Walkabout

Today I took a person day to wander around Berlin.  With the doors open now to the public at IFA and it being the weekend, the place is a useless madhouse for trying to get any real work done.  (At least that was the case last year – and, I’m told, every year…)

I walked to Tiergarten, which is a huge public park, not terribly far from where I’m staying.  Maybe a mile, maybe more.  It’s quite lush with a lot of walking path – and bike paths.  Biking is huge in Berlin; they even have separately-paved areas for bicycles on sidewalks throughout the city.  Woe be the person (usually a tourist – he says from experience) who doesn’t realize this, or forgets it, and the speeding bicyclist come bearing down and frantically ringing his bell, and perhaps shouting if you…er, if the person doesn’t realize who it’s directed at.

The park used to be a royal hunting grounds, until one of the many Kaiser folks decided it should be turned into a public park.  Quite a few statues are laced throughout, some of which just sort of pop up out of nowhere, along with an occasional water basin.  Among the nicer statues was one dedicated to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.  As I said, the park huge, and major streets divide it in places.  At the edge of one such split, there’s a fascinating monument on Strasse des 17, Juni, one of the major east-west roads in Berlin.  It’s set back from the street, but looms large, and there’s a soldier, tanks and canons pointed out, and from afar you sort of start to scratch your head a bit – but the reality is not only far more palatable, but almost as strange.  It’s a memorial that the Soviets had built in 1945 honoring their war dead.  Considering that they were part of the victors, it’s a surprising structure to see in the middle of the city.