Travel

At the start of February to celebrate the new St Brigid’s Day long weekend (a Covid dividend, finally) Mr. Waffle and I went to Berlin to visit friends who moved there from Ireland last year.

Day 1 – Friday, January 31, 2025

Our friends live in the beautiful Grunewald a very genteel suburban part of town in the forest which we had never visited when we were in Berlin in the baking hot summer a couple of years ago. In retrospect, that might have been a good idea.

After admiring our friends’ very luxurious house where (oh my goodness yes) we felt we would be very comfortable for the weekend, we all went out to a local pub for dinner admiring some charming and many large houses as we walked to our destination.

Day 2 – Saturday February 1, 2025

February 1 is my mother’s birthday and it was nice to be with a friend from childhood who had known her very well. We had a nice chat about her over breakfast. My friend’s husband is a bit of a breakfast guru and made us all a delightfully elaborate breakfast.

Then off we went to the station to get the S-Bahn into the city. On the way we passed Judith Kerr‘s house.

There’s a plaque about her father but, sadly, no reference to her. I think it is time to trot out one of my favourite Judith Kerr stories. When she wrote the first Mog story her German publisher insisted on making Mog a male cat despite her objections. In the next book Mog was pregnant. I don’t know, if this is true but I really hope so.

The train station in the Grunewald has a memorial to all the Jewish deportees. It’s sad and really well done.

It seems almost unbelievable that they deported more than 50,000 people from here to the camps and almost certain death. The last deportees went in February 1945.

The cute little station is, I imagine, largely unchanged since then and it is incredible to think of such vast numbers of people being herded through here to their deaths not so very long ago.

We pushed on into town. We were keen to revisit our Place Savigny stomping grounds from when we were last in Berlin. What a really lovely part of town. Just outside the airbnb where we had stayed, we noticed for the first time Stolperstein with details of some people who had fled to Ireland. In fairness to the Irish Times, they had a great article about the family.

We had lunch in town. Then, we decided to go to the Gemäldegalerie. Honestly, it is impossible to find. Even though I forget everything, I vividly remembered how hard it is to get there as I nearly died in the attempt in 2022 trekking miles across a soulless, sign-less concrete desert in 40 degree heat. It’s absolutely excellent when you get there. A really superb collection and you have it to yourself because, obviously, no other tourists will be able to find it.

There was a temporary exhibition there with paintings from Odessa and, no shade to Odessa which I would love to visit and which is obviously having a tough time at present, it is the collection of a regional museum with all the limitations that implies. However the main collection was, as ever, superb.

I enjoyed this picture painted by the subject’s husband, a man called Lampi, who honestly, I expect got a piece of her mind as soon as the sitting was over.

I am a big fan of the quiet charm of Chardin and I loved this beautiful little portrait which is typical of his work.

Who isn’t a fan of Botticelli? Nobody, that’s who.

This picture by Joshua Reynolds of an East India company grandee and his family has faded rather badly but it’s interesting for lots of reasons – you know, Joshua Reynolds, always good value; the Indian maid and also, the mother who was née Austen and an aunt of the more famous Jane.

This guy was a former governor of Ireland – 1st Marquis of Camden from whom I presume we get Camden street in Dublin where the young people like to go of an evening – by Hoppner. It may well be a flattering work but I wouldn’t really be delighted if I were him.

I’m not a massive fan of Rembrandt myself but a Rembrandt self-portrait is always interesting.

All I can say about this one is you would have to feel sorry for the inbred Hapsburgs. Even my children instantly recognised this picture as being a Hapsburg due to the extraordinary chin. I bet it was even worse in real life. It’s King Charles V by Christoph Amberger in case you’re wondering.

There was lots and lots more – amazing paintings in a nearly deserted gallery. I cannot recommend it highly enough provided you can get there.

We were a bit exhausted after all the culture but fortunately our hosts had a voucher for dinner in a lovely restaurant which they chose to spend on us so we were all picked up by this. Incredibly, our waitress was from Kuldiga the tiny town in Latvia that we had visited over the summer. It was like meeting someone from Leitrim: so unlikely because almost no one is from there.

Day 3 – Sunday, February 2, 2025

The following day we went to Potsdam. Poor Mr. Waffle who bought train tickets for us both made some terrible error with the ticketing and ended up spending €50 rather than about €10 due to some difficulties with automatic ticketing. We move on.

Potsdam is very pretty but somehow feels quite Eastern European though, I am pleased to report that Berlin specialty Curry Wurst is available there. A classic.

We’d gone to Potsdam to check out Sans Souci the summer palace of Frederick the Great. It’s impressive. Great grounds but, just so as you know, the palace closes at 4.30 in winter.

We had a rather hurried inspection of the interior of the principal palace but, honestly, pretty good for our needs. Many more palaces are available for inspection on a future visit but I believe we saw the main one. Pretty luxe for a summer palace, I can tell you. We had it pretty much to ourselves except for the security guards who followed us from room to room locking each door after us. It felt a bit…pointed but I suppose they were keen to finish up work for the day like the rest of us.

After our cultural experience we went for a reviving cup of tea and a wander around Potsdam. We got a bit lost on our way to the station and Mr. Waffle asked two German ladies whether they knew the way to the station and one of them said grumpily, “Haben Sie kein Google maps?” Definitely not feeling the love from the locals. But the centre of the town, doubtless reconstructed by the East Germans because they did a lot of that, is very attractive. Though kind of weirdly empty.

We found the station eventually with the aid of google maps and took ourselves back to the Grunewald where our hosts gave us dinner.

The next morning we were up at cock crow to get back to Dublin. Our hosts warned us that security was really slow in the airport. Never was a truer word spoken and myself and another Irish woman in the queue bonded about how they made Dublin airport security look like paragons of efficiency. Anyway despite waiting an unnervingly long time, we made our flight no bother.

My friend will, I’m sure, be delighted to learn that I’m contemplating an annual trip to Berlin. It’s so nice there, lads, and there’s lots more to see.