traveling by train to Strausberg from Berlin

Yesterday decided to go to Strausberg by train ...... it takes nearly an hour from Berlin along the S-Bahn line.

Because it was a Saturday my ticket only cost 2 Euro and 80 cents, normally it is about 8 or 9 Euros, so the day started out very well indeed.

Everyone was helpful - even though none spoke English - I had my directions and where I wanted to go written in my notebook so all I had to do was point. The lady in the rail store where I bought my ticket was very helpful and even when I tried to ask her how long the train trip was or how many stations it was before I got to Strausberg, she printed out a list of stations for me. It was very helpful, especially when I had no idea how to even pronounce the names!

First though I had to get to the station - Friedrichstrasse .....

OK ..... so now I wait ..... so many trains pulling in and out .... and it was not this one ...

nor was it this one.....

and it wasn't this one either, though the dog certainly knew it was his ....

I kept looking up the line waiting for mine ......

eventually mine came along and on I hopped ....

carriages were large and clean with area's set aside for strollers and bikes or any other large item ... there was a man that got on with a huge industrial cleaner .... the doors are opened by pressing the red button beside the door. They are not self opening upon arrival into the station!

so had an interesting train journey to Strausberg 

and back again on the following train that is seen here 

waiting at the Strausberg Rail Station

would recommend traveling by train in and around the outskirts of Berlin ... it is a pleasant and easy way to see the countryside.

.

...... and the boys came marching by .....

as I was walking towards the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Berlin, I came across a building next door where they were about to lay a wreath. 

The Military came marching by and it was all very official with two bearers taking the wreath inside.

Some images here to show you....

 

 

it was interesting to watch the precision marching and to note that the rifles were no

where clean and shiny like I have seen elsewhere in the past!

.

Look up and you will see ......

Look up and you will see ......

how dark it is at 20 minutes to 5 in the afternoon ....

 very ornate window frame...

at 11.00am some great cloud effect, possibly left behind from a jet stream.....

a sign in lights to tell us these are the lights of Christmas .....

yes ... we are at Checkpoint Charlie......

a Christmas Tree hanging from the crane .... in Australia it is a tradition to place a tree on top of the crane, it must also be the same here..

and I see a man cleaning the bridge .... maybe the graffiti?

everywhere you look up there is something on top of a spire or a building ...

a monument .....

street lights ..... beautiful old street lights ....

the sun is trying to peek thru the star of the street decorations ....

I have arrived at Strausberg Rail Station .....

and here when you look up you see the winter sun trying to shine through the bare tree's ....

if you don't look up ocassionally you do miss out on seeing many beautiful and interesting things !

The Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church in Berlin.

The Berliner Dom is a baroque Cathedral built between 1894 and 1905. It is located on an island in the river Spree, also known as the Museum Island.

 

The first church built on the site of the current Cathedral was a 1465 church. The building, which later served as the court church for the Hohenzollern family was replaced by a cathedral, built between 1745 and 1747 in a Baroque design from Johann Boumann. It was reconstructed into a classicist building from 1816 to 1822 following a design by the Berlin architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

The Berlin Cathedral had never been a cathedral in the actual sense of that term, since Berlin, let alone this Cathedral, had never been the seat of a Catholic bishop.

When in 1930 the Holy See for the first time established a Catholic diocese of Berlin, the Berlin Cathedral had long been a Protestant church. St. Hedwig's Cathedral serves as seat of Berlin's Metropolitan bishop. Function and title of bishop, as used in the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg (under this name 1945-2003), comprise the Protestant bishop's regular preaching in St. Mary's Church, Berlin, being the bishop's domicile church with Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church being the second seat.

 

 

 

 

Most of the above info is from Wikipedia.

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2,711 concrete slabs .........

According to the Wikipedia website ..... The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial, is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold.

It consists of a 19,000 square meter (4.7 acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38m (7.8') long, 0.95m (3' 1.5") wide and vary in height from 0.2 m to 4.8m (8" to 15'9").

According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

Building began on April 1, 2003 and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public on May 12 of the same year. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately €25 million

Nowhere inside the memorial, or around it, does it say what it commemorates. Some think that this is a deliberate attempt to encourage visitors to reach their own conclusions.

 

 

from the Wikipedia site:

Criticisms ....

The monument has been criticised for only commemorating the Jewish victims of the Holocaust...

In 1998, German novelist Martin Walser cited the Holocaust Memorial in his public condemnation of Germany's "Holocaust industry." In the speech Walser decried the "exploitation of our disgrace for present purposes." 

He criticized the "monumentalization", and "ceaseless presentation of our shame." "Take all the towns in the world", said Walser. "Check whether in any of these towns there is a memorial of national ignominy. I have never seen such. The Holocaust is not an appropriate subject of a memorial and such memorials should not be constructed...

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I was here on Dec 2 2009

if you visit Berlin, then at least spend a moment of your time here too.

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