Berlin 2022
The first car that Jón Þór drove was a Trabant that his brother Alli owned. A beautiful poison green Trabant Station. It was therefore natural that when Jón Þór turned fifty he would need go to Germany and drive a Trabant through the streets of Berlin.
It was in November 2022 that we flew to Berlin, took the train into the city and arrived in time for dinner. We stayed at a hotel next to Alexanderplatz which was a great base for sightseeing.
Berlin is the capital of Germany with almost 4 million inhabitants. The city is is best known for the Berlin Wall that divided the city between West and East Germany during the Cold War, which ended in 1989 with the reunification of Germany. We spent some time walking along the wall and looking at the graffiti art.
We manged to fit in a lot during our 2 full days in the city. We visited a museum about the GDR, which is located right in the city center. An informative and well-organized museum about the time when this great power in Europe was divided in two and what life was like in the eastern Germany from the end of the second world war in 1945 to 1989 when the countries were reunited. What caught Jón Þór’s attention the most was recognising many things in the museum that were also in Iceland during the 1980´s and early 90´s, when he was growing up. Icelanders did a lot of trade with East Germany during these years. That is precisely why the Trabant became a “fairly popular” car in Iceland, even though it was less known in other Western European countries.
The highlight of the trip was visiting Trabi World a “museum” about the Trabant car and getting to do a self-drive Trabi tour on the streets of Berlin. We arrived early in the morning and were shown into the car lot where we could look around the cars. After picking the car we wanted we were given an introduction about how to drive the car. Once in the car the guide led us, through the streets, passing many famous landmarks. The guide is in his own Trabant at the front and we listen to him via the car radio. What an adventure, we drove around for over an hour, we got stopped at a red light and lost the guide. Then as we turned the corner, there he was waiting for us at the next intersection. We finally got a good handle of the car and had a fantastic time. After the tour we were all given a Trabant driving license. As it was Jón Þór´s birthday he received a small green Trabant as a gift.
We visited Checkpoint Charlie, which was one of the checkpoints west of the wall under the care of the United States of America. We enjoyed a VR tour of how Berlin had looked through the years before trying the famous Currywurst.
The architecture in Berlin is unique, as we saw when we did a sunset boat ride on the Spree River. We walked around the Brandenburg Gate and walked up the steps to the cathedral dome. We enjoyed some good food and local beers and were very lucky with the weather.
On the last night we walked around the historic Nikolaiviertel area and had a traditional meal at Zille-Stube. It was hear we learned about the German illustrator, Heinrich Zille.
This was Rachel´s first time in Germany and she was so impressed it will not be long before we come back.
