Train whistle blowing ...

Before leaving Berlin for other destinations, my view of the German railway system.

While we’ve travelled by train in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England and Switzerland in recent years and found the service highly efficient and comfortable, the Germans excel. Railway tracks crisscross the country and most of them are electrified and seem to be very efficiently operated.

On arriving at Frankfurt, rather than board another aircraft to Berlin, approximately 420 kilometres distant ‘as the crow flies’, we boarded an Intercity Express (ICE) at the airport (the railway station is in the airport, with two levels, one for intercity and international trains and the other below ground level for regional trains) that initially took us into the main station at Frankfurt, then onto Hanover. At Hanover we transferred to another ICE that took us onto Berlin. 

And on efficiency. In Australia our daughter Sarah, using the on-line train schedules information, was able to monitor the train movements on the intercity journeys we undertook and when needing to change trains enroute sent sms messages informing us of the platform to move to and the timeliness of the connecting train.

The photos below are of the concourse with booking office and shops, and the intercity/international level platforms at Frankfurt airport. The train is an ICE powered by overhead electricity. The Europeans have overcome the problem of pantograph ‘bounce’ causing intermittent disruption to the supply of electricity to high speed trains. Note the WiFi 'hotspot' in the carriage.

ICE usually means “high speed”. While rocketing along in excess of 150 kph (above the internal door at each end of the carriage there is an information board that amongst other matters displays the name of the next station and the train speed), between Hanover and Berlin the ICE cruised at 250 kph (see photo below). And, it’s a comfortable journey; a long stem wine glass can sit on its own on a table without the drink slopping over or the glass toppling.

With big windows, comfortable seats, dining car and a steward serving those who prefer to remain in their seats, and lots of room, we prefer to travel between major centres by train. Far better than the hassle of security checks associated with flying, the usual hurry up and wait at airports and cramped aircraft interiors.

This brings me to ‘suburban’ train services. Berlin is, as are the other major cities in Germany, well-served by  city-wide railway networks. We made extensive use of the suburban trains to move around Berlin, some elevated and others below ground. The trains are well maintained that is no graffiti and stations are clean. And stations are largely unattended.

A ‘ticket’ is in the form of a receipt issued by the machine and is stamped with the duration of the validity of the ticket. In my travels I never saw a machine or facility for validating a ticket. The vending machines are very user-friendly in that they offer several languages, including English. And no one asked us to produce our ticket for examination or collection. Imagine that level of honesty by train travellers in Melbourne.

The series of photos below are of trains that run above and below ground serving Greater Berlin. The tiled walls of Spittelmarkt underground station, a short walk from our apartment, displays scenes of old Berlin. The first underground and elevated lines were opened in 1902 and resulted in Berlin being the fifth European city after London, Budapest, Glasgow and Paris to have an underground railway system.

Bicycle friendly, too.

Dresden and the mighty Elbe

The Elbe, one of the major rivers of Central Europe, passes through Dresden on its 1,094 kilometre journey from its headwaters in the Czech Republic to the North Sea. During the journey the waters from seven other rivers spill into the Elbe.

As can be seen from the photos (below) the river is wide and deep enough to carry ships the size of the paddle steamer and river cruisers of the size of the one photographed (below) on the Main River, in Frankfurt, last Saturday.

Able to carry large barges, the Elbe and linking canals provide important trade links as far inland as Prague.

Other notable survivors of the Dresden bombing and fire storm

Kathedrale St. Trinitatis

The Dresden Roman Catholic Cathedral (below), originally known as the Hofkirche (Church of the Court) but renamed Kathedrale St. Trinitatis when elevated to cathedral status in 1980. Again, the extent of repairs or restoration is indicated by the variation in the colour of the stonework.

The blackened covered bridge is visible down the left side of the church in the penultimate photo above.

The heat from the fires must have been extreme to blacken the stonework to the extent where it is so ingrained to be visible nearly 70 years later.

Frauenkirche

The protestant Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady), located just beyond the porcelain fresco, survived the bombing and firestorm but collapsed a couple of days later when the fires finally reached the building and ignited the timber pews and other flammable materials, and the heat-affected crumbling sandstone eventually failed under the weight of the very heavy dome roof.

The blackened stonework in the first photo below is all that remained of the original building after it collapsed.

The division of Germany following WW2 left Dresden deep with the communist East and controlled by an administration that had little interest in restoration of damaged churches and some public buildings it considered important only to the bourgeoisie at that time. Consequently, it was many years before restoration of the two churches commenced and it was as recent as October 2005 when the consecration to mark the conclusion of the Frauenkirche reconstruction was celebrated.

Semper Opera House

Located to the right of and behind the Kathedrale St. Trinitatis is the Semper Opera House (below).

In 1678 an opera house was first erect on the land. A replacement opera opera house was was completed on the land in 1841, after which it hosted many premiers of works by a resident of Dresden, Richard Wagner.

Straying momentarily from the program, the little Austrian corporal with the toothbrush mustache was a fan of Wagner, and his "Ride of the Valkyries" was the music behind the helicopter assault ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning") in the motion picture "Apocalypse Now".

The building was destroyed by fire in 1869, and again destroyed in the February 1945 bombing and fire storm. It was reconstructed forty years later and symbolically reopened in February 1985 with a performance of Carl Maria von Weber's "Panther Quadriga Der Freischutz", the opera last played before the bombardment in 1945.

The Dukes of Saxony

Reputed to be the world's longest porcelain fresco, 24,000 small tiles over a distance of 102 meters and 10 metres high depict the 35 Princes of the Wettin House that ruled Saxony from 1127 to 1904.

The original fresco was done with paint during the period 1872 - 1876, but the painting was transferred to porcelain tiles in 1907 to resist weathering.

Mercifully, the tiles suffered little damage from Allied bombing of Dresden in WW2, with less than 200 needing to to be replaced.

Transparent VW factory

Imagine the joy of our relatively new VW Golf owner and enthusiast when she spied the glass-sided Dresden VW factory from the passing bus. Too late to raise her camera to capture the round multi-story exhibition building visible in the background of the first of the two photos below, but quick to record the glass-walled assembly line (second photo) with cars in the process of being assembled.

With each nosed-up to the glass wall, on its several floors the exhibition building displayed many if not all of the VW products over the post-WW2 years.

Market place

Another indicator of the destruction of Dresden is the absence of old buildings in the city centre. The photos below are of the market square where the surrounding buildings are all obviously post-WW2, while the building in the background in the first photo bears the black scar of the firestorm.















On the day of our visit the market consisted of a number of stalls selling products of the area, including flowers, takeaway food and beer, all enthusiastically presented.

Rain, rain, go away ...

Shortly after we arrived in Dresden it began to rain, causing us to retreat to a hop-on-hop-off bus that took us on an extensive tour of the city and part of the surrounding suburbs.

As we were limited to four hours before we needed to catch a train back to Berlin, the visit looked to be very limited as the rain set in. Miraculously, the rain cleared when we stepped off the bus, giving us two hours to visit some of the surviving pre-WW2 buildings.

The following photos taken from inside the bus and slightly rain-affected show some of the dwellings and other buildings outside the city-proper.

Dresden risen from the ashes

During the period 13 February - 15 February 1945 Allied aircraft dropped tons of incendiary bombs on the German city of Dresden, causing a firestorm that consumed the whole city and is estimated to have taken the lives of around 250,000 people.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to determine the actual death toll. Though Dresden was a city of approximately 5,000 residents at the time, it is estimated that there were at least 600,000 refugees, mostly women and children, sheltering in the city considered safe in that it contained nothing significant that contributed materiel to Germany's war effort.

Towards the end of our stay in Berlin we took a train to Dresden to see for ourselves how the city looks today. Though only a couple of hours from Berlin, if we'd fallen asleep enroute we could have found ourselves in Prague or the end of the line in Budapest

The European rail network has always fascinated me, in that standing in the main railway station at Milan or Florence for example you can see destination signs for numerous other countries, like our trains go from Southern Cross to places such as Bendigo and Warrnambool. Maybe more about trains later in this blog.

Simply, buildings or parts of buildings that remained after the firestorm are blackened, while replacement stonework is relatively clean and lighter in colour.

Dresden Hauptbahnhof

With destruction of German's rail network important to disrupting the movement of troops and war fighting material the Dresden railway yards would have been important targets for Allied bombers.

The unblemished railway overpass and partial rebuilding of the main railway station facade (photo below) are evidence of the damage to the rail facilities.

A fitting memorial

Adolf Hitler spent his final days in a bunker deep under Berlin. When it was obvious that the war was lost and to avoid capture by the approaching Soviets he shot himself. History has it that his body was taken out of the bunker and incinerated to avoid it falling into Soviet hands.

Today, the site of the bunker is an unkempt car park outside an apartment building. German authorities, anxious to avoid any memorial where Neo-Nazis may gather to celebrate Hitler as a martyr have allowed it to be marked with nothing other than the sign shown below.

The sign, though vandalised, recounts Hitler's final days and shows the layout of the large bunker network, provides information on how it was constructed and its fate after WW2.





I wonder what tales this tree (below) could tell, it's quite substantial at its base.

Holocaust Memorial

A visit to Berlin would not be complete without a walk through the Memorial to the Murdered European Jews, the Holocaust memorial for Germany.

The memorial is a Field of Stelae covering an area of 19,000 square metres and containing 2,711 concrete blocks of varying heights (photos below) and an Information Centre located below the south-eastern corner of the stelae. The ceiling of the Information Centre undulates in unison with the undulations of the stelae field above it.









Within the Information Centre, a Room of Dimensions exhibits extracts from personal diaries, letters and last notes written during the Holocaust set into the floor (below) and a Room of Families shows various Jewish lifestyles of the time, using the example of 15 families.



Turteltaub Family

The photos (below) show one family of Austrian Jews, the Turteltaubs and their fate.










In 2008 we visited the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, now a park with a large stone and bronze memorial (two photos below). Standing in that place with knowledge of the fate of the majority of its residents, young and old, was a very sobering experience.






Reading some of the records exhibited in the Berlin Holocaust Memorial reminded me of Warsaw and the dreadful persecution of Polish Jews by the Nazis. The Polish death toll estimated to be between 2.9 and 3.1 million far, far exceeds the death toll of Jews elsewhere in Europe.

The photograph below shows the locations of Nazi concentration camps across Europe and nearby.



A note alongside the map states that it was incomplete due to some of the Eastern European countries being less than cooperative in identifying camp locations within their borders.

If the ghost of the little Austrian corporal with the toothbrush mustache haunts the bunker then it's only a short walk across the road to the Holocaust Memorial where he can sit and ponder the fate of his vision of a Thousand-Year Reich.

And, maybe it's karma, Germany being called upon to again contribute financially to bailing out the Greeks and those other European countries with debt problems that they directly or indirectly brutalised in WW2. Maybe a form of war reparations when most needed.