It is time once again to leave Copenhagen. I have said it before and I will say it again. I said it the day before yesterday to two locals. If you could have a Northern European government with a Southern European climate, you would have the greatest place on Earth. In other words, take Copenhagen with its health care and public transit and cleanliness and general contentedness, and ship it down to the Mediterranean, and I would be in heaven.
I lift a cup of room service coffee and bid adieu to Copenhagen.
The four of us hopped into a mini-van taxi, and on the ride to the airport we had the taxi driver who never stopped talking.
He was actually from Spain, but claimed to have travelled the world doing PR and ended up in Copenhagen because he married a Danish woman. There is little that we did not learn about him, including that he has had three daughters with two wives. When he mentioned PR, my mother mentioned BS, and he said, "Ah, yes, b---s---! Yes!"
Now, the one important thing that he told us is that in Denmark -- listen up fellas -- there are so many beautiful blondes that every man gets one. In other countries, beautiful blondes think that they are special and you have to be rich or famous to get them, but in Denmark there are so many that every man gets a beautiful blonde.
There you have it. Life according to the Spaniard who lives in Denmark.
The joyous luxury of air travel.
In honor of last year's accidental photo of the No Photography sign in the Copenhagen Airport, this year I take an intentional photo of this sign.
The Air Berlin airplane that shall take us to Berlin.
No in-flight pictures. I was busy watching The State DVD 2 on the iPhone. Yes, having DVD's that I ripped and loaded onto this phone brings me a kind of joy that only a nerd can understand.
I failed to take a picture inside the Berlin Tegel International Airport that said, "Welcome To Berlin." However, as we waited for our driver to bring around the car, I got a picture of the Porsche Panamera that pulled up while we stood there. Nothing says "Welcome To Berlin" like a Panamera. (In case you are not hip to it, the Panamera is Porsche's 4-door sedan and you do not see them every day.)
We arrived at the Westin Grand Berlin and are staying on the sixth floor, at the top of this atrium. My fear of heights kicks in along that walk; it is that high.
We ate lunch in the hotel's cafe, where they have placed a piece of history for us tourists to photograph.
Yes, I did the Colbert point-and-smile with it, but if you read last year's Berlin visit on the Waste you would know that, really, I can think fewer things more horrible than the Berlin Wall. Walls for defense, I can understand. The East German government built the Berlin Wall to keep their own people in. In fact, they turned the entire country into little more than a prison; a prison that trapped Europeans within a Soviet dominated totalitarian state for 44 years. The wall existed for the first 21 years of my life, and with the exceptions of a few celebrity defections, we never heard about the people behind that wall struggling to be free. The young men who were shot dead as the attempted to escape to the West.
For the record, everything you will see on the Waste in Berlin is the former East Berlin. If we ever visit the former West, I will be sure to note it for you.
Finally, I will only bother you with this fact once; the Berlin Wall only existed for 28 years, from 1961 to 1989. I suspect we will not forget the Berlin Wall, but in fact that wall was only a part of this city for 28 of its 800 years. I try to keep that in mind as well.
Look at that. A soapbox jumped into the lunch portion of the Waste. My apologies.
I got the linguine with sage and pine nuts. And, yes, I loaded it with parmesan.
Barbie got a chicken club sandwich.
Are we friends again? I said I would only babble on about the Wall that one time.
We are staying two blocks away from where we stayed last year, and since the sun is shining and everyone is in the mood Barbie and I decide to show my parents the neighborhood.
The Gendarmenmarkt, with its mirrored cathedrals, completed in 1705 and 1708. The closer one is the French Cathedral, built by the Huguenot community that escaped to Germany from France when the French Catholics tried to kill them for being French Lutherans. The further one is the German Cathedral. Hidden between them is the Konzerthaus, which as a Neo-Classical building looks the oldest but is the new kid on the block, built in 1821.
Good old St. Hedwig's, a clear homage to the Pantheon of Rome. That structure just to the right is the hotel we stayed in last year, Rocco Forte's Hotel de Rome.
Inside St. Hedwig's, a lifting Panorama works wonderfully.
Across Unter den Linden, we come to one of our favorite memorials, the Neue Wache, or New Guard House. It was a guard house until it became a memorial for the lost soldiers of World War I in1931. In 1960, the East Germans repaired this war damaged memorial, lit an eternal flame inside and dedicated it to, "The Victims of Fascism and Militarism." After German reunification, it was rededicated in 1993 as, "The Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny." In 1969 the remains of an unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim were buried here, surrounded by dirt from a World War II battlefield and dirt from a concentration camp.
In 1993, this enlarged replica of Mother With Her Dead Son by Kathe Kollwitz was placed where the eternal flame had been.
My parents and wife, with that mother and daughter, looking at this rather painful statue.
Few statues capture what Mother With Her Dead Son statue captures. I have lived one of the luckiest lives in world history. Really. My mother never once had to fear losing me on the battlefield. As historically rare as that is, I believe it is the way of the future and not an anomaly.
What? Did you not expect a few thoughts of war and pain and loss in Berlin? I will also tell you this. As soon as we got here, Barbie and I walked the streets and felt the neo-classical and modern architecture around us and both said, "I love this city." Berlin is a wonderful city, and it brings you more warmth than sadness.
The Berliner Dom, one of our all-time favorite cathedrals.
The Lustgarten and Altes Museum, one of our favorite spots in Berlin. The Lustgarten, or Pleasure Garden, is a site which the Nazi's paved for military parades. However, let me repeat from last year that in February 1933, when the Nazi regime first took power, 200,000 Berliners demonstrated here against the Nazi regime. That is what I think about when I am here.
I had no choice but to try a panorama.
It had been a nice walk, and we headed back to hotel and clean up for dinner.
For dinner, we stroll down the street knowing that there are a few nice looking restaurants. We come to Gendarmerie and step inside to see the menu in English, but the artwork on the wall convinced us to eat there before we even saw the menu. A Gendarmerie, by the way, is a corps of gentlemen at arms, a concept which began with nobleman cavalries performing police duties in France.
This picture does no justice at all to the interior of this restaurant, which is one of the most beautifully designed spaces I have ever seen. When we inquire about the colossal artwork on the equally colossal wall, we are given a book about the artist to read through. His name is Jean-Yves Klein, and the piece is titled Bacchanal. It is from 2009 and measures 5 m (16.4 ft) by 14 m (46 ft.) I absolutely fell in love with this piece, and cannot really explain why I did not take a better picture for you to see. My apologies, but we are also here for dinner.
I started with the Foie gras and chicken terrine, cherries, fruit bread. Superb.
Barbie started with the Duck confit salad, baby spinach, egg and truffle. Superb.
The view from our table. When you combine the elegance of the space with the deliciousness of the food, this quickly became one of those meals when everyone at the table continually praised every aspect of the meal and restaurant. It became a love-in. Even the walk to the Water Closet was a joyous journey of exploration.
No joke, this picture is my return from the Water Closet. In case you are wondering where the people are, it is sunny and warm outside and every table is taken out there. It is only because of my desire to be away from cigarette smoke that we are inside, but if we were outside there would be no Bacchanal, no perfect light fixtures, no restaurant length bar with lighted bottles...
My main course, and the same was ordered by my father and mother, Liver "Berlin Style", mashed potatoes, glazed onions, apple. Simply delicious. We never order liver at home, yet in Germany we have ordered it here and last year in Frankfurt, and both times it was delicious.
Barbie got the Pan-fried Wiener Schnitzel of veal, and substituted that bowl of mashed potatoes for the menu's lukewarm potato salad. I ate some of hers, it was fantastic. I wanted to eat it all, but was already regretfully full.
I pointed out that the wood that Bacchanal is painted on is actually carved and sculpted itself, and this is Barbie taking a closer look.
My father got the Chocolate mint slice. This remarkable dessert combined several tastes of chocolate with the mint cream which you see peering out the side.
Barbie ordered the Caramelized orange - passion fruit tartlet. It was outstanding. I was too full to order my own dessert, yet I wanted to eat all of their desserts for them.
I stepped to the other side of the bar and tried to get a good shot of the restaurant. I should have taken my time and taken a three-part panorama, but my restaurant geekdom was starting to embarrass me.
Finally, at the end of the bar, was this large ice bucket with, shall we say, figures at each end who are comfortable with each other.
There you have it. Paris, Rome, St. Tropez, Florence... 40 days in Europe and I believe I can confidently say that Gendarmerie is among the finest meals of this trip. Only the lunch in Parma stands out more, but that is an unfair comparison. One thing is for sure, if you come to Berlin -- and you really, really should visit this city that is on par with London, Paris, Rome and Madrid -- you really, really should eat dinner at Gendarmerie while you are here.
We walked back to the hotel, and said good night.
Until tomorrow....
