Bristol - Broadmead + Castle Park

We went to Bristol for four days a few weeks ago. I had not been for years, so many parts of it were like new. What struck me most was how vibrant the place is - people like to have fun, to go out and enjoy themselves: the bars and restaurants were full to bursting, and as the weather was good, people were sitting out. Bristol is also a very multi-cultural city which gave it an added positive vibe. We had a great time.

Out hotel was in the centre, next to Broadmead shopping centre, with Castle Park on the other side.

Broadmead is a typical British shopping centre 

but there are more old, classical buildings than in other shopping centres. 

The Odeon is housed in this gorgeous Art Deco building.

An old Almshouse, built in 1399

Part of the Dominican Friary, founded in 1227.

The Society of Friends meeting house, 1747. The Quakers held meetings on this site from 1670 to 1956.





A happy co-existence of old and new.

What made this shopping centre different for me, is the large number of stalls selling international food, reflecting the multi-cultural nature of the city, but also, a sign of its vibrancy.

We couldn't understand what part of an animal they were roasting here

This child sang beautifully - the stall sells Argentinian food

Later that day, when we were returning to our hotel, by this same stall, a man on stilts was dancing to the music, and so many people were dancing with him

People were having such a good time!

Bristol is famous for its street art - we did not see as much as we would have liked 

Normally, when we go to a new place, we like to try out different places to eat. This did not happen this time however. We had lunch here during our first day, but also ate here during  our second and third evenings. 

When we booked our hotel they offered us an upgrade, an offer so good, that we could not refuse. One of the perks was the Executive Lounge, where one could have unlimited amounts of wine, and what they called canapes, but which were in fact, proper starters. We liked sitting there (unfortunately I did not take any photographs) drinking wine, and nibbling various starters, so when it came to having a meal, which was pretty late by then, we just popped out to the nearest place and had a main meal and a pudding, with an additional glass of wine. It just suited us.

Two our of the three times we ate there, we were able to sit outside as the weather was very good, and this was our view - the old Friary.

On our first evening, as we were walking back to our hotel, having had dinner at a place by the riverside, we saw police tape draped by the park which was opposite our hotel. I asked one of the police officers who were keeping guard and he said that there had been a stabbing which started at the park,

 and finished here, on the edge of Broadmead.

Forensics were here too.

Contrary to what happened that evening, the park is a peaceful, calm space that is used a lot during the day by people intent on relaxing on the lawns, or as a thoroughfare to get from the Broadmead area to the riverside, the old city and beyond.

We walked on the edge of it, by the river every day for that purpose

The Left Handed Giant was always busy

the same during our return, where a path would lead us straight to our hotel

Bristol Castle  occupied the whole of the eastern section of today's Castle Park - it existed from at least 1088. From the 1100s, Bristol Castle was strengthened and enlarged and by the 1200, it was one of England's largest royal fortresses. By the 16th century the castle was 'tending to ruin' and following his victory in the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell decreed its destruction in 1655, a process which was completed within a fortnight. Following its destruction, a commercial avenue, Bristol's main shopping district,  opened along Castle Street towards Old Market. The area was largely destroyed by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz, and that which remained was subsequently demolished by 1969.

In the middle of the park stand the ruins of St Peter's Church.

Adjoining the ruins is this sensory herb garden with silver birch trees as a memorial to the beaches of the D-Day landings.

So peaceful and beautiful

Castle Park has become home to a number of anti-fascist memorials.

Berlin - Brandenburger Tor and Tiergarden

An important historical district, this was key in Berlin's 18th century transformation from a relative backwater to the capital of Prussia, which became one of Europe's biggest players. With Prussia's rise its architects were commissioned to create the trappings of a worthy Weldstadt (world city) with appropriately stately institutions built on and around Unter den Linden. Traditional Baroque and Neoclassical styles predominate. Almost every one of these symbols of Prussian might was left gutted by the bombing and shelling of WWII. Paradoxically it was the post-war communist regime that resurrected them from the wartime rubble. The result was a pleasing re-creation of the old city.

The restoration was so successful that looking at these 18th and 19th century buildings it's difficult to believe that as recently as the 1960s large patches of the centre lay in ruins. Like archaeologists trying to picture a whole vase from a single fragment, the builders took a façade, or just a small fraction of one, and set about re-creating the whole.

The Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) has come to mark the very centre of Berlin. Built as a city gate-cum-triumphal arch in 1971, it was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans and modelled after the Propylae, the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. The Gate became, like the Reichstag later, a symbol of German solidarity.

After the building of the Wall placed the Gate in the Eastern sector, nearby observation posts became the place for visiting politicians to look over the Iron Curtain from the West in what became a handy photo opportunity. With the opening of a border crossing here just before Christmas 1989, the east-west axis of the city was symbolically re-created.

The Brandenburg Tor looms over Pariser Platz. Standing on the southeast corner of the Platz, the Hotel Adlon is a 1990s reconstruction of one of Europe's grandest hotels.

The lobby

The Akademie der Kuenste is the only building where the strict rules of the redevelopment, - only a maximum of 49% glass -  have been flouted.

DZ Bank is next to the Akademie. Described by Frank O. Gehry 'as the best thing I've ever done', it mockingly follows the re-building rules - it's 50% stone.

 
The inside is stunning: Portuguese marble at the entrance, and thousands of individually formed metal panels give the entrance an aquatic, undulating curvaceousness. This is a very bad photograph, but I wanted to include it so that I could remember what it was like.

From the Brandenburg Tor and Pariser Platz we moved on to the

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, known as the Holocaust Memorial

Unveiled in 2006 after almost 17 years of planning and controversy and six years of construction, the monument was the work of New York architect Peter Eisenman, who took inspiration from the densely clustered gravestones of Prague's Jewish graveyard.

It involves 2711 dark grey oblong pillars, evenly and tightly spaced but of varying heights, spread across an area the size of two football pitches. As there is no single entrance, visitors make their own way through the maze to the centre

 where the blocks are well above head height,

tending to convey a sense of gloom, isolation and solitude, even though Eisenman insists his intent was to create a 'place of hope'.

Highly contentious was the hiring of German company Degussa (now Evonik) to supply the anti-graffiti paint for the block, since they are a daughter company of IG Farben, the company that produced Zyklon B, the gas used in the Nazi gas chambers.

Personally I have doubts as to how well it works as a memorial, as a place of remembrance of so many lives lost: people climb on the pillars to take selfies, kids use it as a playground, running around the maze and riding their bikes at great speed.  But, I might be wrong in my reservations and maybe the fact that it's used like this is just an affirmation of life and hope, as the architect intended.

The entrance to the underground information centre that relates the life stories and plight of some Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

We then crossed the road and entered the Tiergarden, Berlin's largest and most popular park.

Almost immediately we came upon the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism. A 4m-high concrete tube, it remembers the 54,000 people who were convicted of homosexual acts under Nazionalsozialismums. An estimated 8,000 died in concentration camps. The monument mimics the pillars commemorating Jewish victims but also contains

a window behind which

plays a film of same-sex couples (alternating between men and women every year or so) kissing.

We explored the garden for a while

and soon we came across the Global Stone Project which consists of ten stones. Five stones are placed in the five continents of their origins, while the other five are placed in a circle right here, in the centre of Berlin. Once a year on June 21 the light of the stones connects all ten by reflecting the light beams.

We eventually reached the Gate again

and a little further on is the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, commemorating the half-million Roma and Sinti that died at the hands of the Nazis.

Through the gate

is a circular pond, surrounded by rough stone flags.

At the centre of the pond is a rock upon which a single fresh flower is placed every day. This flower has supreme significance as the murdered Sinti and Roma lie in unmarked plots in huge cemeteries with only plants growing above them. The flower lies on a triangle which represents the triangle the Nazis forced all gypsies to wear.

We then walked on to the Reichstag which was restored as the seat of the Bundestag, Germany's Parliament in 1999. An imposing 19th century Neoclassical building, it has as its main attraction the giant glass dome that was designed by Richard Rogers.






We have now visited Berlin twice and we still have not managed to get inside the building. Both times we tried to book in advance but were unable to obtain tickets - the only ones available were very late at night, and we did not fancy this. We could have queued for a very long time to obtain access, but we did not fancy that either.

Right by the entrance is this monument in memory of 96 members of the Reichstag (Parliament) of the Weimar Republic who were murdered by the National Socialists.

We moved on to this grassed-up area

where a lot of people were having fun with the fountains.

At one end is the Chancellery






Angela Merkel's Downing Street

and at the other end this gorgeous modernist building, the Paul Loebe Haus.






The Social Democrat Paul Loebe was a member of the constituent National Assembly that drew up the Weimar COnstitution during the years 1919-1920 and President of the German Reichstag from 1920 until 1932, when he was forced out of office by the National Socialists. He was held for several months in concentration camps in 1933 and 1944. After WWII he took part in the rebuilding of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)

We circled the building

and reached the café at the back, which is by the waterfront






the bank of the river Spree belonged to West Berlin, whilst the river itself was the territory of East Berlin.

Where the west wall met the riverbank, the White Crosses memorial was erected in 1971. The crosses serve as a memorial to all those who lost their lives attempting to flee from East Germany to West Berlin after the border was closed. Guenther Litfin was the first refugee to be shot at the Berlin border by East German border police after 13 August 1961. Chris Gueffroy, the last to be killed, was shot while trying to escape in February 1989 - nine months before the border was opened.