Scenes from a Stroll

Sunday afternoon, I decided to turn off the trashy German TV, peel myself off the couch, and take a walk. I bundled up, practically flew down the 4 flights of stairs through the door in my building, and upon reaching the outdoors, froze in my tracks. It was raining. To go back inside, flop back on the couch, and forget the whole thing? No, this was going to happen regardless of the weather. Emphatically, I marched onward.

Right after racing back upstairs to grab an umbrella.

Instead of doing a loop, I decided to take the subway over to the center of the city (Mitte) and walk back home from there. I head to the Brandenburger Tor, where two major Berlin avenues meet. Unter den Linden, that heads east, and Strasse des 17. Juni, on the west. I've been on the first multiple times but had never walked along the second, which translates to "Street of the 17th of June." I'm currently reading a book on the history of the Berlin Wall (appropriately titled "The Berlin Wall") which makes mention of this street that commemorates a famous uprising by East German workers all across the GDR in 1953 (pre-Wall era).

This street also runs through the Tiergarten, Berlin's biggest and most famous city park. From there I took a couple smaller streets to connect back to the touristy Ku'damm that looks like Christmas exploded all over it. I'm not complaining, it's quite lovely. The whole thing took just about 2 hours with a necessary and well-deserved stop for a Heisse Schokolade mit Sahne (hot chocolate with whipped cream).

This last shot is of a memorial for the 80,000 or so Soviet soldiers that died during the Battle of Berlin at the end of the war. Priscilla, Micha, and I visited a similar memorial in Treptower Park a few weeks ago and there are a couple pictures of it at the end of that post. This Tiergarten memorial happens to be on the same street that less than ten years later was the site of a major uprising by East Germans against the Soviet regime which it is now named after. Just another example of Berlin's complicated and fascinating history!

The Soviet memorial: