Sunday
A reunion with the Grutzner family in
Germany was a key part of our Gap Yah planning. I hadn’t been to Peitz since
1990, when I took Christina and a 9-year-old Manuela home from Paris after
their very first trip to the West, and Andrew had never been but was curious to
understand their lives, my antecedents and to practice his German.
It took us three and a bit hours to drive from
Hof to Peitz through lovely rolling hills, almost following the Czech border, with
sun on the hilltops and mist in the valleys. In these conditions, it was hard
to imagine the old DDR.
When we arrived at 25 Altebahnhofstrasse
the family was in the garden and a 3-generation gaggle of weeping Grutzner women
rushed towards us, with Anna Marie, Christina and Manuela in the lead. A series
of large meals then followed – all involving cakes and coffee and sometimes
beer - and the day lasted well into the night.
Monday
Christina took the day off work and showed
us around the distinct with her friend Burkhardt. We revisited the house at the
old family farm where Mimmi grew up, though is looking the worse for wear. Andrew
got excited about an old DDR border patrol boat parked in the yard but the rest
of us could only see the junk!
We climbed the Festung tower in the centre
of Peitz, which has been well restored and provided good views of the district.
Anna Marie then organised a bike trip round the lake to a nearby restaurant
with Christina, Burkhardt, Tomas and us. At 78 she is amazingly fit, but then
all the Peitz women live well into their 90s. It was sad to leave her though
there’s every chance we will meet again.
We drove up to Berlin via the Polish border
town of Guben, about 30kms north east of Peitz. Crossing the Oder River into
Poland satisfied Andrew’s curiosity about a country he’d never visited though
the badly made streets, rundown houses and shops advertising cheap cigarettes
were a bit depressing. We drove into Berlin after a brief stop at Uli’s parents
to return Otto, the German GPS, then on to our rented apartment in
Zionkirchstrasse in the old East Berlin.
Tuesday
Zionskirchstrasse is in a delightful area
of cobbled streets, pre-war apartment buildings and small squares, the nicest
of which contains the Zionskirche where Deitrich Bonhoeffer once preached. After
getting acquainted with the local bakery and our washing machine, we headed out
to drop off the hire car, a longer and more complicated process than it should
have been. But afterwards we emerged from the brand new Hauptbahnhof just round
the corner from the Reichstag.
Sir Norman Foster’s rebuilding of the
German parliament building is fantastic. You can still see the odd bullet hole
and the original façade is once more intact but the new glass dome, ascended
via a ramp curving up the inside, provides spectacular views across the city in
every direction and aims to convey the openness of modern German democracy. We
had lunch (a glass of wine and seafood risotto) on the lovely terrace
restaurant at the top and felt we had at last arrived in this fascinating city.
No visit to Berlin is complete without a
pilgrimage to the Brandenburg Gate, so we traipsed off for the obligatory photo
and to marvel at what has been a rallying point for Germans seeking change
since it was built in the 18th century. Napoleon cheekily removed
the gates en route to Moscow but the Prussians got them back after Waterloo.
Wednesday
A slatey grey sky, a drop in temperature
and drizzly rain by the time we got to the Pergamon Museum mid-morning. The
Pergamon Altar and other German archeological finds from the 19th
century place this museum as a serious rival to the British Museum for the best
collection of Greek and Roman antiquities in the world, and the giant Gates of
Babylon are gorgeous with their row upon row of mosaic lions and other beasts.
In the afternoon we went to the
disappointing Checkpoint Charlie museum. The checkpoint itself is now “guarded”
by some tacky actors in US military uniform and sneakers and is a really just a
photo opp for American tourists. Inside was not much better: a great collection
of genuine escape vehicles and devices (and the stories that go with them) but
a lot of junk too.
In the evening We took the s-Bahn down to
Manuela and Torsten’s apartment in the southern Berlin suburbs and all went out
for dinner in a nearby Italian restaurant. Eight-month-old Sarah provided lots
of laughs and a trip to Australia is still firmly on their family wishlist…
Thursday
On the recommendation of my book club
friend Dee, we took a Cold War “Fat Tires” bicycle tour through the eastern
part of the city. It was hosted by Tom, a smart young Welsh guy with a nice
sense of humour, whom we met at Alexander Platz. Last time I was there it was
still the proud centerpiece of a totalitarian state!
Tour highlights for me included the remaining
eastern section of wall with the famous (post 1989) graffiti of Brezhnev and
Honeker kissing, the bookshop from the final scene of The Lives of Others, and an amazing four euro Turkish lunch in Kreutzberg.
In the evening we also discovered in our own Bernauerstrasse neighbourhood the
spot – immortalized in an iconic Cold War photograph – of a young East German
border guard jumping the barbed wire to run to freedom.
Tomorrow is an early start (try 5am) to
catch our flight to London. Lufthansa cabin crews have called a national strike
today but we are quietly confident that our codeshare flight will be run by
British Midlands…fingers crossed.
