A warm and sunny Sunday for April, with hundreds out on the streets of Mitte. The tidy outdoor vendor stands along the Spree near the Cathedral in Mitte were open and thriving. The clientele is post-East German, casually dressed and without apparent link to any bourgeoisie past or present, but solid. Occasionally, six foot amazons in tight jeans would drift into sight.
A visit to a newly opened treasure trove, the Neues Museum on the Museum Island. Smashed and battered during the air raids of the War and badly cared for in the following years, the museum re-opened during the winter. It is now cavernous, gaunt and spare with brickwork showing through crusted concrete walls. But once inside, it is a delight. It has the feeling that Santa Claus emptied his bag of gifts, as one is greeted with a wide array of mostly ancient artifacts. Finds of Schliemann’s digs at Troy soon blend into a marvelous collection of Cypriot pots and small statuary in stone and terra cotta. Ascend a grand staircase, and there you are. And there she is, the magnificent Nefertiti, or at least her hallowed bust, a portrait of the most beautiful woman who ever lived. This is a museum that could be visited weekly for a long time. We wandered through less than 20% of it in less than an hour, since it was too sunny outside to tarry in a rainy day venue.
Later, time to buy the seven day tickets good for transportation on the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn and any bus to anywhere for a week. The reasonable cost is Euro 26.40 per week, about $35. Alas the automatic ticket dispensing machines in both the Stadtmitte and Franzoezische Strasse U-Bahn stations were malfunctioning, and so I had to walk up to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof to buy the tickets at the municipal transport office. The Bahnhof is never dull for people watching.
We took a taxi to the massive Marienkirche, a high-steepled, red-brick Protestant church near Alexanderplatz for our 6 p.m. Anglican worship. The service had been relegated to a chapel off the main nave, but not knowing we entered through the main entrance to find a protestant service in progress. It was billed as a “university” service, and it looked to be well attended. Christian worship appears to be making a slow but steady comeback in urban Berlin.
We found our service, and there was the redoubtable Reverend Irene, our German lady Anglican priest from St. George’s in the west end of Berlin near the Olympic Stadium, tall, firm, graying, elegant and very handsome, presiding at the service. There were about 25 in attendance, Brits, Nigerians, we two Americans and others of uncertain provenance, all attentive to the scripture readings, old English hymns, beautifully phrased liturgy and a warm-hearted homily from the Frau Reverend, who exudes enough faith and holiness to carry hundreds of us along.
Irene told a story about a bible study class somewhere where the participants were asked to name who in the Bible they would like to be. The usual answers of “Samuel,” “Mary Magdalene” and “Peter” were forthcoming, but one young girl answered “Lo!” When told there was no person in the Bible named “Lo,” the girl responded: “Of course there is. Right here it says, “Lo, I am always with you.”
After the service we walked about a mile west along Unter den Linden in the blue and gold sunset to one of our favorite restaurant/cafes, the Café Einstein on Unter den Linden, a Viennese-affecting gathering spot for people who are dressed in tans and grays and look intellectual. Since we are now just commencing the best time of the year in Germany, namely, white asparagus season, we fell into the fabulous good fortune of a magnificent dinner consisting of huge, luscious spears of white asparagus, a tender small Wiener Schnitzel ample enough for a meal in itself, small peeled potatoes soaked in butter and parsley and a tiny vat of concentrated, potent, lemony, creamy, ecstasy-invoking Hollandaise sauce. Add the pilsener beer, and we had the best dinner in the world that evening.
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