Walking in Berlin

On the last day of his recent visit to Berlin, Red Baron visited Kieser Training at Berlin-Mitte.

Nobel Prize winner Robert Koch

Their premises are near the Charité, the famous hospital where giants of medicine, including Rudolph Virchow, Emil von Behring, Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich, and Ferdinand Sauerbruch, practiced.

The entrance to Kieser Training Berlin-Mitte is hidden.

The reception in the back has a corporate look.

The narrow lockers were a shock. Only two hangers! My jeans shorts already filled the whole width. What do they do during the winter?

There was little attendance for a Monday morning.

In Freiburg, the training machines are not as tightly positioned.

An exciting addition to machine B1 is the foot rollers we do not have in Freiburg.

For lunch, I went to Berlin's Disneyland. The German Democratic Republic constructed an old Berlin quarter around Nicolai Church to make East Berlin attractive to tourists.

Few tourists were there at noon, but many eateries invited me for lunch. I chose Bolte's Berliner Steakhaus, although I was annoyed by the Deppenapostroph in the name borrowed from Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz.

I did not choose a steak but a specialty of the House: Benser Blutwurst*. The black pudding produced by the famous manufacturer of blutwurst located in Berlin-Neukölln is roasted and served on a slice of apple with a mustard potato mash and onion melt. I downed the sausage with a Berliner Weiße mit Schuss (white beer with a shot of woodruff syrup).
*Note: This traditional dish is not offered on the English menu card.

Here is a painting of Witwe (widow) Bolte inside the Steakhaus.

Widow Bolte on her way to the cellar where she keeps her Sauerkraut

Wilhelm Busch rhymed in his comic Max und Moritz:

Daß sie von dem Sauerkohle Eine Portion sich hole, Wofür sie besonders schwärmt, Wenn er wieder aufgewärmt. -

Widow Bolte went for a sour Kraut, which she would devour Warmed a little on the fire With exceeding great desire.

Following lunch, I decided to walk along the Spree River toward Humboldt University.

Tourists are on boats. The scene looks like Venice. In the background are the Berlin Cathedral and the Hohenzollern Castle, the latter of which is under construction, as is the Humboldt Forum.

Note that the back facade of the city castle was not reconstructed in its original form.

Following the street, there is the building of our Foreign Ministry on the left and Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Bauakademie (Building Academy) on the right. The former "is considered one of the forerunners of modern architecture due to its hithertofore uncommon use of red brick and the relatively streamlined facade of the building" (Wikipedia). To demonstrate the beauty of the building, one corner was reerected in the original masonry. The rest is simulated by painted canvas.

The Schinkel square in front of the Academy is of rare beauty.

The statue of Schinkel is in the middle, while that to the left represents Christian Peter Wilhelm Friedrich Beuth, who is called the father of Prussian manufacturing. The one on the right shows Albrecht Conrad Thaer, the founder of the science of agriculture.

Looking to the right shows the cupola of the Humboldt Forum, which is still under construction.

Crossing the Spree River on the Schlossbrücke opens a good view of the Museumsinsel with its new Henri James Simon Forum. Stay tuned for my next blog.

The statue of Alexander von Humboldt is in front of Berlin's Humboldt Universität. In 1939, the University of Havana dedicated the sculpture to the second discoverer of Cuba.

There is yet another statue in the courtyard of the main university building. It represents the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz.

Driving on Unter den Linden with a view of Brandenburg Gate. 
In the back to the left is the building of the US embassy.

Being tired, I took the public double-decker bus 100, often "abused" by visitors for sightseeing. This famous line runs from Alexanderplatz to Bahnhof Zoo, touching most major Berlin sights on its route.

I arrived with the S-Bahn at the Hauptbahnhof (central train station), where I had a good view of the Reichstag building. To the right is the building of the Swiss embassy.

I will end my photostory with an evening view from my hotel with the river Spree in front and the Federal Chancellery (Germany's White House) in the back.
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