Day 13 - Touring and reminiscing in Berlin...

So here we were back in Berlin for the first time since 1991, celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary.

In the morning we did a city tour with our tour group.  In the afternoon we decided to break away and go check out some of our old "haunts" near Tempelhof Central Airport...


Berlin Concert Hall/Playhouse. On Christmas Day in 1989, weeks after the border was opened, Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony here. In the final movement “Ode to Joy” he had the singers/choir replace the word joy (Freude) with the word freedom (Freiheit). Wow! A little German word play.  Berlin sure is a wonder...

Another quick stop at the Brandenburg Gate, so strange for us to see it from the east side and to be able to walk right up to it and go through it... Driving to our next tour stop, we happened to pass the Reichstag, the seat of Germany's government.  More from the Reichstag tomorrow...

Crossing the Spree River en route to our next stop which was... ... the Berlin Wall Memorial.

Graphic describing the Berlin wall and border strip (aka "death strip").  After the wall was opened in 1989, I was able to drive down the death strip to chip out souvenir pieces of the Wall. A wall memorial with a wreath.  The wall divided Berlin from August 1961 to November 1989.

Angela with a remaining portion of the wall behind her. A close-up of the remaining Berlin Wall section.  Reinforced concrete with rebar, ouch!

 

At this point we decided to leave our tour group and head out on our own.  We found the nearest U-Bahn station, bought a couple of  "Tageskarten" (day passes), got on board the next U-Bahn car and headed toward our old haunts near the former Tempelhofer Central Airport.

 


The Berlin U-Bahn system map, we ended up getting on the "U6" line We decided to get off at the Alt-Tempelhof station.  We remembered that this stop was near our first apartment in Berlin which was on Tempelhoferdamm between Ringstraße and Borussiastraße.

We first went looking for “Mirabella”, our favorite Italian restaurant on Tempelhoferdamm that we dined at on a regular basis and used for innumerable flight parties. It was not at its former location.  It turned out they moved from their former location to a new one down the street on Alt-Tempelhof Straße in 1999. The owner passed the restaurant on to his son whom we met at the restaurant...

When we lived in Berlin, Berliner Kindl was not my favorite beer.  Apparently the company was sold after we left and the new brewer has a much better recipe, this one was delicious!
 

A "little" caprese appetizer before the main course! Angela smiling at our spaghetti carbonara.  We use to order this all the time, it was still great! 

After lunch we went looking for our first apartment and we found it!  It was in this building on Tempelhoferdamm on the second floor. The dress shop on the first floor has been replaced with another business. There also use to be an Imbiss stand in the side alley which doubled as access control to our side door entrance.  Now it is just a locked gate...  Next door to our apartment building was a Hennig’s ice cream shop with a garden in the back. Shop and garden were still there, so we stopped by and had some ice cream... 
 

We then walked north up Tempelhoferdamm eating our ice cream.  Along the way we saw this very familar building across the street.  This was the main airfield building at Tempelhof Central Airport (TCA).  When we were in the Air Force and stationed in Berlin our unit headquarters was in this building. In front of the main entrance to Tempelhof Central Airport.   Our understanding is that it is now multi-use; some local government/police and some commercial. And a big chunk of the airfield proper is being used to house refugees.

Head of the eagle that use to be on top of the TCA building.   It "disappeared" shortly after WWII and apparently lived for many years at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  After German reunification in 1991, West Point decided it was a good time to send the eagle home...

The Luftbrücke "Airlift" Memorial.  Trees are a little bigger but otherwise it is still the same. The Berliners nicknamed it the "Hunger Fork."  The three prongs represent the three allied air routes coming into Berlin during the airlift.  There is a twin memorial in Frankfurt, we saw it earlier on our trip...

Getting back on the U-Bahn to go back to our hotel. Back in the good old days, we use to have the shift bus drop us off at this specific station so we could ride the U-Bahn back to our Tempelhoferdamm apartment.

First tour = no car, so we dragged groceries and laundry up and down these stairs a lot of times...

 

 One last look at the Brandenburg Gate. The adjacent building to the immediate left (south) of the gate is the US Embassy...