The past few days we have been a bit busier. On Tuesday, we went to the Computerspielen Museum just for fun. It has computer and video games from throughout the ages, including some you might remember if you are older, like Galaga, Pacman, and Pong. And some more recent games, including my favorite, Zelda.

They also had more unusual computer games, like the Pain Station, which is crazy. I wish we’d gotten a picture of the game itself. Basically you place your hands on these metal plates and they shock you when you lose. Anyway, here’s the warning on it.

The next day, Wednesday, we went to Berlin Unterwelten which is a tour of the bunkers underneath the city that were used to protect the German people during air raids. All the stuff underground is protected by copyright so we couldn’t take any pictures. I loved this tour and I think everyone who comes to Berlin should do it.

Some things we learned. Forgive me if it is boring:

-There were only bunkers for 20% of the people who lived in Berlin. Once the air raid sirens went off, the people had 15 minutes, regardless of where they were or what they were doing, to make it to a shelter or the doors would shut and they’d have to find shelter elsewhere. Of course, this put women and children at a distinct disadvantage because children are very slow and the women were always the ones taking care of them. So they had a special shelter for women and children, but you could only go there if you had more than three children.

-There were special awards for women who gave birth to a lot of children in Germany. Once you got to 4 children, you started being awarded “crosses” that conferred privileges, like preferential food shopping. I can’t remember exactly, but at a certain point, Hitler became the last child’s godfather.

-They had candles in the air raid shelters to monitor oxygen levels because the ventilation was so bad. There would be three candles placed at three different levels in the shelter. As the oxygen turned to carbon dioxide, the lowest candle would go out and everyone would have to make sure their children were off the floor on on their laps. Then the next candle would go out and the children would be put on the shoulders of their mothers and fathers; finally the highest candle would go out and everyone would have to evacuate, even if the raid were still going on.

-Lastly, after the war was over, there was a really harsh winter in Germany and many people died, mostly women and children, since so many men had died in the war. To stave off the cold, almost all the trees in Berlin were cut down, so most of the trees here are 70 years old or younger. It got so bad that there was a “Forest Police” who were employed to guard the remaining trees.

On Thursday night we, along with all the elderly Berliners, went to the Zeiss-GroßPlanetarium near our apartment for a Schubert / Star-Gazing Concert in their theater. It was pretty fun and definitely made me wish that I could see the full complement of stars nightly.  Too much light pollution. The whole presentation was in German and punctuated by long-ish lectures, so it was hard for us to understand, but there were charts and diagrams and arrows that helped.

Here is the planetarium at night. People here are very supportive of LGBTQ rights.

Finally an ode to our apartment. We are staying with Fabian and he has this incredibly beautiful place. His company just built Netflix’s LA lobby, so he’s a pretty high level designer, I think. He calls himself a carpenter, but I suspect he’s being a bit modest.

We have a nice monumental communist statue of Ernest Thällman near our apartment in a park. He ran against Hitler in 1932. He was arrested, along with all the other communists, the same year after the Reichstag burned down. Although no one really knows who started the fire, Hitler used it as an opportunity to sweep the board of his opponents. I suspect his opposition to Hitler is one of the reasons his monument remains. There aren’t too many communist leader statues around anymore in east Berlin.

Garett wanted me to include a few pictures of Alexanderplatz where we love to go to eat and hang out. It’s got a lot of different types of food and is quite lively. There’s a fair there right now.