Berlin, June 5 - 11, 2014

After several shorter visits to Berlin, we decided to stay a full week this time in order to savor more of the city’s many delights.  Working through the internet, we leased an 8^th floor apartment in a building overlooking the Spree near the northwest corner of the Tiergarten only 20 minutes by foot and S-Bahn from the center of town.

View from our balcony

Spree near our apartment

Our visit was all the more enjoyable because Fred and Jenny Bergsten, old friends—they introduced us!--were guests of the American Academy in Berlin.  We were able to attend a dinner and Fred’s lecture at the Academy, where the guests included former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and tag along with them on other parts of their program.

We were especially fortunate, for example, to have joined Fred and Jerry at the Pergamon Museum and the Jewish Museum, where knowledgeable staff members steered us through the exhibits, making these visits far more interesting than our previous self-guided tours.

Fred and Jenny at the Pergamon’s Ishtar Gate, built in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II

Pergamon Altar with the frieze portraying the battle between the Olympian gods and the Giants (Olympians 1, Giants 0)

Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum, an architectural triumph

The Garden of Exile with sloping ground and leaning pillars that create feelings of unease in visitors—just like exile, in Liebeskind’s view

No visit to Berlin is complete without a day in Potsdam, site of the Hohenzollerns’ summer residences.  We drove there on a cloudless day, great for photography but hotter than “Billy be damned” (to quote Todd’s mother) as Berlin temperatures that week approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit.   Sans Souci and its gardens were as beautiful as always, but this time we had the chance to visit the Neues Palais, now open but not yet fully restored.  While Sans Souci generally reflects the taste of Frederick the Great, later Hohenzollerns made changes to the Neues Palais, which they favored as a summer residence.  Most poignantly, we visited the room where Kaiser William II, almost exactly 100 years ago, signed the decree launching Germany into World War I.   Our favorite residence, from the standpoint of livability, was Cecilienhof, built in the early 20^th century and used as the venue for the Potsdam Conference after World War II.  On the way back we crossed the Glienicke Bridge, linking Berlin to Potsdam, which was the scene of spy swaps during the Cold War.  A lot of war for a small town.

Sans Souci Palace

Gardens from Sans Souci Palace

Part of Neues Palais complex

Cecilienhof

Glienicke Bridge

Todd’s memories of Berlin in the 1960’s and 1970’s are dominated by the Wall, which created a jagged scar through the center of the city.  Mercifully, these memories have been superseded by a vibrant city center, into which the Germans have poured resources to create some of the best cityscapes on the planet.

Brandenburg Gate and US Embassy from the top of the Reichstag, where we lunched at the Käfer restaurant

Brandenburg Gate from Pariser Platz

Pariser Platz and Unter den Linden

Gendarmenmarkt with Schiller statue and French (Hugenot) Cathedral, where we heard an organ concert

Potsdamer Platz, as ultra-modern as the Gendarmenmarkt is traditional

Philharmonie, where we heard the Berlin Philharmonic memorably perform Richard Strauss and Schubert

As our earlier postings indicate, one of the joys of traveling through Europe is the chance to reunite with old friends.  In Berlin we saw Ambassador Irene Kohlhaas, Todd’s opposite number in Moldova and our next door neighbor, and her daughter Susanna.  Irene adopted Susanna when we were in Chisinau, and we were delighted to see that she is now a very sophisticated citizen of the world.  Irene entertained us at a wonderful cocktail with members of her entering Foreign Service class, where we could talk shop with our German colleagues and their spouses.

A dog’s life in Berlin is not the same as a canine must endure in, say, Sun Valley.   Restaurants and public transportation welcome dogs, although in some cases their owners must buy them train tickets (at a reduced price, of course).  We can only wonder how Sage might perform in the situations pictured below.

On the U-Bahn

Joining the family for a restaurant dinner

Finally, bears.  As the city’s namesakes, bears are ubiquitous in Berlin.  They come in all materials, except—thankfully—flesh and blood.

Adorning a bridge

Offering S-Bahn and U-Bahn information

Ready to comfort children

Amsterdam, June 2 - 4, 2014

After crossing the Channel (la Manche) Monday from Dover to Dunkirk (Dunkerque), we arrived in Amsterdam and checked into an airport hotel that offered some relief from the city’s sky-high parking rates.  A bicycle is one alternative, the choice of most Amsterdamers, but we opted for public transportation.  With a city bus stop next to the hotel, we could arrive downtown in 20 minutes.

Infinitesimal portion of Amsterdam's bikes

Our first priority was the Rijksmuseum, which we had last visited in 2006, when it was closed for restorations designed to recreate its late 19^th century interior.  The result was impressive, especially the central axis on the main floor, which brought visitors through world-famous works by Hals, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and other Golden Age Dutch painters to the sanctum sanctorum, the room with Rembrandt’s “Night Watch.”

Renovated Rijksmuseum from canal

Outside Rijksmuseum’s entrance

Vermeer

Watching “The Night Watch”

Mae West reportedly said, “Too much of a good thing is just wonderful,” but Amsterdamers apparently feel an occasional need to blow off the adoration laid at the feet of the Golden Age.  This feeling may have led to the mural below, hopefully executed with apologies to Frans Hals, who painted such group portraits in a much more serious vein.  We encountered this oeuvre when dining with our Washington friends Phyllis Bonanno and Evan Berlack, with whom we had arranged to meet in Amsterdam.

Mural from wall of dining room at Pulitzer Hotel

Drinks with Evan and Phyllis outside Pulitzer Hotel dangerously close to canal

The weather in Amsterdam was so rainy that we focused on indoor activities, including the Van Gogh Museum, where the staff handed out umbrellas to the art lovers standing in the drizzle.  We had visited this superb collection before, but this time we took advantage of an hour-long lecture by a museum curator, who told us a number of things we had not known about Vincent.  The rain dissuaded us from visiting the city’s famous flower market, but we were able to view some fantastic blooms in one of the few sunny moments.

Of course, our sense of civic duty required us to check out the cannabis scene, which had existed well before Colorado and Washington State legalized the weed.   The pot dispensaries advertise themselves as “coffee houses,” but a caffeine addict would never confuse them with Starbuck’s.   We took the picture below, but—unlike Maureen Dowd—we did not sample the wares.  Of course, Maureen is paid for doing such things.

“Coffee house” on Prinsengracht