Canal Zones : Sampling Scenery, Grand Cuisine and History on Three European Waterways : Berlin’s River Spree

BERLIN —  The River Spree, stretching into the former East Berlin from the Jannowitz bridge to Altes Rathaus (the Old City Hall) and Museum Island beyond, cuts northwest to southeast through the heart of the city. Here, contained within about a square mile, is the Berlin of myth and reality.

We are cruising on a boat called the Spree Lady--midpoint in the water tour of reunited Berlin, a city with more bridges than Venice. Its 62 lakes and 127 canals and waterways are its arteries, used over the centuries by kings and coal barges and still major industrial thoroughfares.

Berlin was built in the 12th Century in the midst of low-lying land crisscrossed by streams and rivers. Successive sovereigns dug canals to rescue the land and created a modern city that richly deserves its reputation as a Teutonic Venice.

Mine was a three-hour journey into politics and history, just one of dozens of boat trips that explore the waters in and around Berlin.

The water tours are a hassle-free way to get an overview of the city, its streets now choked with traffic as visitors pour in from all over Europe, east and west.

Our voyage last summer had begun at the Jannowitz bridge, home of the White Fleet and the Stern und Kreisschiffahrt tours that cruise the city’s rivers and canals during the summer months.

We had floated past that monument to imperial architecture, the Reichstag, the former seat of parliament. Even more than the famed Brandenburg Gate nearby, the Reichstag is a symbol of German unity. It was built to house the first all-German legislature, and the first republic was proclaimed from its windows on Nov. 9, 1918--a date pregnant with significance in German history, since it was also on that day in 1938 that Nazi brownshirts surged into the streets in the infamous Kristallnacht , destroying Jewish homes and businesses throughout Germany. In 1989, it was the day the wall opened up and hundreds of thousands of East Germans had their first taste of the fabled west.

Across the river, the crushing remnants of the infamous wall are slowly falling to the hammers of souvenir hunters, its original graffiti replaced by newer versions.

“Reunification is a joke--the victors are marching in,” the walls speak.

“Karl is dead. Long live Groucho!!”

“Mike Siriani was here.”

“Save your East Marks. The GDR will rise again!!!”

On the western side of the canal, in a small garden, a line of white crosses commemorates those who were shot down trying to swim to freedom, which eventually came last Oct. 3.

The boat passes under the Muhlendarn bridge into the core of classic Berlin. The Molkenmarkt, medieval milk market, is on the right. It was here that Berlin’s first settlement was established in the 11th Century across from its sister city of Cologne. Here also is the Nikolaikirche, Berlin’s oldest church, begun in the 11th Century.

For a while monuments come thick and fast. The Red Rathaus, so named both because of its red brick and the political color of its councils, looms on the right, once again the city hall of the reunited metropolis.

Immediately on the left is the glittering glass-and-metal Palace of the Republic, former parliament building of the now defunct German Democratic Republic. It was built on the site of the former royal palace, blown up after World War II by the Communist regime in an act of spite almost immediately regretted. East Berliners still refer to the modern “palace” as the “Ballast of the Republic.”

The Spree Lady passes under the Marx-Engels bridge decorated with Karl Friedrich von Schinkel’s stunning neoclassical sculptures. On the left the famed Unter den Linden boulevard is flanked by rows of historic buildings: the Arsenal, home of another city museum; the tomb of the unknown soldier; a former royal palace; the Opera House, and the renowned Humboldt University.

On the left in the distance, the Brandenberg Gate marks the old border between East and West. As you approach its victory arches, the massive, now anachronistic bulk of the Soviet Embassy--a huge marble head of Lenin dominating its courtyard--squats on the tree-lined boulevard. From this building, occupying most of a city block, Soviet officials dominated East German regimes for 45 years.

We pass under the bridge Karl Liebknechtstrasse. Liebknecht, for whom the bridge is named, is part of one of the more somber stories of Berlin’s waterways. He and fellow anti-Nazi Rosa Luxembourg were dragged from their quarters on Jan. 15, 1919, by officers of marauding military, executed and dumped into the Landwehr canal.

The former East Berlin’s immense television tower, topped by its bulbous restaurant, soars above. On clear days, the sun imprints a golden cross on its glass. For years, West Berliners called this optical illusion “The Pope’s Revenge.”

But the Spree Lady moves on, leaving behind history and taking up art. It passes the immense bulk of Museum Island, home to the Pergamon, Academy of Arts, Old Museum and National Gallery museums. Concentrated among them are some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, the Renaissance and the modern era.

The Spree Lady passes under what is perhaps Berlin’s most famous street, the mythic Friedrichstrasse, the most important artery formerly linking East and West Germany at Checkpoint Charlie. Immediately on the right is the Berliner Ensemble, a theater specializing in the works of Berthold Brecht. On the corner is a famous East Berlin watering hole, once a favorite of visiting journalists, the Ganvmed. It’s an old-fashioned place, informal despite the dinner-jacket clad waiters, with an aging unused piano and a decor reminiscent of a 1920s Berlin bordello.

The tour continues past the Charlottenburg Palace, summer residence of Prussian kings throughout most of the 18th and 19th centuries. Across from the palace is the intimate Egyptian Museum, which houses, among other rare treasures, the bust of Queen Nefertiti. Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740-1786, and his successors often traveled by barge along this waterway from Charlottenburg (in suburban Berlin, site of the 17th-Century palace of Queen Sophia Charlotte, wife of Frederick I of Prussia) to the jewel-like palace of Sans Souci, built by Frederick in the suburb of Potsdam.

Frederick and his predecessors contributed greatly to Berlin’s special irreverent flavor by welcoming some 6,000 French Huguenots who fled from France after the revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed them religious tolerance. Today, French esprit and names still form an undercurrent in this crossroads to Eastern Europe.

But this is just one of many tours. History has many directions--and canal trips--for travelers to Berlin.

With the unification of the city and merger of Berlin’s major east and west canal fleets, tour possibilities have proliferated. A leisurely four-hour trip begins at the Stubenrauchbrucke in the Templhof section (just south of city center) and moves through narrow tree-lined canals to the broad reaches of the Muggelsee--a lake northeast of the city center. It is a revealing look into the back yards of the former German Democratic Republic, ranging from the opulent villas of the Communist elite to the small wooden sheds and gardens of the working classes.

Of note, the tour passes under the Oberbaumbrucke, a bridge made famous by the John le Carre novel and film, “Smiley’s People.” Karla, Le Carre’s fictional Soviet KGB chief and Smiley’s longtime opponent, walked across it in the last pages of the book to be met by British spy Smiley, as always ambivalent in both victory and defeat.

On another journey, the Wannsee boat tour, departing from Wannsee harbor across the street from the S-Bahn station of the same name (west of the city center) passes under the infamous Glienicke Bridge, where Anatole Scharansky crossed to freedom in 1986 and the American U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers was exchanged for legendary Soviet agent Rudolf Abel in 1962.

Once a menacing symbol of the city’s forced division, the bridge was closed to all traffic except diplomats and members of the U.S. Military Mission in East Germany, but is now the main road to the suburb of Potsdam.

On still another tour, boats leave at regular intervals for Potsdam and the surrounding lakes. A five-hour historical tour is the centerpiece of the program. Two-hour trips circle the inner city.

Potsdam’s historic center stands in stark contrast to the cereal box construction of mass housing built later but already stained and decaying. Casting a spell over it all is the deserted and unfinished concrete shell of a new cultural center, a forlorn monument to the previous regime’s inadequacy.

In many ways, the former East Germany is suspended in time. Bordering the canals, houses, gardens and simple restaurants retain the seedy charm and flavor of the 1920s and ‘30s. Pre-war wooden sailboats, mahogany immaculately maintained, exist side by side with the shoddy fiberglass and plastic newer models.

In addition to the Potsdam trips there are daylong tours through the province of Brandenburg and a four-day trip to Hamburg for the truly adventurous.

The piece de resistance of a Potsdam visit is lunch or dinner at Cecilienhof, the country residence built by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German monarch, for Crown Prince Wilhelm of Hohenzollern, who lived there until March of 1945. Here in the summer of 1945, Truman, Churchill and Stalin met to decide the fate of Europe. The conference was disrupted by Churchill’s defeat in a British election and Clement Atlee took his place at the conference table in the final days. Today the lodge is a museum dedicated to this famous meeting.

A walk through the gardens leads down to the water’s edge, where swans swim gracefully along the banks and people on the White Fleet tour boats wave to those on the shore. East and West Germans, still distinguishable by their clothing, now mingle on the quiet pathways as they do in the crowded city streets.

And underneath it all, one senses the truth of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s observation that, “There live here, and this I notice in everything, bold people, such that one does not get far by being delicate. One must be sharp-tongued and sometimes a little coarse to keep one’s head above the water.”

GUIDEBOOK

Berlin’s Canal Rides

Getting there: Fly nonstop from Los Angeles to Frankfurt, then on to Berlin via Lufthansa, for about $1,128 round trip. Or on KLM from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, then to Berlin, for $1,128. On United and British Airways from Los Angeles to London then to Berlin; $1,128 on United and $1,459 on British Air.

Canal and river tours: Weisse Flotte (White Fleet) and Stern und Kresschiffahrt tours: call locally 810-004-0.

From Jannowiztbrucke to Schlossbrucke and return: approximately three hours. Five trips daily. About $10.

From Stuberauchbrucke (Templehof) and return: tour covers tree-lined canals and lakes of semi-rural Berlin suburbs. Leaves at 9 and 11 a.m. and returns from Marienlust at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m., arriving at departure point at 6 and 8 p.m. About $10.

From Wannsee to Potsdam and return: tour covers historic sites in and around Potsdam and Wannsee. Leaves Wannsee hourly from 9 a.m.-5:15 p.m. 2 1/2 hours. About $7.

From Wannsee: two-hour trip through the lake area. Boats depart at noon, 1 p.m. and 2:45. About $10.

From Wannsee: extended five-hour trip through the Havel lakes. Leaves Wannsee at 10 a.m., noon and 1:45 p.m.

From Potsdam: a 2 1/2-hour tour of Potsdam leaving from the Lange Brucke harbor at 9:15 a.m., 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. About $3.

From Potsdam: Historic tour of Potsdam and surrounding area. Includes Glienickebrucke and Pfaueninsul (Peacock Island). Leaves Potsdam at 9 a.m. and returns at 2 p.m. About $10.

From Potsdam: 14-hour day trip from Potsdam through the Mark Brandenburg to Neuruppin. Return by bus. Lunch and dinner included. About $55. Reservations necessary.

Potsdam-Hamburg: Four-day trip, all meals included. About $300. Reservations necessary.

For more information: Contact the German National Tourist Office, 444 S. Flower St., Suite 2230, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 628-7332.

Times and prices subject to change.