Bayram Cigerli Blog Click and Visit For Info and Material

berlin etiketine sahip kayıtlar gösteriliyor. Tüm kayıtları göster

Riding the Rails: Berlin to Prague

By bayramcigerli at 18:51 berlin, Bohemia, Dresden, EC 171 Hungaria, Hauptbanhof, hlavni nadrazi, Prague, rail, Saxony No comments

Riding the rails along the Elbe River in the Free State of Saxony, Germany.

July 19, 2011 -- After visiting Berlin this summer, the next destination on my rail journey around Europe was Prague. I rode the EuroCity 171 Hungaria train from Berlin Central Train Station (Hauptbahnhof) to Prague Main Railway Station (Praha hlavni nadrazi). We traveled through the spectacular Saxony countryside along the Elbe River (Labe in Czech) and Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

The train was an older model and the Czech Republic isn't set up for high-speed rail yet so it didn't go as fast as most trains traveling through Western European nations. Czechoslovakia dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia rather recently on January 1, 1993 following two uprisings against the communist regime -- the Prague Spring of 1968 and the 1989 Velvet Revolution. There are plans to construct a high-speed rail network in the Czech Republic, although operation isn't expected until at least 2020.

Prague Main Railway Station and train I took from Berlin -- EuroCity 171 Hungaria, whose final destination is Budapest, Hungary.

But traveling at slower speeds was actually preferable because it offered more time to enjoy passing the scenic countryside and historic villages, towns and cities in Saxony and Bohemia.

There are four seats to a cabin with a sliding glass door and I had it to myself for most of the trip. There is rolling cart food and beverage service as well.

As en environmental journalist and clean energy blogger, I couldn't stop snapping pictures of the wind turbines in Germany. Every time I looked out the window while traveling through the Saxony countryside I saw enormous wind farms with huge wind turbines.

Not to be outdone, while traveling through the Czech Republic I took this picture of a solar farm. That is a lot of solar panels supplying clean, renewable energy to citizens of the Czech Republic.

Another highlight was passing through Dresden. Almost completely destroyed by an Allied bombing campaign near the end of World War II, the city has been rebuilt since then and is now one of the most important cities in Germany.

Arriving at Dresden's main train station.

We finally arrived in Prague and I set out on exploring the next city on my European rail adventure.

Here is video of the rail trip from Berlin to Prague.

And here are more photos of the rail trip from Berlin to Prague. Click here to see the set on Flickr.

Summer 2011: Berlin, Germany

By bayramcigerli at 13:33 berlin, Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Germany, Grand Hostel, hitler, Holocaust Memorial, Nazis No comments

July 17-19, 2011 -- Berlin was the third city I visited this summer after London and Brussels. It was also the most interesting. Perhaps no city in the world has been defined by events of the 20th Century than Berlin. The city has survived Nazism and Communism to become the liberal, tolerant city it is today. Berlin is the capital of a unified Germany that is a model democracy. The city that has suffered so much has triumphed over its tragic past.

I stayed at the Grand Hostel, which is consistently rated as one of the top hostels in Germany and the world. The historic building, constructed in 1874, is located in the Berlin borough of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain overlooking the Spree River.

I highly recommend taking the New Berlin Free Tour, which leaves every day near the Brandenburg Gate for a 3.5 hour walking tour. The guide will ask for a tip at the end if you liked the tour, and most people give him around five euros. It is an excellent introduction to the amazing history of Berlin -- from its days as the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia; to the capital of the Third Reich; to when the city was divided by the Berlin Wall; to its development into a world-class city.

Seeing the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag Building, Gendarmenmark, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and other historic sites were amazing. But it was the brief twelve year period from 1933-1945 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party ruled Berlin that was most intriguing to me.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a moving memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Walking the 4.7 acres (19,000 square meters) through the 2,711 concrete slabs brings about different emotions to different people. For me, I felt how orderly, vast and inhuman the Nazi extermination system was.

But as much as Germans have gone out of their way to honor and remember the victims of Nazi tyranny, they have also chosen not to remember the perpetrators. Case in point is Hitler's bunker, which is located underneath a car park a few blocks from the Holocaust Memorial because German authorities don't want it to become a shrine for neo-Nazis. There was not even a plaque to mark the site until the 2006 World Cup was in Germany. After 66 years, the feelings are still too raw in Germany to even attempt an archaeological excavation of the underground site where the Fuhrer married Eva Braun before they both committed suicide as Russian soldiers closed in.

Another few blocks brings you to the only Nazi-era building still standing after the Battle of Berlin and the Allied bombing campaign in 1945 -- the Ministry of Aviation Building, where Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was in charge of development and production of aircraft, primarily for the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe).

The government building was a vivid reminder of the cold, calculated centralized bureaucracy behind the mass murder of millions. This building was a typical government building in Berlin during the Nazi era. Thousands of bureaucrats making life and death decisions every day. The most disturbing thing about it is that the building wouldn't be out of place in Washington, D.C., Paris, Beijing or any other world capital.

Bebelplatz is the site of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremony, which took place on the evening of May 20, 1933. The Nazis set fire to 20,000 books by many authors including Heinrich Heine, whose tragically prophetic quote from 1820 is engraved at the site of the book burnings: "Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people."

A memorial by Micha Ullman consisting of a glass plate set into the cobbles, giving a view of empty bookcases, commemorates the book burning.

There are stories of ordinary Germans who did extraordinary things during that dark period in human history. One such figure was a local police officer named Otto Bellgardt, who on the night of Kristallnacht in 1938, when Nazi mobs were destroying Jewish businesses and institutions across the city, saved the historic New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße by drawing his pistol and telling the mob it was a protected historical landmark and he would uphold the law in protecting the place. The crowd dispersed and the synagogue was saved.

Click here for more observations of Berlin on Green Center Blog.

Here are more photos from Berlin. Click here to see the set on Flickr.

Riding the Rails: Brussels to Berlin

By bayramcigerli at 14:58 belgium, berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Deutsche Bahn, Germany, high speed, InterCity-Express, Koln, solar panels, Train, wind turbines No comments

July 17, 2011 -- I took a Deutsche Bahn InterCity-Express train from Brussels to Berlin with a transfer in Cologne. The train makes intermediate stops at Liege and Aachen before reaching Cologne. From Cologne the train makes intermediate stops at Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Dortmund, Hamm, Gutersloh, Bielefeld, Herford, Hannover, Wolfsburg, Stendal and Berlin-Spandau. DB ICE trains travel at speeds up to 200 mph (322 kph).

The train station at Liege, Belgium is spectacular. It was designed by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who also designed the new transit hub at Ground Zero in New York City and the Chords Bridge in Jerusalem.

In typical German fashion, Deutsche Bahn wants you to know exactly how fast and efficient their high-speed trains are. The ICE trains top out at around 200 mph (322 kph) so my train was gaining speed at the time I took this picture. For Americans reading this blog post, that is 155 miles per hour.

As we sped through the German countryside I was expecting to see alpine houses and gothic cathedrals, which I did. However, I also saw gigantic wind farms with enormous wind turbines dotting the landscape. And it seemed as if every other house I saw had solar panels installed on the rooftop. Germany is obviously not the windiest or sunniest country in the world, but the Federal Republic has had a Renewable Energy Act in place since the year 2000, so this is the result of over eleven years of generous incentives for wind and solar power. It is impressive to see so many wind farms and so many citizens powering their homes with the sun.

That evening we arrived at the multi-level, futuristic looking Berlin Central Train Station. Trains are coming and going all the time on different levels, making it look like something out of the Fox animated science fiction show "Futurama." So cool.

Here are photos and video of my high speed train trip from Brussels to Berlin. Click here to see the photo set on Flickr.

Berlin Destroyed: When The War Ended In 1945

By Türkçe Bayram at 06:59 berlin, berlin 1945 No comments

Berlin has always been a proud city. Prouder still was it under the rule of Nazis. But it saw a destruction that still shakes us up when we see the images of a broken Berlin in April 1945.

It was not only the German women who were raped. Berlin too was raped.