Day 11

Our last day in Berlin and the end of the Ladies on the River story......boohoo! For our last day, a beautiful day, we decided we would go to the zoo, go to the gedachtniskirche (memorial church in rough translation) of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, visit the Tiergarten to see the Victory column and maybe do a little souvenir shopping. It was the day of the Assumption and therefore a holiday and pretty much EVERY store was closed so it became solely a sightseeing day. We took the Ubahn to the station where we could go to the zoo and the church and found that every person in all of Germany was in line for the zoo so we ditched that plan and went to the church. The gedachtniskirche is a protestant church that was bombed during the war and the damaged skeleton was left as a memorial. It's still a beautiful building despite the gaping wounds left by the bombing.

A new church has been built next door that is modern, functional and unimpressive except for the attractive stained glass windows.

New church

After the church visit, we took the Ubahn to the Tiergarten where the station was a nice walk to reach the Victory Memorial in the center.

Nicki in the lilacs of the Tiergarten

Nicki and I braved the traffic and finally figured out the traffic avoiding under-street tunnels to reach the memorial where we went through a small museum. Michele and Joanie wisely sat on a bench in the shade while Nicki and I made our pilgrimage.

Another Ubahn ride and we made our way to the Topography of Terror Museum located on the site of the destroyed Nazi headquarters buildings. There are extensive displays both inside and out that document the rise of the Nazi's and their subsequent destruction.

Outside part of Topography of Terror Museum with fragment of wall and photo displays

It's an overwhelming amount of history to try to absorb with many, many photographs to accompany written information.
Then onto the Checkpoint Charlie area (our home neighborhood) for some souvenir shop time (the only open stores) and checking out the Trabi's (Trabant) once again. Here's some info from Time Magazine re a car I had never heard of before: This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness (actually, the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wood). A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle — a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. But history has been kind to the Trabi. Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell, which made it a kind of automotive liberator. Once across the border, the none-too-sentimental Ostdeutschlanders immediately abandoned their cars. Ich bin Junk!

After all this, we went to the same Italian restaurant that we enjoyed on our first day in Berlin for a wonderful dinner with delicious wine where we toasted the end of our fabulous trip with wonderful friends. Then it was back to our hotel to pack for our early morning flights....home for Nicki. Michele and Joanie and a flight to Venice for me for part two of my trip.

Day 10

Today we were met by Matthias who came to our hotel to treat us to a day of non traditional sightseeing. Matthias was introduced via email to Nicki. It's another relationship too convoluted to try to explain. We expected we would spend maybe a couple of hours with him before he would be totally ready to dump the old ladies but he took us to all sorts of interesting places and dropped us off at around 5 PM after a really wonderful day.
First he took us to the East Side Mauer (German for wall) museum. This is the area of wall that was left for contemporary artists to paint. I actually posted a picture from this wall in the day 9 post but we didn't actually see it until Matthias took us there. Here's another picture from that wall:

From a photo of Leonid Brezhnev kissing Erich Honecker when he visited East Berlin. Said to be an expression of fraternal (??!?) love to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of East Germany as a  Communist nation

We then drove through the Charlottenburg neighborhood of Berlin to reach the Russian Memorial, a memorial to the lives of the Russians lost during the fight for Berlin during WW II. It is a mammoth memorial located in an area of a huge park. It's quite dramatic!

With Matthias at entrance to Russian monument

Soldier with sword standing on broken swastika

 After the visit to the memorial we went to a charming suburb of Potsdam with buildings that appeared in the old traditional German small town style. There was a market that we wandered through then we were off to lunch at a very local type roadside place frequented by motorcyclists. Great, casual place with good food. 

Joe and his brother in law George talked about the area of Berlin that they remembered in the area of the American troop base so Matthias took us to search it out. There is a museum at the site of the old base that has the original Checkpoint Charlie building and we went through museum looking at all the memorabilia.
We were able to find the address of the house that George and Joe remembered. It looks pretty modern...wonder if it was razed and a new building put up. The entire area is a very nice neighborhood.

Our next stop was the actual bridge that is in the movie "Bridge of Spies", a story based on a real exchange that took place on that bridge.....Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel.

It was late in the afternoon by then and Matthias drove us back to central Berlin and offered to drop us at KaDeWe, a HUGE Harrod's London type department store. It didn't take much time to make THAT decision......yay, shopping!! It was a great store with a gigantic food hall that we wandered through, made our way through the store doing a bit of shopping and went to the U bahn for our trip back to the hotel. 
There was probably dinner involved but I can't remember........

Day 9

Our guide, Heidi, picked us up at 9AM for a 4 hour walking tour of Berlin. Heidi is a British ex pat who has lived in Berlin for 12 years and is crazy knowledgeable about the history and especially the WW II and Berlin Wall history. Heidi was accompanied by Daisy, her small mixed breed VERY well trained dog who is off leash most of the time and clearly knows this route by heart. Daisy stops at every curb until she’s told to cross and now and then Heidi puts her on leash in particularly crowded areas. 

Daisy taking a well deserved rest during our coffee break

The war and the wall are ever present in Berlin despite that the wall is gone and everything is beautifully rebuilt. Our tour took us through lovely residential neighborhoods as well as the historic sights of the city. The wall is marked by a cobblestone marker the entire distance of the wall. There is a short section that remains in the area of the old Nazi offices (all destroyed and replaced by a museum about the Nazi period) and another piece of the wall was preserved and current modern artists including Andy Warhol were invited to paint it.

We walked all over the historic area and saw Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz, the opera house, Humboldt University (any relation to OUR CA Humboldt??), and main government buildings. 

Brandenburg Gate

We walked through some cozy neighborhoods and into little alley areas containing local businesses and stopped for coffee in one of these areas. 

Funky alley of encouraged graffiti

Our coffee stop

We also walked through the Holocaust Memorial. It is a very large area covering about 2 city blocks and consists of a maze with pathways that are sometimes flat, sometimes hilly and take you through a “field” of concrete slabs of various heights and orientations. We each walked alone with the instruction to meditate on the exhibit and think about its significance. It was a very moving experience that each of us experienced in our own way.

Another way of memorializing those lost in the holocaust are small brass markers in the sidewalk in front of homes where Jews lived and were sent away to camps and died. Some have dates of death, others just the date of disappearance.

Another very moving memorial is a statue of a grieving mother holding her dead son, a "memorial to the victims of war and tyranny." 

We ended the tour by going to Checkpoint Charlie.

At the end of the tour, Heidi pointed out an Italian restaurant that she recommended for lunch where we were happy to rest our weary feet after almost 5 hours of walking and to feed our poor empty stomachs on a fantastic lunch that included excellent pastas, veal piccata, calves liver (the best any of us have ever tasted!!), some wonderful red wine, great bread and, of course, dessert.

Day 8

Autobahn day

We breakfast at the Hotel Residenz in Passau, an included breakfast that is a ridiculous spread that exceeds the ridiculous spread on the ship. We eat as though we haven’t eaten for a week (we’re talented that way) then Nicki and I taxi to the Sixt rental car office to pick up our car. It’s FABULOUS!! It’s an Opel Insignia (never heard of it), very comfortable and with all the bells and whistles: nav system, blind spot monitor, back up camera, six speed stick shift and diesel engine! We go back to the hotel to pick up the luggage and Michele and Joanie and we’re off for the drive to Berlin. 

Our VERY cool car

I LOVE the autobahn! I can drive 180 km/hr in this great car on this great highway. We make a couple stops on the way for the WC and then for lunch.

We pass vast fields of yellow rape blossoming. Apparently, farmers are subsidized to grow it as it's used for biofuel. It's a beautiful addition to the landscape.

We cap off our lunch by going to McDonald’s for a vanilla cone and make our way into Berlin with only a few glitches related to one way streets around the hotel.  We leave Michele and Joanie to check in and manage the luggage and Nicki and I return the car (easy peasy) and promptly get lost walking back to the hotel approximately 5 blocks away. We finally figure it out and stop at a small grocery for wine (which we now need desperately) and some snacks to go with the wine. That ends up being dinner but we all go out for a nice walk in our new neighborhood before we call it a day.

Day 7

Passau.

Today was disembarkation day. We had arranged for a taxi to take us to our hotel early in the AM where we could deposit our luggage and then go to 9:30 mass at the cathedral.  The point (at least for me) was to be able to hear that magnificent organ but it turned out that this was a special celebration where villages and organizations from all over the area gathered in traditional dress both for the mass and then for a parade afterward. While waiting to go into the cathedral we talked to some locals with Nicki being the translator for us.

Because of the holiday, there was not only the organ but a small orchestra and a men’s choir in addition to the usual choir. It was everything I hoped for music wise and Nicki enjoyed the mass since she could understand what was being said.

After mass, there was a huge parade with each organization or village group dressed to represent their group parading in front of the cathedral. Quite a spectacle and many of the groups had a marching band with them.

Not everyone enjoyed the festivities

After all this excitement we needed some nourishment. After all it had been at least 3 hours since our mammoth ship breakfast. We went to a lovely café across from the cathedral and had some delicious soups followed by some of the decadent desserts they offered.

After our dainty little lunch, we went back to our hotel to await Utmar, Nicki's ex brother-in-law who picked us up to go to Plattling, a small town about 30 minutes away from Passau where we were to meet Ute, a relationship to Nicki too convoluted to explain other that that she was close to Gudrun, Nicki's sister-in law (Joe's sister) and wanted to meet us and to show us Gudrun's burial site. The plan was that we would go there for "tea" and to meet Ute and her 13 year old daughter, Franzis (?spelling.) Tea turned out to be a MAMMOTH spread of baked goods: a home made cheesecake, a home made sponge cake topped with fresh strawberries, a home made mandarin cake and a bakery bought Black Forest cake. (No pics, unfortunately. We had just met and didn't want to reveal our true selves yet.) Ute's parents came over to meet us and we all enjoyed ridiculous quantities of delicious stuff. (Of course, it HAD been 2-3 hours by then since our dainty lunch.) Ute, her daughter, Franzis and Utmar were all terrific company and we had a great time with them. We had some somber moments as we visited the burial site of Gudrun and then returned back to Ute's house for champagne and to visit with some delightful friends of Ute's and to have perhaps just a bite more of the yummies. Frances is busy figuring out their flight arrangements to visit us in San Francisco in Jan 2017. Frances and Utmar made maps for our trip to Berlin with Utmar offering really valuable route advice.

Franzis, Ute, Utmar and Nicki

Note cat sleeping in cat tree basket on right

Utmar drove us back to our hotel and we went out for a typical German meal at the only restaurant open in Passau on Sun night. You might ask how it was possible that we ate again....we're tough!!

Day 6

Passau

We woke in port in Passau and after breakfast we went on a walking tour of Passau. Passau is the city of three rivers: the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz and has a history of some incredible floods with buildings along the river having high water marks painted on them to remember the events. Passau is a small town of 50,000 with beautiful old buildings and little cobblestoned streets.

We walked through the main square where a market was taking place, visited St. Stephen’s Cathedral with Europe’s largest pipe organ, saw the old Rathaus and the outside of the elegant Bishop’s residence. Passau is the archdiocese of the region.

Stand in the market

Organ in St. Stephen's

Interesting sun dial painted onto building

Spire of St. Stephen's in the background

After our walking tour, Nicki and I walked up the hill to the old castle (managing to take the wrong path and approximately doubling the distance) while Michele and Joanie took the bus.

The "before" picture. There is NO "after" picture.

Yes, we WALKED up to this site

We met at the top (Nicki and I being a bit worse for the wear) and headed for a nice pub for BEER (YAY!!!) and wurst with sauerkraut and bread.

And of course, we had to share some strudel for dessert. The view from the top of the hill was spectacular!

The walk down was a bit less challenging and we also took the correct path which helped.

We arrived back at the ship in time to take a tour of a working dairy farm and see a bit of the Bavarian countryside. We LOVED seeing the calves (the youngest was born the day before) and learning about a small dairy operation.

Farmhouse

Cow enjoying a back scratching

Cute baby calf

To supplement their income, the owners make cheeses and yoghurt which they provided to us for tasting. 

Back at the ship, we were finally able to enjoy the sun deck for a drink and watching the ship re position to a new pier.