From Prague north to Berlin. A small sidestop at Terezin--the concentration camp of Therisienstadt, about 70 km north of Prague. We didn't have to time to wander the huge complex--which occupied virtually the entire town. What were the barracks lie in one huge area surrounded by what looks like a medieval castle wall, today fringed with Christian and Jewish cemeteries, but upon crossing the river into the "town proper", we reached the "school" which today houses a museum with the history of the town, the camp and all the ramifications. Therisienstadt was a transit camp during the earlier years of the war, one of the big transit points to Auschwitz. It would have probably taken the better part of a day to wander the entire site, and so we took our silent thoughts with us and swung back onto the highway, and then quickly found ourselves in Germany again, a distance away, but parallel to the Elbe south of Dresden/Pirna, and then viewing the rebuilt city in the distance as we left the autobahn for secondary roads, where we stopped in the small town of Weinbohla, so that the newcomers to Germany could look around a typical small town--complete with bakery, small weekly market on the main square, and that onrush of mixed emotions of those with persecuted ancestors.

Along a beautiful stretch of the Elbe, bike paths in full evidence, small towns dotting the sunny landscape, and then on towards Oschatz, Torgau and on towards Berlin. Interesting is the subtle and yet evident difference between what was East Germany and what we had been visiting prior to our sidestep to Prague--a more prosperous, lively, colorful West Germany. The transition to prosperity is everywhere--roadbuilding being the most evident change. It was difficult to let go of those gray thoughts about everything that supposedly happened in the East--some of it seemed more of a movie script in my head than reality--but other than the older generation, that definitely seems harsher, rougher and less used to niceties of any sort, the rest was largely --I suppose-- my fabrication extracted from the abandoned factories of Freital, the absence of color and flowers virtually everywhere, the harsh practicality and lack of human touch that seemed evident when one began looking at the towns in more detail. All very subtle but nevertheless present. The architecture, too, was nothing beyond functional. Definitely no art for art's sake in these parts. But presumably, this, too, will begin to change as time first softens this history, and finally buries and obliterates it--for reasons that range from right to convenient.

Berlin is Germany's largest city, as unGerman as New York is unAmerican. After getting suitable lost upon entering the city, we finally found a sign to Kreuzberg, saw the fountain at Viktoria Park and knew we'd found the apt we'd rented. Then took Steve and Dani to their hotel just off the Ku'damm and got settled in. The apt was fine, actually very nicely located, but had a strange layout--get to the kitchen via the bedroom, a two door bathroom which provided challenges getting in and out of, but no matter. We rearranged some furniture, visited a supermarket and eventually found dinner and rest. On the following morning we all met in Mitte(central Berlin) to rent bicycles for our stay. A bit of a to-do with 5 people picking and choosing and adjusting and baskets on the back and so forth, but within an hour we commenced our biking tour through some of the highlights. This year, with less time on our hands, and acting more like tourguides, things were more scheduled, but the sensation of moving through the city on bike was just as positive and energizing as the previous year. What good fortune to have the possibility of bikes and ample public transport as well. Just a mild green streak of envy there, from those of us who live in the public transport challenged US of A. No matter. We hit all the highlights: first to the Brandenburg Gate, awash with tourists from all over taking zillions of pictures, through the gate and to the Reichstag, burned by the Nazis and left to smolder. Today with Berlin again the capital of a united Germany, it has received a notable facelift, and a tremendous addition in its glass cupola, which can be visited, and has a lovely spiral stairway along its contours. The dome sits above the present parliament, with the notion that the people watch over the government being the predominating theme here. The lines were very long, so we headed for the other side of the Brandenburg gate where the cityblock sized Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is located, with a small museum underground. The memorial consists of huge dark gray stellae that appear to rise and fall across the landscape. To me it's reminiscent of a huge and imposing cemetery. I personally enjoy the museum underneath, which is small but different from other museums. It has a long hallway which describes the history of Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany. Then one moves to a room, where "graves" with items of import-- all written materials-- lie directly below the stellae in the square. Mostly these are excerpts of letters, post cards, diaries, with frantic and uncomprehending messages that attempt to make sense of the violence and persecution. Just below the ceiling are the death toll numbers according to each country where Jews were systematically murdered. In the following room the exhibit changes markedly. About 16 families of different economic means, and from different countries in Europe are exhibited. There is a family picture, a description of each family's work/business, and then a list showing what happened to each of the people in that family. They range from murdered at Auschwitz (or other camp), to hid, survived, moved to Palestine, committed suicide, and a few others. I find the story element humanizes the plight, and brings it to a more comprehensible level, and thus more heinous crime. It makes it a more emotional experience, from my point of view. There are also computer data banks where one can look up relatives and so forth, a room where the names of each victim are continuously projected on the walls in the dark, one at a time. Wouldn't you know that this was the day I chose to bring my knife(to make sandwiches, I promise!), and of course had to suffer that uncomfortable pinge when being checked to get into the museum... From there a bite to eat, a look see at Checkpoint Charlie, the entrance/exit of the Russian and American zones, and later one of the ways into and out of the walled part of Berlin to the East. Then past the lovely concerthall and churches at the Franzosischer Platz, down the monumental buildings(Opera, Universities, museums)on Unter den Linden--Berlin's avenue of note--to the Museum Island, home to the Berliner Dom and a plethora of beautiful musea, many still being renovated, over the Spree river to see the renovated synagogue which was destroyed during Kristallnacht--with its stunning golden ribbed dome, the Jewish cemetery--still being worked on, and then back down the Spree past the Brandenburg gate to the Potsdamer Platz. 20 years ago it was a wasteland, but today it is home to the ultramodern Sony Center. Cooled off there and tried to get internet connection on A's tablet--successfully after Steve's intervention, and then headed up to the Bergmannstrasse to "our" tea place--Knofi. Still lovely although the service is of the fly-by-night variety. Then on our separate ways until our meeting the next day. It was raining on the Sat. morning, so that didn't exactly bode well for biking, but we had our breakfast and were lucky enough to make it down to the Museum Island dry. A. headed back to the Sony center, while R. and I visited the stunning Pergamom musuem. It houses the majority of the Pergamom temple from Turkey--the remnants of which we laid eyes on a few years ago. This makes the whole idea of how amazing these civilizations were simply leap out at you. They also have the gate of Ishtar, which is sublime, with its blue tilework, gorgeous relief work--also all in tile, and just the majesty of it is quite breathtaking. We took in the other highlights--Aleppo room, a beautiful room from the hinterlands in Iran and other stellar Islamic pieces of art, and then biked back to meet up with A, who had fortunately run into Dani and Steve, and they'd done some touring about the Tiergarten(the huge park which also houses the Zoo, which used to be the royal hunting grounds). We biked past the Jewish Museum which is a building of note--although I am not particularly impressed with the exhibits(which we saw last year), found lunch in the lovely and new market at the Bergmannstrasse, rode past Viktoria park, and then wound our way along a canal until we hit the Wittenbergplatz, at which one finds the KaDeWe department store. Can't speak for the rest of the shop--which is top of the line in name--but the gourmet food shop on the top floor is definitely an attraction not to be missed. At every corner your eyes feast on some delight--cheese, teas from all over in beautiful porcelain jars, sausages, a bakery not for the faint of heart or the carbochallenged, chocalates, fish, liquor, wines, and even --for us most amusing--a section of American foods--brownie mixes, peanut butter, Campbell's soup and the like--staples, one supposes, of life!

After goggling fairly controlledly, we parted ways as we were to meet up with A's cousin Claudia that evening. R. was in all states of hyper excitement, and thoroughly enjoyed our evening of reminiscences, shared photos--Gerda(her mother) in the bathtub with the cat Lucky as sentinel stole the show--tales of Berlin with and without the wall--and then made plans to bike together in Potsdam the following day. Had some nice Vietnamese food and then she was off. R. was glowing--she just loves knowing that she has family somewhere--even remote relatives and thousands of km away.

In the end Potsdam ended up being by car. The train trip with bikes was simply prohibitive, so we drove. There are SO many palaces and parks in Potsdam, in retrospect it's amazing that we ended up so close to where we actually wanted to be--the Sans Souci park and Schloss(castle). We walked for several hours through the huge grounds of 2 palaces--the "new" palace and the Sans Souci palace, with impressive grounds, littered with other buildings--Orangerie, TeaHouse, fountains, stables, etc.--enjoyed the initial "lost in Potsdam" walk til we stumbled upon the way into the royal stuff. Then found the center of town, ate a bite of lunch, enjoyed some shade--it was hot!--and drove through part of Babelsberg, found the Glienikerbrukke--another E/W crossing point, and after a mite more meandering, headed back to Berlin. From there biked out to Claudia's neighborhood--for a long way along the Potdamerstrasse, met up with her, saw her lovely apartment, and then took off on our bikes for a whirlwind tour of the Zehlendorf/Grunewald area. We popped through the field of an organic farm, where you can pick your own potatoes, and through reams of kms of paths through the greenery that surrounds the city. C. says that so much remained untouched--was left green--because the W. Berliners needed to have some sort of recreational space, and of course they couldn't just leave the W. Hence today's paradise of small swimming lakes, dropped as it were, in the midst of lovely forests. She swims and bikes in the area almost daily--weather permitting--, and clearly loves and needs that connection with nature. After a couple of hours we stopped at the Mexikoplatz train station for tea etc. and then popped our bikes on the train and rode back into Kreuzberg. After lots of phone calls made a connection with her son Luciano, and met with him and Nadine and Claudia at a creperie about 15 minutes away from the apartment by bike. These were our haunts last year in Berlin. Lovely food, but incomprehensible and shall we say, slow, service, but a really pleasant evening of reconnecting in several languages. Lots of drawn-out goodbyes, and then a late-night ride back to the apt.

Our last morning in Berlin was reserved for the visit to the Reichstag, where we arrived in fairly wet condition, having biked in steady rain--me in my garbagebag rain"coat", R. avoiding too much contact with such a sight... but it certainly did the trick. Weather steadily improved, making our visit in the glass dome most worthwhile. Returned our bikes, metroed back and then packed the car and autobahned our way towards Leipzig, and direction Erfurt, but stopped and stayed in Weimar.

Yes, as in Weimar Republic, home of Goethe, Schiller, and it turns out a slew of other notables. It is a lovely town, clearly would have been worthy of more time, but we were able to skim the surface of the town in an evening and a morning. Our walk brought us past the monumental statues of notables, plaques for the likes of Hans Christian Andersen, J.S. Bach, writers, and an unusual plaque that paid tribute to those persecuted by the Stalinist terror system. The town is utterly charming, and clearly a hybrid of East and West Germany. It has certainly piqued my curiosity about exactly where the iron curtain actually "hung". Foolishly I didn't realize that the iron curtain was no mere metaphor, but a hellish barbed wire fence that ran the course of the border and was heavily mined--as in minefield. The area, too, is lovely, and we didn't do the place justice, but came away with that wonderful if bittersweet feeling that it's a place to keep on the list for the future. Continued on past Erfurt--where we didn't stop, turned southwards toward Frankfurt, and stopped for our last veritable cake/tea session in the delightful little town of Alsfeld. I'd looked on the map, checked in the "book", and it seemed like a potentially attractive stop. Drop dead medieval lovely, and cakes to match. A little foray in the ancient lanes, a peek at the church without a steeple, and on to the ever closer and busier Frankfurt area. Fortunately a piece of cake to find our out of town hotel/car drop off, and a decent albeit forgettable dinner later, we were up again with the sun.

A. and I went walking in the surrounding fields in the morning, wanting to get some movement in before the flight. Gorged ourselves on wild blackberries, and thoroughly enjoyed the bucolic quiet of this tiny area, a hole in the net made by criss-crossing autobahns and other major traffic arteries, to close out the Germany chapter.

So what did we like? On the list: (no real order here, promise): the bread, the small towns, the consistent energy/eco consciousness, windmill power, BIKING, cake:), generally gracious service, bottle returns, the human scale of life--, small distances, country accommodations, roads, history and meeting family.

What we did not like so much? Not much. On the whole, food was probably what we all liked least. Robotic efficiency. In East Germany the horrid architecture of "public housing" and the stifling of all things beautiful--the little things, that is. And let's face it, some awful weather....

Nevertheless, chalk it up for another great trip. Hope you enjoyed hearing about it.