After spending four weeks in Europe using public transportation, trains and my own two feet to get around in Venice, Prague, Berlin and Ljubljana I pulled together random thoughts about those experiences. In Part 1, I wrote about Italy and Prague now in Part 2, I am adding some anecdotal observations about Berlin and Ljubljana, which is the capital city of Slovenia.
Berlin, Germany
The four-hour train trip from Prague to Berlin was much more relaxing than taking a short flight on the airlines. Not only do you pass several bucolic spa cities in Southern Germany, but the scenic Elbe River is a constant travel companion much of the way as well. But arriving at the Berlin’s enormous glass and steel Berlin Central Station or Hauptbahnof (Berlin Hbf) I was shocked from my train reverie by the size and magnitude of the transportation hub. The Berlin Central Station was completed in 2006 on the former site of the Lehrter Station, which was originally constructed in 1876 and heavily damaged in World War II.* The two levels of Hauptbahnof connects local train transportation (top level) with the regional train service (bottom level). Fortunately, my older daughter Cynthia, who lives in Berlin, greeted my partner and travel planner extraordinaire Denise Casey and me and led us to our AirBnb apartment in the Kreuzberg section of the city. Otherwise we might still be wondering around this "train metropolis."
When the Berlin Wall was built, Kreuzberg was a district surrounded on three sides by East Berlin and for years remained rundown before being inhabited by more bohemian and artist types. There was a heavy Turkish influence as well because of the Turks who emigrated to Germany to work in the factories in the 1960s could live there cheaply. After reunification, the 3oth anniversary was earlier this month, Kreuzberg retained its counterculture heritage but has been part of the gentrification controversy. We spent most of our time in Kreuzberg and the buzz and activity on the streets has a certain energy that sets it apart from other boroughs of Berlin (from what I’ve been told.)
In addition to the trains and buses which run constantly, there are plenty of cyclists in Berlin. The bike lanes and paths blend “too seamlessly” because I had to specifically look for the designations such as different color bricks or sidewalk lanes marked by reflector buttons so riders wouldn't yell at me, "Achtung, Bitte". Berlin has long, hard winters, and the cyclists had a gritty aura that showed their toughness. I half-expected to see a cyclist carrying a Panzerfaust. (* See footnote at the end of the posting for the full explanation and digression.)
After a few days, Denise and I felt comfortable getting around by ourselves and we took the subway to the central part of the city to see the Brandenburg Gate and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (shown here with cyclists on Hannah-Arendt Strasse.)
Ljubljana, Slovenia
There are limited rail and air travel options between Berlin and
Ljubljana so we flew from Berlin to Zagreb, Croatia and took a shared van service called GoOpti to get to Ljubljana. Once you are in this medieval city that is built on the peaceful Ljubljanica River, your transportation needs are few since you can walk to the most sites in the city within twenty minutes.
The central part of the Ljubljana is strictly limited to pedestrians and bicycles. Only a few automobiles are granted access relying these clever little obstacles (shown below). I am so easily entertained; I could watch these for hours.
E-scooters are starting to appear in the city, but our food guide who was an avid cyclist is hoping they don’t take hold. In Ljubljana, I was wary at first because the way the cyclists darted in and out among the pedestrians effortlessly. The cyclists who dressed in normal clothes and followed the guidelines I mentioned when describing the cyclists in Treviso, Italy. (See European Transportation Part 1.)
We were in Ljubljana for a week and we wanted to see other parts of Slovenia. Slovenia is a relatively small country and we used Ljubljana as a base, because it takes less than two hours to drive to the glacial Lake Bled to the north (shown below) or the alpine shepherd’s village of Velika Planina or the Adriatic seashore town of Piran, which we did. It was the only three days we drove during the almost four weeks we were abroad. (Slovenia has good roads and the drivers are not particularly aggressive.) Unlike other European countries Slovenia does not much of a regional train network and when we left the country to return to Treviso, Italy for our eventual flight home, we used the GoOpti service again.
Panzerfaust Footnote *
Part of my Berlin experience was influenced by reading Antony Beevor’s The Fall of Berlin 1945 (2002) before I arrived in the city. This detailed account of the Soviet Army’s crushing defeat and punishment of Nazi Germany in the final months of World War II, is pure misery porn. Beevor’s book it describes the suffering of millions of German civilians and the horrors that the Soviet army put on the German population, partly in retribution for Nazi atrocities against the Soviet Union in 1942-44. Two accounts in the book stick in my mind: 1.) How the German civilians hid in the subways like Lehrter Station to avoid the heavy Soviet bombardment of the city (The Red Army even zeroed their artillery on the station entrances so if the civilians tried to get out temporarily get food and water it was only at great peril. And 2.) The Germans use of Panzerfaust, an anti-tank weapons resembling rocket propelled grenades that German soldiers riding bicycles would use to attack Soviet tanks with effective results. In this less than perfect photo of the Brandenburg (shown below), I found the helmeted tourists riding Segway-like vehicles amusing especially considering the Panzerfaust heritage. This may seem to be an odd narrative juxtaposing war stories and tourists on scooters, but since Berlin is a city that has been wrestling with its past, it seemed relevant.
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