The Communists got the good stuff! When the city was split after WWII, the old historic heart of Berlin ended up under Soviet control, while the Allies focused their rebuilding efforts of the western half of the city around a district called Kufurstendamm (Ku'damm for short).
As you'd expect from the capitalist western powers, much of the development was given over to shops, offices and neon signs so it feels a bit soulless in parts. One of the chief attractions is the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, or its ruins at least. Built in 1895, it was nearly obliterated by Allied bombing in 1943.
A portion of its clock tower remains as a sort of peace memorial and is flanked by a 1960s carillion.
The original church has some of its mosaics intact plus a display of photos from its heyday, while a new church next door has huge panels of deep blue stained glass surrounding a dour modernist crucifix.
Calling in at a nearby U-bahn stop felt like stepping back in time, with what initially seemed to be old billboards from maybe the 1920s. On closer inspection, these proved to be clever reconstructions (with website addresses, for instance).
Still, a welcome change from the usual adverts for scary clowns.
Nearby Potsdamer Platz has been one of the city's largest building sites for almost 20 years, a vast new commercial space which attempts to knit the two halves of Berlin back together. A hundred years ago, this was the Times Square of Europe, crisscossed by 30 tram lines and overlooked by the continent's finest hotels and cafes. Much of the neighbourhood was demolished in WWII before being divided by the Berlin Wall.
Huge sums of money have been spent over the past few years in an effort to return the area to its glory days, with hotels, theatres, casinos, apartments, offices and shops being built by some of the world's best-known architects. The impressive roof shelters a huge gathering space amongst the office blocks, but it's very much a playground for the rich who are content with upmarket eatery chains and overpriced clothes shops.
Potsdamer Platz turns its back on West Berlin's equivalent to the Museum Island of East Berlin, a series of low-slung buildings which house the Kulturforum.
The Old Masters are to be found in the New Picture Gallery, so-named because the building dates from 1998. We had the gallery almost to ourselves and in some rooms it was only us and a guard whose job it was to insist we stood behind a line on the floor away from each painting. The labelling was sparse (just an unobtrusive caption on the skirting boards near the floor) and the floor plan gave no clues on where to find the best stuff, so we tried to look into each and every room. This became a tiresome exercise in back-tracking, which became more confusing because each room is painted the same. I've been in far older galleries which were designed much better.
It was also a case of quantity over quality: entire walls by the likes of Rembrandt, Cranach, Drurer, Hals, Rubens and Tiepolo but very little that could truly be could a masterpiece.
It was a treat though seeing two Vermeers side by side (Young Woman with a Necklace and A Glass of Wine), when you consider only about three dozen of his paintings have survived. By comparision, the museum has 39 Cranachs alone (but then they were a father and son outfit).
They were by no means Vermeer's finest pieces though (one was not entirely successful as a portrait and the other did not have a compelling narrative like you find in his best work).
The Caravaggios somehow eluded us (what was I saying about the lousy layout!) but I was drawn to two Venuses by Cranach (including one that features Cupid being stung by a swarm of bees, yet at the same time he is unwilling to drop the honeycomb he is holding - an allegory for the sweet torments of love), as well as his Fountain of Youth and a copy he made of Bosch's Last Judgement. There was a proper Bosch, but it was a fairly straightforward devotional piece of St John (of Revelation fame).
A canvas by Brugel was a real puzzle. At first glance I took it to be a village of idiots, there were so many odd details. I gathered from the German caption that it was in fact illustrating 100 Dutch proverbs of the time, showing the chaos that would ensure if people did follow all the old adages.
Other Dutch paintings included a cat fight at a bordello and a knife fight at a tavern. Balancing out these bloodbaths was Hooch's nearly photographic The Mother with everything caught in mid-motion.
As for the Italians...all I will say about Canaletto is that he certainly could churn them out. The bits by Botticelli weren't his best. The one work that stopped us in our tracks was a portrait by Moroni. A very powerful and realistic work.
Velazquez and Zubaran represented Spain, while Reynolds and Gainsborough flew the colours for England. Altogether not the finest collection we've seen, but certainly one of the most thorough.
Just time enough the visit the new Holocaust memorial nearby. From the perimeter it looked like a cobbled square, although the grey concrete pillars turn out to be monolithic in size as we walked through them. I've found this aerial view. There are nearly 3000 stones. Each is rectangular and they look a bit like coffins.
Although the tops of the stones are almost level at the top, the ground between them is in fact uneven. As the ground falls away, the stones soon towered over us. Some are nearly 12 feet high and lean at almost imperceptible angles, so there is some chaos amid the uniformity.
The stones stand so close together people have to walk single-file. The stones are laid out in a grid, so we could see across to the other side, but we never knew what we might encounter at each intersection. Other people walked among the stones, but we'd only catch disconcerting glimpses - someone's foot as they strode past, a child's laugh, a couple ahead suddenly disappearing off to the side - which meant at each crossing we worried whether we would collide with someone else. Escaping to the other side and looking back, the tops of the stones appeared more uneven, unsteady even, as it being heaved up by the earth. It's not often a brief visit to a memorial turns into a nerve-shattering experience, so all credit must go to the designers for this unsettling creation.
With the cultural portion of the day over, it was time for a drink! Ouzo, anybody??
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