Monday, 27 May 2024 Berlin: On a Spree!

Written 16 August 2024

Just getting there took longer than we expected, and we had to park farther away than we hoped, so we ended up hailing a taxi, which got us to the dock in time. At the right and left here are shots of our vessel, but we didn't use these chairs.

Because it was so sunny, we sat indoors, in the very bow, in front of huge panoramic windows. As you can see, we had plenty of room and could move from window to window if we wished, because everybody else chose to sit up on deck, cultivating their basal-cell carcinomas.

Across the river we could see this handsome mural—don't know whether it was fresco, mosaic, or what— above the door of a brasserie called "Ganymed." I therefore assume the mural is a portrait of Ganymede.

Once we got underway, we passed under the Weidensdammer Brücke (which carries the Friedrichstrasse over the river) and traveled a short ways upstream, to the first lock in that direction (the Mülendammschleuse), where we turned around.

On that first leg, we passed under a second bridge (the Ebertbrücke) to the point shown at the left. That's the dome of the Bode Museum (sculpture and Byzantine art), on the tip of Museum Island, an island in the middle of the river that is home to five major museums and the the Berliner Dom (the city's cathedral). The Bode was the fourth of the big five to be built. (The first was begun in the early 19th century, the last completed in 1930; Museum Island is a Unesco site). To the left of it, you can see the 1969 East German TV tower, which was supposed to look like Sputnik and houses a revolving retaurant that goes around every half hour.

We took the left branch of the river (passing under the pedestrian bridge that connects both banks to the tip of the island.

I think the photo at the right is still part of the Bode.

Next, we passed the Pergamon Museum (famous for its full-scale reproductions of monuments of antiquity), but it's set back a little from the bank, and I didn't get a good photo. At the left here is the 19th-century Berlin Cathedral, with the green domes. Just before it but not very visible, is the "Old Museum" built by Schinkel (remember Schinkel from yesterday?).

Beyond the cathedral was the Humboldt Forum, shown here at the right. I think only the façade looks this modern, but I still wonder whether this is the "concrete cube" mentioned by an earlier guide, where the stability of the island is measured.

Museum Island is always described as home to "five major museums," but if you Google map it and zoom in, you'll see many more than five buildings marked as museums of this or that.

I wasn't able to put a name to the imressive façade at the left, but it was the next thing we came to on that side of Museum Island.

At the lock, just even with the end of Museum Island, where the river comes back together, we turned around. Beyond the lock, we could see other cruise ships, and the narrator said that many ships in the old harbor there are used as restaurants.

At the right is the view back the other way, with the gradiose but nameless façade (now on our left) followed by the Humboldt Forum, and then the green dome of the cathedral.

At the left here is an illustration of one of the frustrations of river tourism. In a bus, you're often up too close to buildings to get good photos, on a boat, you're often down too low! If you look above the stone wall in the photo at the left, in the top corner of the window, you can see the part of the back of a famous statue of St. George slaying the dragon, but this is the best shot I could get of it from where we sat.

The statue is on the ground of St. Nicholas Church. It was the oldest church in Berlin, but now it's a museum.

At the right is a closer view of the main cathedral dome and some of its little satellite domes. Originally, it was the palace church of the Hohenzollerns.

  Just past the cathedral, sighting over the top of a bridge, we had this view of the dome of the New Synagogue. It's been called that since it was built, in 1866, but it was reconstructed in 1995, and the gold-striped dome dates from then.

At the left here is the main Berlin train station. It's Berlin's largest and fourth largest in Germany. The station is actually curved to follow the tracks, which emerge from it on this side directly onto the bridge we passed under.

Just beyond it, the narration pointed out a little blue building called the Palace of Tears; it housed the checkpoint through which Berlin residents passed back and forth to visit East Berlin, weeping as they left friends and relatives behind. I never actually saw it, because large trucks passed in front of it both times we passed it.

After passing within easy view of the Reichstag building, we came to the "ribbon of government," a long series of white government buildings on the river banks. At the right here are the parliamentary office building (left) and the parliamentary library (right), which are jointed by two footbridges, under which we passed. The lower bridge is open to the public; the upper one is reserved for reichstag members. The two bridges span not just the river but the old boundary between East and West Berlin.

Along there I spotted the first pair of diving ducks, of a sort that I saw several times. They looked sort of like lesser scaups, but from my description, Gritta (who hadn't seen them) thought they might be common goldeneyes.

Written 18 August 2024

The strange black cube up ahead here is the Futurium, a museum and institue dedicated to the future, discussions of it, and hypotheses about it. Just beyond it, we passed the mouth of the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal, which is connected to the Spree by the Humboldt Harbor. The eastern bank of the harbor basin was the Berlin wall. It had gone unused for a long time, but after reunification, it was redeveloped.

As we continued past it, the banks became increasingly industrialized, as shown, for example, in this field of storage tanks and loading crane.

But interspersed throughout were parks and nonindustrial buildings.

And—safety first!—we passed this pair of rescue boats/lifeboats conferring in midstream. Apparently they cruise the banks watching for people who fall in.

Many more things were pointed out to us along the way than I could get good photos of. For example, we were reminded that the Charité hospital is spread out on many campuses around the city (a couple of which we sailed past), that it's one of Berlin's largest employers, and that most of Germany's Nobel prizes come out of it.

Many former harbor facilities (presumably replaced by newer ones elsewhere) have been made into green spaces. Along one stretch, the west side was industrial, but the facilities along the other had been converted to a riverside promenade.

The narration pointed out red brick buildings that typify 18th- and 19th-century port buildings but that are now used by the university. A former garbage-scow loading facility now houses an upscale architectural firm.

One long stretch of bank was occupied by garden allotments. Gritta explained that groups of allotments are usually organized as clubs, which have joined to form the Federal Associatio of German Garden Friends. Unfortunately, many allotments are getting built over now, but urban gardens are growing in other ways.

On the Westhafen canal, which is 2.5 km long and connects the Spree with the West Harbor, the narrator pointed out tanks tha are the largest and most efficient of the port. Along there we also passed the Berlin wholesale market, a large regional produce market like Rungis in Paris. Along the other bank, cars were speeding past on the main Berlin ring-road, and somewhere along the way, we were passed by a "DE" train, the German TGV, going somewhere fast.

I didn't have a map, so at this point, I was having trouble keeping track of just where we were and what body of water we were on. Somehow, from the Westhafen canal, we circled back around by the Spree, stopping short of the Charlottenburg lock, which drops 1.23 m and leads to Spandau. The narration pointed out a belvedere on the right built that was built by same architect who built the Brandenburg Gate (I was looking elsewhere and never saw it), but it wasn't until the narration pointed out the back of the New Pavilion at Charlottenburg Palace (which you can just see a sliver of through the trees in the left-hand photo) that I realized we were on the loop of the Spree that curves around the palace gardens! When we visited the New Pavilion on Sunday, we had no idea we were so near the water! But if you look back at the aerial photo in Sunday's diary page, you can see that the Spree passes right by the belvedere at the far end of the gardens, beyond the water feature (it's just a dot, but its label is the one at the very top of the photo), then passes under the reflected light flare on the photo, the passes right behind the New Pavilion.

The narration mentioned "Suum cuique," the motto over the Charlottenburg gate. Maybe it's on the belvedere as well. The phrase is usually translated "to each his own," but in looking up what it had to do with Charlottenburg, I found that it is also taken (especially by police and military organizations) to mean "everybody gets what's coming to him." Now there's a threat . . . ."

Along the banks, I spotted a great grey heron, and we passed a couple of families of swans, one parent leading the string of goslings, and the other taking up the rear.

The red brick bridge shown at the right is the Martin Luther Bridge. Beyond it, the wooded, right-hand bank is the edge of the Tiergarten. We were surprised to hear that, during WWII, the Tiergarten was cleared and used as farm land. In 1949, the mayor planted a new linden tree to kick off its reforestation, and it's now quite respectably wooded.

At the left here is the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the House of World Culture, nicknamed "the pregnant oyster" (or, according to the internet, Jimmy Carter's smile." It's the one with the hyperbolic paraboloid roof that we saw from the roof the Reichstag.

All too soon, we were back at our mooring below the Weidendammer Bridge. Since it was lunch time, we just climbed up to street level and walked across the bridge, the railings of which are ornamented by these elaborate wrought iron eagles, to have lunch at the Brasserie Ganymed.

Because it was our last day in Berlin and in Germany, we took care to get some photos of everybody in our little group. David took his glasses off because they're the kind that darken in the sun and tend to make him look like a mafioso.

The weather was beautiful, so we sat out on the terrace. I think that's our boat above and to the left of my shoulder in the right-hand photo, loading up for another circuit.

Both photos here are of the gorgeous salmon tartare we shared as an appetizer. It came with puffs of salad, crisp slices of seed-bread toast, and little splodges of beet purée and basil mayo. Altogether yummy!

At the left is David's traditional Alsatian flammkuchen, with bacon, half-soured cream, chives, parsley, and red onion.

Gritta chose quiche, Lorraine I think, which came in a square rather than a wedge an had salad on the side.

I don't know what that is in front of Leon, but it looks like a slab 'o meat, braised in a rich dark brown sauce, with roasted vegetables under it.

I had a flammkuchen with cream, red onion, chives, prosciutto, and a handful of halved uncooked grapes scattered on at the end.

Then we passed the French cathedral of Berlin before encountering his handsome building—the "Deutsches Dom auf des Gendarmenmarkt," the German cathedral in the Gendarmenmarkt (which claims to be the most beautiful square in Berlin). It was, according to the plaque whose text allowed me to track down its identity, built under King Friedrich I between 1701 and 1708 and rebuilt under Keiser Wilhelm I between 1881 and 1882.

Nearby was this handsome, and no doubt useful, overhead walkway between buildings.

Back at the hotel in the afternoon, we took it easy and packed for a while before going on foot to a highly rated French restaurant in the neighborhood. Packing, in my room, I was again reminded of the renovation that turned this house into a hotel. The door to my room was clearly once a double door leading into a much larger space, but now what remains of the right-hand door is fixed in place and bisected by a wall.

Our restaurant for the night, Heising, is shown at the right, its award certificates displayed in the bottom of the window.

The candle-lit interior was all dark wood, antique chairs, pink roses, and old brandies.

As soon as we sat down, the plate of warm amuse-bouches was set before us to munch as we studied the menu.

We were immediately taken with the menu covers, which were old Art Nouveau advertisements. If they weren't Mucha, they were very good immitations of his style.

And here at the right is my first course: stuffed quail with pan-fried peach on a peach sauce. What you see are the leg quarters standing up leaning on the stuffing with their little ankle bones sticking out at the top. Very tasty indeed.

David started with the night's special appetizer, paperclipped to the menu: white asparagus with a puff-pastry fleuron and mousseline sauce.

Grita and Leon both started with the coconut sorbet on a pineapple compote and Batida (actually listed under "second courses"). Batida is a Brazilian cocktail made with cachaça, sugar, and fruit juice (presumably pineapple in this case. Sort of a deconstructed Brazilian piña colada!

For the second course, David and I both went traditional. I had the Burgundy snails Alsatian style, which I could not have distinguished from Burgundy style.

David chose the traditional fish soup with croutons and rouille sauce.

David's main course was loup-de-mer ("sea wolf," aka our old friend bar, Dicentrarchus labrax, with Noilly-Prat sauce, saffron tinted basmati rice, and green asparagus.

I chose filet of lamb on a tarragon sauce with artichoke and potato-olive mash. Delish!

Both Gritta and Leon had filet of veal on a "café de Paris" sauce with oyster mushrooms, spinach gnocchi, and glazed carrots.

The most photogenic dish was definitely my dessert sampler. Sorry it's a little blurry. It included a chocolate mousse dome, a mini tart Tatin, a little chocolate sandwich with cream in the middle, a small guava bavarois (the pink thing), and nougat ice cream in a little tulipe cookie. Berries scattered around to add to the visual appeal.

I can't match Gritta's dessert to any of the descriptions on the menu, so I guess it must be the "Grand dessert of the master pastry chef."

And David ordered the "Surprise dessert of rhubarb and strawberries. Beautifully plated! The rhubarb was hiding (with more strawberries) under the dome of toasted meringue.