| | Berlin, part one of two.
Despite the fact that I was wearing neither white tennis shoes nor a fanny pack, I still felt like the quintessential tourist.
I was in Berlin for work, but I did have one “free day” to poke around. Two of my co-workers and I began the day as tourists in a foreign land should – at Starbucks. (I know, I know. It wasn’t my choice.)
From there we hit the next obvious stop, THE most touristy thing one could do: A bus tour that blows through the entire city in about an hour and a half.
It was great.
Not in the sense that I learned all that much (the tour guide spoke in both German and English, but I’d say the split was 70/30, in favor of the former), but with just one free day in Berlin, we got an overview of the city and learned which areas we should return to in the afternoon.
The most touristy spot on the touristy bus tour was the Brandenburg Gate. This was made evident when bus tour stopped for 10 whole minutes so we could click off a few snapshots.
As I learned more about the Brandenburg Gate, it became clear why it’s the most photographed structure in the city.
It was built as the grand entrance into town when America was still an infant.
When Napoleon conquered Germany, (the first Napoleon, not Napoleon Dynamite), he plucked the statue from the top of the gate back took it back to Paris. It was displayed in the Louvre and placed on top of the Arch de Triumph before it was recaptured by the Germans eight years later.
During World War II, allies bombed the entire area, leveling all but two structures. The other was a hotel.
During the Cold War, the Berlin Wall essentially ran through the Brandenburg Gate, separating East and West Berlin and leaving the gate isolated and inaccessible to everyone.
It’s where JFK gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner!” speech in 1963 and where Ronald Reagan delivered the historic “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech in 1987.
Two years after Regan’s visit, when Gorby did tear down the wall, millions celebrated at the Brandenburg, and the Gate is now a symbol of unification rather than separation.
Guess which touristy tourist got his picture taken in front of the Brandenburg Gate and guess who’s glad he did.
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| | Posted 6/27/2005 10:24 AM - 24 views - 13 comments
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