Surprise! Back from vacation
The very nature of a blog is that it’s public, open to friends, family, and the random Internet surfer. You’d be surprised sometimes how a blog can connect people together; I think it was only a month ago that a random visitor from Texas contacted me asking if I knew how to arrange concert tickets for some band performing in Frankfurt. The thing is, if you follow a person’s blog carefully you can get to know a frightening amount about them. So, for just that reason, I didn’t post in advance to my blog that we were out of town this week on a 5-day vacation .. but now I’m back and ready to tell you all about it.
We went first to Leipzig, then to Dessau, then to Berlin (yes, we stayed in Germany).
Leipzig
Leipzig is famous as the place that Bach spent most of his career, and also famous as home to the former headquarters of the Stasi, East German secret police. We didn’t originally plan to go to Leipzig, but when we decided to go to Dessau (see below), Leipzig was on the way so we said, okay, why not.
In the Museum in der “Runden Ecke” we learned on a German-language tour about how the Stasi formed, operated, and was eventually brought down in 1990. Just the concept that a “case” was never handled by a single Stasi employee from beginning to end so that no one could easily piece together the details after-the-fact was already enough to send chills down my spine. Then we saw the fake ceiling in one of the offices that was used to hide documentation stored in the ceiling; the cabinets of spy equipment; the “appointment” room with an entrance door that closed behind you … and automatically locked; and finally the huge machine in the last room used to destroy all the microfilm and files in the days prior to the fall of the communist government. The most chilling of all was the realization that freedom of ideas was suppressed so efficiently in a Western country, until only 17 years ago (reference picture).
In Leipzig we also visited the church where Bach is buried and where he did a lot of his work, Thomaskirche. Did you know he used to write a new contata each week?!
Dessau
Dessau is famous for the Bauhaus, the school of modern architecture - both literally and figuratively - designed and built under the leadership of Walter Gropius. Built in Dessau in the 1920’s, it was the precursor to modern architecture. Neither the school nor the architecture concepts were popular at the time, due in part to the first World War, after which Germans simply wanted to return to “normal”, as opposed to embracing more progressive ideas.
The most interesting concept to me at the Bauhaus was that architecture should first of all be functional … but if the aesthetics must be compromised to achieve functionality, then nevermind - go for the aesthetics!
Berlin
Berlin was not the type of city I expected. The city is very spread out and both modern and old at the same time. It didn’t give me the “fuzzy-wuzzies” like other European cities can do. Berlin is built on the swampland that surrounds the crossing of a couple rivers, including the Spree. During the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, as capital of the kingdom of Prussia, the population grew from around 300,000 to over 3 million people in a span of some 50 years; this explains to me why everything is so spread out. Much more recently, as we all know, the city was pretty much bombed to pieces at the very end of World War II - this explains the bullet holes and shell markings in a large majority of the buildings in the central area that have not yet been restored. The history is fascinating but I won’t bore you with its entire rendition here - I recommend the reading on Wikipedia.
Two things stood out to me as we learned about the history of Berlin: first, that the communist party so strictly regulated what people were allowed to think or be exposed to ideologically; second, that such a middle-age-sounding regime still existed in Western Europe until 1990.
Did you know that the East German government continually perfected the methods by which they locked people into East Germany? Once an escape attempt happened, the hole in security was generally closed within 24 hours. Fifty bonus points to anyone who knows why the round bit is on top of the wall…
A more well-rounded set of photos from our vacation can be found at Tim’s blog photo gallery.
on May 6th, 2007 at 20:07
like i sayd on tim’s blog i realy love to visit berlin thanks to all what you have writen and spesialy shown in the pictures ^.^
on May 7th, 2007 at 3:25
I loved West Berlin… not East [the wall was gone when we went, but it was still referred to as a separate entity].