The Bottomleys’ and Gaugers’ Trip to Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic: Friday, October 4, 2013

We started the day with a quick trip back into town in Goslar, primarily to stop in a few shops that had been closed for the holiday yesterday. Then another stop at the tourist office, and then back to the hotel to start out toward Berlin. It became a day of things that we had hoped to do that didn't work out, and of things we hadn't planned to do that ended up being great. So, in the balance, it was a fine day, and we did indeed end up at our hotel in Berlin with no hassle whatever.

The first planned stop was at the Border Museum in Helmstedt, a city that had been very much synonymous with transit from West Germany to Berlin, as it was the border city on the Autobahn that went across East Germany. It was also the jumping off point for the official 'duty trains' operated by the three Allied Powers for military travel to/from Berlin. We had traveled the duty train many times, but the Autobahn had been off limits for us.

Sadly, the museum was open only from 3 to 5 in the afternoon, and we were there at noon. So, Plan B became a walk to the center of town and lunch at the Ratskeller. Lunch was very enjoyable and easily made up for our failing to have the expected Ratskeller experience in Goslar. The Ratskeller was quite lovely, with elaborately painted columns and arches throughout (befitting its location in the basement of city hall with the requirement that it support the upper floors). And, for the first time on this trip, we found Toast on the menu. Not the stuff you would eat for breakfast with jam and butter, but a hot, open faced sandwich, with lots of good things on top. We had been searching menus for this, as it's been a long time favorite. Sue Anne and Aimée both had Toast Hawaii, with ham, pineapple, and cheese, and Bruce had Toast Helmstedt, which featured a generous layer of cooked mushrooms, two grilled pork cutlets, and a layer of cheese, all covered with delicious sauce. Prices were quite reasonable, and we're sure that the fundamental contents of Bruce's toast could have commanded an even higher price had they been offered by themselves as an entrée.

But it was still too early to get to the museum, so we drove a little bit north of town into a rural area to find the Klabautermann Hotel that Bruce had once stayed at during his Army time. (Army people had tended to pronounce it Klub Ottoman or even Klub Autobahn, so it did take a bit of research with a veterans group on Facebook to locate it by its actual original name. Klabautermann turns out to be a mythical spirit that resides in the Baltic Sea. That's still a good distance from here, so it does seem kind of a strange name.) The hotel was indeed still there, now called the Clarabad. It appeared to still be functioning but was locked up tight with no explanatory sign and nobody in evidence.

Bruce's Army adventure had entailed a short walk to the West-East border on a trail behind the hotel. Borders in the rural areas were simple things with barbed wire fences and mine fields in the death strip. Nothing elaborate like the Berlin Wall. So, still in uniform after a day's work in the area, Bruce and his boss stood and looked at this evil barrier that personified the reason we were serving with the Army in Germany. As we stood and looked over at the other side, Bruce spotted a border guard eyeing us through binoculars and pointed it out to his boss. The guard realized that he had been spotted and dropped down into the bushes. Next we heard the unmistakable sound of his chambering a round in his rifle. We figured it was just for show, but nonetheless we concluded that the time had come for us to return to the hotel, in a dignified fashion befitting two officers of the US Army. So after a long stare in the direction of the guard, we slowly turned and started walking back. Then he fired off the round. We had no belief that he was aiming at us, but that it was simply a statement on his part. Later discussions with veterans who had served in the area confirmed that this was pretty much the usual performance that the East German border guards put on to greet visiting members of the Allied forces. Nonetheless, we did indeed enjoy the beer that we quickly acquired upon returning to the hotel.

Returning now to the present, we unfortunately failed to find the right trail to that location, though we did have a pleasant walk in the woods. Back at the hotel we saw a couple of women working in the garden of the house across the street, so we went over there to talk with them and see if they could shed any light on the location of the trail to the border. A very pleasant conversation ensued. The older woman, Frau Schumann, owned the house and operated a gift/antique shop there, and the younger woman was her daughter, now in her late 50s. They had lived there for many years, well before the Wall. The daughter now lives in Berlin but comes back every couple of weeks to help her mother with the garden and other chores. The mother, now in her 80s, gets around on a pair of canes but seems to be otherwise quite with it. They both had many memories of the time that Americans were stationed in the area, and the mother had even rented out her other house to some of them. The daughter is an artist who shares much of Sue Anne's passion for on-location drawing, so we talked art with her and showed her the drawings that Sue Anne had so far created on this trip. As a souvenir of this visit and of our recent visit to the wine country on the Rhein and Mosel, we bought a small plate with a grape motif at their shop.

The women aimed us at the place just past the hotel where the border had crossed and cut off the road, so we drove down there for a look. Sure enough there was a cleared path emerging from the forest on both sides, once known as the death strip. I suppose that with a bit more time we could have walked along it (hoping that the mines had been well cleared) and finally gotten to the place I remembered, but by then it had gotten too late and we still had to get to Berlin. It was also too late to try to take in the museum back in Helmstedt. So we continued on toward Berlin, believing that there was one more museum of the border at the former vehicle checkpoint just across the West-East border at Dreilinden. Well, if there was a museum there they managed to conceal it pretty well. But there were still many structures that certainly looked like they had once been a part of border control.

Plan A, Plan B, new improvised Plan C—that's pretty much been the story of our trip. That's OK. We've encountered new things, and we've learned lots of new information.

The drive to Berlin was quite straightforward. Nothing too inspirational along the way, and no problems with traffic. No Stau! After about five days on the move, tiredness was beginning to set in on all of us. GPS took over once we got in the city and delivered us right to the Hotel Nürnberger Eck, a couple of blocks off of the Kurfürstendamm (Ku-damm), the fabled main street in the heart of what was West Berlin. The hotel keeper Frau Baalmann greeted us, took us to our rooms, and gave us a rigorous indoctrination into the way things ran and to the opportunities available in the neighborhood and elsewhere in the city.

Then we headed out onto the town. This area was familiar territory for Sue Anne and Bruce, until we started trying to seek out old haunts. The building where we had lived in 1972 was still there, but apparently the part where we had lived was no longer operated as a longterm hotel. The sidewalk café was utterly gone and plowed over, and the marvelous warren of little bars and restaurants that had penetrated the block on the ground floor (the Sperlingsgasse) had disappeared. So Plan B became a trip to the supermarket, and supper in our rooms.

Here are the pictures of the day. Tomorrow we take on the city.