Sunday, June 3rd (Berlin)

We woke up early to catch the Original Berlin walking tour (which started 3 kilometers away from our hotel). We hustled there only to find out they were picking up a second group right near our hotel (just our luck). Our tour guide Julie was a Fullbright scholar from Wellesley studying German (immigrant) Integration Policy was very knowledgeable. She took us through Museum Island (home of the Pergamon Museum which houses ancient buildings moved stone by stone from Turkey), Brandenburg Gate (the one Napoleon and the Nazis famously marched under) the Murdered Jews of the Second World War memorial (the designer almost walked off the project when they tried to rename it the Holocost Memorial), and Hitler’s Bunker among other sites. We were going to tour the Reichstag (German parliament building) but were told it was a two hour wait and Carla felt a sniffle coming on so we decided to head home for a nap.

Carla felt a little better after sleeping so we decided to venture out once again. On our way to the Reichstag however we saw that the National Opera House, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, was putting on a Mozart Opera, LA CLEMENZA DI TITO. This was the Opera house that had been rebuilt 3 times. It was destroyed at the beginning of WWII but since Hitler liked Operas so much, he had it rebuilt in 1943. It was again destroyed and rebuilt after the end of the war. We decided to check it out. We were lucky because we got student discounts (12 Euros v. the 42 Euros listed) and a nice Canadian backpacker spotted us the Euros since we didn’t have enough and the place wasn’t accepting our credit card. We jetted to the cash machine just in time for the show to start. We sat w/ the Canadian up on the 2^nd balcony. We didn’t know what we were in for. The orchestra was fantastic but we didn’t recognize any of the songs as being Mozart. They had the translation to the Italian opera in German but we couldn’t understand that either so we were pretty lost the first half. This was the premiere and I think the scenery still had to be worked out. At one point they raised the back curtain and we could see the stage behind it with all the other props, ladders, etc. It was pretty entertaining to see their lack of focus on the stage. The singing was great though.

At intermission, we realized you could get an English summary so we prepared ourselves and at least knew what was happening in the 2^nd half of the opera. Much to our surprise it had a happy ending – a little too Disneylike for our taste. Overall, Jim was a fan, Carla, not so much.

http://www.staatsoper-berlin.org/spielplan/detailansicht.php?id_event_cluster=25087&id_event_date=72304&id_language=2&show=handlung&aktiv=oper

We hadn’t had dinner yet so when we got out of the Opera at 10:15pm, all the restaurants were closed since it was a Sunday night. We decided to treat ourselves to some good food at the restaurant at our hotel, the Westin Grand Berlin. Wow did we treat ourselves – it was $$$ but SOOO good. Carla’s burger wasn’t quiet a burger – more some really good steak in a burger form. We enjoyed the pianist playing covers of many songs we knew and enjoyed our late meal in the fancy fancy hotel.