Today is Shopping Day! We went to KaDeWe anticipating spending the whole day browsing the 7 floors of department store goodness. Instead… well, let me back up.
We slept in and weren’t in a hurry to get out of the room since we didn’t have any timed plans for the day. We went to our regular früstuck place. We had lattes, I had müseli and an apple danish type sweet and Mom had a half of a Bröetchen with sautéed veggies and a sunny side up egg on it. It was cold, but yummy. Then we took the U-bahn further than we had yet and got off in the oldest U-bahn station in Berlin. Rick Steves says to look around at the old time ads on the walls. We did, I took pics and will post on Facebook when I get home. They were fun!
We emerged from under ground and bang! There was KaDeWe smack in front of us! It’s sometimes a crap shoot if we’ll come out on the right side or not. The signs down below give directions for which street is which direction, but we don’t always know what street we want, but we do know what sight we want to see, so there’s that. We guessed right this time! The store is an imposing size being all one store and not a mixed use building. We entered, eager with anticipation of what treasures awaited us.
We were immediately greeted with a Macy’s type 1st floor make-up section with high end jewelry behind it, I mean Rolex, Tiffany, Bulgari and the like as well as high end Chanel bags, Prada and similar brands. They all had stanchions ropes across the entry to their stores and I can only imagine you had to go through a financial application in order to enter. Mom tried to take a picture of the front of Tiffany for Premilla and got scolded and told Nicht photographs! by the guard. Yikes! Okee dokee, sir. I promise we’re not staking out the place. We went up to the 1st floor (remember our 1st floor is their Ground Floor) and found Men’s wear. The “Sale” rack had t-shirts for 70 Euro, after mark down! Yikes! Moving on… Up to the 2nd floor. Women’s wear. High end clothing. Jimmy Choo shoes for $895. Next! Another floor of Woman’s wear, another floor of high end items. There was nothing we could afford. We were getting disappointed. We moved to the 4th floor and it was Housewares. Nothing here we can buy cuz we can’t take it home, if we could afford it.
The 5th floor was books, stationary, Mont Blanc pens and supposedly Souvenirs. We wandered and wandered and couldn’t find any so we had to ask. Well darned if this place doesn’t have all sorts of nooks and crannies behind walls we didn’t see. Finally found souvenirs. Yay for stuff we could afford. All 3 shelves of it. What??? Seriously, very little to choose from. We managed to find a couple of key chains, and some AmpleMann stuff (Google it, trust me, very cute). Finally we headed to the 6th floor, Food! Lots of individual food stalls offering everything from sandwiches to champagne (Veuve Cliquot, thankyouverymuch). Tall tables were scattered to sit and enjoy your feast. There were a couple of full on butchers, raw meat on display and all, as well as ice cream, chocolate (LOTS of different sellers of individual truffle size bites up to gourmet full bars.) We couldn’t decide on a stall to have lunch at when Mom suggested we look at the restaurant on the top (7th) floor. It’s a cafeteria style place that was high end. We wandered through and it all looked so good! We decided to stay here, share a Rinderrouladen (thin slices of beef with bacon and a pickle rolled inside, served with Rotkohl (German cooked red cabbage) and roasted potatoes. I went to the salad bar and got a serving of cucumber salad. We each chose a drink then we went to find a seat by the window for spectacular views of the city. Well, we didn’t get right next to the window but with the large windows and windows on top, we had a fabulous lunch!
We went back to the 6th floor and I bought some chocolate, along with a small piece I could eat right away. We asked about touristy items and were directed out to the street to the “I Love Berlin” type stores. Off we went, found a few shops, browsed made some purchases then wondered how we’d spend the rest of the day, as we had intended to be at KaDeWe all day. We decided to walk the couple of blocks to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. This is a church that was heavily bombed during WWII, and all that remains now is the spire. It’s one of the iconic sights in Berlin. I encourage you to Google it. The Germans decided not to demolish the spire, but to preserve it as a visible reminder of the destruction of war. There are reminders everywhere in Berlin of the cost of war. Lest We Forget is a typical phrase here.
We went into the Memorial portion of the church and viewed a photo display and explanation of what the church looked like before and after the war and the reasons for preserving it. We went into the new church on the same grounds and sat and saw the amazingly beautiful stained glass that surrounds the congregation on all 8 sides. It’s not like our stained glass in churches at home. No depictions of Christ or Disciples or the Virgin Mary. Pictures soon. Mom saw a poster outside about Organ Vespers tonight at 6 pm. We decided to attend and then hop Bus #100 and ricky tick over to The Dome for the 8 pm Choral Concert we learned about on our 1st day in Berlin.
We went outside and solemnly paid our respects at the Memorial to the 12 people killed in the terrorist attack at the Christmas Market just outside the church on December 19, 2016. We did a little more wandering in and out of tourist shops and decided to sit down in a cafe and have a cool drink while we waited for the 6 pm Organ Vespers. Mom had a bottled peach tea and I had a blood orange Orangina.
The Organ Vespers was magnificent! So moving. I saw Mom listening with her eyes closed most of the time. The sound was hypnotic. We quickly left and found the bus to go to The Dome. We slid into our seats after a quick bio break (a 50 cent donation for the church) just as announcements introducing the choral group and instrumentalists from Zurich was starting. They sang a Bach Contata and a Bach Mass. I thought it odd that they came all this way to sing a 45 min. concert. Mom said she thinks they’ll be doing other things in town to keep busy. She thought the choristers sounded “mushy” and that the acoustics were not designed for singing. We enjoyed the music, nonetheless.
It was now 9 pm and we navigated the bus to the U-bahn in the fading light and got back to our hotel by 10 pm and fell into bed about 11 pm. Tomorrow will be an early day as we need to get up, showered, frühstuck’d and *back* to The Dome for the 10 am service!
My journey today was one of disappointment with some retail therapy and music and more music to fill my soul.
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