by the German Parliament building (Reichstag) but I didn't take a photo.  I think by then Sara was having a melt-down on the bus...

Who, me?

We rode the subway back to the apartment and started packing up our stuff for the next day's drive back to Wiesbaden.

Ampelmann
Berlin is famous for the cute little Ampelmännchen that adorn many of the pedestrian stoplights.  The Ampelmann store sells lots of Ampelmann trinkets.

I had been wanting to visit Berlin since moving to Germany and was not disappointed (except that we didn't stay longer).  I really liked it; maybe we will go back.  Tina had not been as enthusiastic about wanting to do this trip but commented afterward that she enjoyed it more than she thought she would.

Berlin Zoo

Oscar had two weeks off for Spring Break in April so we took some trips. The first week we went to Berlin. My cousin and her family were visiting from New Hampshire so they came with us on this trip. I found an apartment to rent at http://www.homeaway.com. The apartment was a quick ten minute walk to the U-bahn so we were able to park the cars the whole time we were in Berlin.

We spent our first day in Berlin at the world-famous Berlin Zoo. With over 2.8 million visitors in 2010, the Berlin Zoo is the most-visited zoo in Europe. The zoo is old (it opened in 1844), large (84 acres), and has the most comprehensive collection of animals and species in the world (more than 1,500 different species and around 17,000 animals). The boys had a nice time at the zoo and we took lots of photos.

Stylin' in mommy's sunglasses:

Business in the front, party in the rear:

Just as we were walking by these wild dogs, the trainers showed up with a big piece of meat.  The boys liked watching them fight over it.

Next time I will write about our second (and last) day in Berlin (we bought tickets for a Berlin City Tour and visited Legoland Discovery Center).