SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2010


KLMNO DETAILS


GETTING THERE Delta offers one-stop flights from Washington Dulles to Marseille for $723 round-trip.


WHERE TO STAY The NewHotel of Marseille 71 Boulevard Charles Livon 011-33-491-315-315 www.new-hotel.com Pop-art-filled design hotel with great views over the port. Rooms from about $200.


Residence du Vieux Port 18 Quai du Port 011-33-491-919-122 www.hotelmarseille.com Recently renovated hotel on the port. Rooms from about $120.


WHERE TO EAT Le Peron 56 Corniche President Kennedy 011-33-491-521-522 www.restaurant-peron.com Sleek bouillabaisse restaurant with terrace perched on a seaside cliff. Bouillabaisse is about $70.


Pizzaria Etienne 43 Rue de Lorette Old-school family restaurant for pizza Marseille-style and house specialties such as fried squid. Entrees from about $14.50.


La Grotte Calanque de Callelongue 011-33-491-731-779 www.lagrotte-13.com Operatic decor in a family-run restaurant in a rustic fishing port at the city limits. Entrees from


marseille from F4


ofmuseums. We left the cafe and headed


deeper into the neighborhood. As we turned a corner, a server from the cafe ran up behind us, carrying the briefcase Espinasse had forgotten. She handed it to him with a smile and ran back. Espinasse opened the weathered leather case and showed me what was inside among his pa- pers: an envelope containing a 200-euro bill (about $270). He shook his head at the irony


of a forthright act of honesty in Marseille, a town that was once the home of the real-life “French Connection” heroin trade. “The problemwithMarseille is always the image,” Espinasse said. “If there is a bank robbery or a scandal, it is always magnified when it is in Marseille. If it’s in another city, nobody cares.” Down one deserted street, on


the ground floor of a building whose upper-storywindows long ago lost their glass panes, we passed the brick-and-yellow Piz- zaria Etienne, a Marseille land- mark that the Cassaro family has run since 1943. A good shove opened the


wooden door, and we entered a world that seemed to be from another time in Provence. From the yellow walls hung family photos; a wood fire was heating the oven for that afternoon’s pizzas; and kitchen pots were simmering with meaty, spicy odors. Therewas no telephone or credit cardmachine, and when a gust of mistral blew outside, it seemed to shake the framed pictures on the walls. “This is a place that will never


have a Michelin star,” said Es- pinasse. “But it is amonument in Marseille.” (I couldn’t resist returning


that evening for a delicious din- ner of fresh fried squid.What the place lacked in sophistication it made up for in friendliness and color: About half of the 50 cus- tomers seemed to know one another and greeted the staff with cheek-brushing kisses. Ev- eryone seemed to depart only after downing the shot of pear brandy that came with the check.) In the afternoon, Espinasse


and I headed south, past the old port and through the more chic


about $22.


WHAT TO DO Musee des Docks Romains 10 Place Vivaux 011-33-491-912-462 A collection of amphorae and other objects from Roman-era warehouses, boats and docks discovered in Marseille. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (11 a.m. to 6 p.m. June through September). About $3.


Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde Place Colonel Edon 011-33-491-134-080 www.notredamedelagarde.com Historic, richly decorated basilica and crypt on a hilltop offering Marseille’s most sweeping panoramas. Open daily 7 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. Free.


INFORMATION www.marseille-tourisme.com


ASSOCIATED PRESS —R.C. Hitler’s excavated bunker in 1952, seven years after he committed suicide there. The Fuhrerbunker contained 30 reinforced rooms. berlin bunkers from F1


neighborhoods that climb up a hillside towardNotre-Dame de la Garde, the richly decorated basil- ica with a 360-degree panorama that looms over the city, theMed and the four small, rocky, wild Frioul islands off the coast. After taking in the views and


the golden mosaics inside the domed church, we continued southward, passing through sev- eral worlds. The first was the refined world along the cliffside drive known as Corniche Presi- dent Kennedy. We ate bouilla- baisse at the sleek restaurant Le Peron as the sea pounded the rocks below. True bouillabaisse is neither


easy to prepare nor cheap. The combination of several varieties of fish fillet servedwith a brown- ish soup that tastes of the sea, along with large croutons and a rich rouille (a rust-colored sauce of olive oil, garlic and chili pepper with the consistency of mayonnaise), takes time in the preparation — and the eating. And though there are debates about the best and most authen- tic way to serve it (e.g., should the fillets be served on the side in traditional family style, or in the individual soup bowl as in Le Peron’s refined, subtly spiced version?), there is agreement that the real thing costs about $50, ormore, in a restaurant. After lunch, we continued


away from town along the coast, past the strip ofmodern beaches and the bays full of windsurfers. Here we entered the calanques, the dramatic sea inlets framed by limestone cliffs, where there of- ten is no electricity or municipal water. The area, a coastal pre- serve with a few restaurants and cafes and rustic hiking refuges, can be hard to get to, especially in summer when the roads that lead there are often closed be- cause of the danger of wildfires. Standing above the small


beach and the turquoise waters of the calanque known as Sormi- ou, I felt as though I were in a remote, pristine corner of Corsi- ca — though we were, remark- ably, in Marseille’s ninth ar- rondissement.


travel@washpost.com


Camuto is a freelance writer based in France and the author of “Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey.”


the potential to become an off- beat tourist attraction, like the catacombs ofParis, the sewers of Vienna or the cisterns of Istan- bul. Dressed in a black woolen


sweater and a Basque cap pushed back on his head,Arnold drinks coffeewith a dash of rum and smokes hand-rolled ciga- rettes as we chatin a local cafe. He tellsme about thewonders of Berlin’s netherworld: under- ground lakes, canal systems with vaulted ceilings overgrown with stalactites, eerie Nazi mu- rals in a bunker under central Berlin, the remains of aMesser- schmidt factory beneath the old Tempelhof Airport, tunnels built by Hitler’s architect Albert Speer that were intended to run along the north-south axis of the Fuhrer’s Germania project, a megalomaniacal Nazi city plan- ning scheme, which, had it been realized, would have radically transformed the center of Ber- lin. The underground is “a sol- emn space,” Arnold says, “with acoustics like in a church.” According to Arnold, central


Berlin is honeycombed with bunkers, particularly in the area of the former government quar- ter around the Brandenburg Gate. The largest bunker com- plexes were destroyed by the Allies during and after the war. One of the last to be excavated was the so-called “Fuhrer- bunker” on Wilhelmstrasse, where Hitler spent his last days. It has been largely destroyed and sealed off from the public. According to Arnold, some 600 other bunker complexes still exist, though most are flooded and inaccessible. “Berlin doesn’t have many


historical remnants from the Nazi period,” says Arnold. “Up until recently there was talk about doing awaywith other big Nazi-era buildings like the Olympia stadium. Only Tempel- hofAirport and a couple of other buildings give one an insight into the Nazi mind. The under- ground is history’s last refuge, offering clues to Berlin’s dark history.” Some years ago, in the mid-


1990s, developers stumbled upon Joseph Goebbels’s private air raid shelter south of the Brandenburg Gate, beneath what was a stretch of no man’s land between East and West Berlin after the war. Plans to eradicate the bunker proceeded until Arnold and the Berliner Unterwelten started campaign- ing to save the structure and others like it. With the permission of city


officials,Arnold started organiz- ing bunker tours to raise public awareness of their historical val- ue. Seven hundred people showed up for the first tour. “This is Berlin history: The


Wall, the bunkers, that’s what foreigners want to see when they come to Berlin,” says Ar- nold. “Not only that, but it is a valuable place for Germans to reflect on and confront the past. This, after all, was where the Endkampf [the final battle] took place. This is where the people who started the Second World War died. We had to preserve this for the next generation.” The Berlin media referred to


PHILIPPE CONTI/PICTURETANK FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Pizzaria Etienne has no telephone or credit card machine, but it is a Marseille landmark that the Cassaro family has run since 1943.


Arnold’s campaign as “a battle between David and Goliath.” In the end, however, officials were unmoved. “They called us necro- philiacs and betonfanatiker


EZ EE


F5 Digging into Berlin’s Nazi past


PHOTOS COPYRIGHT BERLINER UNTERWELTEN


Dietmar Arnold of Berliner Unterwelten, which offers tours ofNazi lairs. Right, an air raid shelter incorporated into a subway station.


[concrete fanatics],” recalls Ar- nold. “They said we wanted to turn Berlin into a museum. The politicians, they wanted to go into the next century without a skeletoninthe closet.And so the bunker was eradicated.”


But Arnold is pressing on.


Last winter, I joined one of his tours of a bunker complex. We met on a street corner in


Wedding, a predominantly working-class, heavily immi- grant district in the northwest of the city. Itwas cold, and an icy mist hung in the air. Arnold showed up in a leather jacket, carrying a military rucksack. As we walked through a wintry park toward the bunker en- trance, he told me about the adventures that he and his friends had had as children, exploring a bunker near his Wedding home. Ignoring warnings, they dug


under a concrete slab blocking the entrance of a bombed flak tower and stole into the bunker, where they discovered pieces of medical instruments, old elec- trical equipment, uniforms, boots, unexploded ammunition and a bazooka. On the way back home they encountered a police- man, and feeling guilty, handed over the bazooka. The next day, the policeman showed up at Arnold’s apartment to warn his mother to keep her children away from the bunker because of the danger of contracting smallpox or typhus. We reach a small concrete


pillbox on the edge of the park. Arnold produces a key from his coat pocket and opens a heavy metal door. Flashlights ablaze, we descend a flight of concrete stairs into the unknown. Left, right, left, we troop


down a maze of narrow corri- dors. Arnold swings open a steel door, and we step across thresh- olds into low-ceilinged rooms that branch off into more corri- dors and more rooms, most empty, some furnished with cots, rickety tables and boxes. Arnold opens another door


and ushers us into a well-lit corridor at the foot of a broad set of stairs leading down into a spacious low-ceilinged hall. Suddenly a stream of people ascends the steps. “Zuruckblei- ben!” – stand back! – barks a loudspeaker, and I realize that we are standing on a subway platform. The bunker, explains Arnold, was incorporated into the station in 1940 andwas used as an air raid shelter during the bombing of Berlin.


DETAILS


GETTING THERE Delta and United offer one-stop flights fromWashington Dulles to Berlin, with fares starting at about $730 round-trip.


WHERE TO STAY Hotel Estrel Sonnenallee 225 011-49-30-6831-22522 www.estrel.com A four-star hotel in the Neukolln district with four restaurants. Rooms from $170.


WHERE TO EAT Pika Pika Sanderstrasse 10a 011-49-1577-194-4916


Also in Neukolln, serving modern, creative Mediterranean cuisine. Also has on tap a tasty Czech beer from a small northern Bohemian brewery. Meals run between $10 and $18.


Zur Letzten Instanz Waisenstrasse 14-16 011-49-30-242-5528 www.zurletzteninstanz.de In central Berlin, serving German specialities such as Eisbein with sauerkraut in a pre-war ambiance. Meals run around $16.


WHAT DO DO Berlin underground tours Brunnenstrasse 105 (in U8 subway station Gesundbrunnen) 011-49-30-499-105-17 www.berliner-unterwelten.de


And then upwe go, ascending


another flight of stairs, passing through another heavy door into another network of con- crete lairs, through dark rooms with “No smoking” signs and phosphorescent arrows indicat- ing exits and entrances. In one cavernous room with


20-foot ceilings, Arnold draws my attention to some unique cobwebs clinging to a corner. “Fantastic, eh?” he says. The cobwebs, blackened by


decades of accumulated dust, climb up the corner of the wall like little shelves.Arnold and his friends spent months cleaning up this bunker in hopes that they could do somethingwith it, turn it into an exhibition space or a nightclub. But these cob- webs, they decided, simply had to stay. “They are artifacts,” says Arnold. “Sixty years it took for themto get that way.” We reach the end of the tour


Regular English tour offered at least once a day Tuesday through Thursday and twice a day during the rest of the week. No tours on Christmas Eve, Christmas or New Year’s Day. Some tours for booked groups only. 90-minute tours about $12, two-hour tour about $16. Children under 12 free.


Berliner Fernsehturm Panaramastr. 1a 011-49-30-24-75-75-37 This television tower at Alexanderplatz was an East German feat of socialist engineering and remains a Berlin postcard icon. Open daily 10 a.m. to noon. Tickets $14.


INFORMATION www.berlin.de


—R.R.


in a narrow room lined with primitive benches where, more than six decades ago, people huddled while Allied bombs rained down and the city erupt- ed in flames. “Maybe people are ashamed


of our history,” says Arnold. “But we must reflect on it and make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. “In places like this,” he says,


gesturing around us, “you can feel the past. You get a sense of erleichterung — relief — here. You can talk about the past.” I knew what he meant.


Standing in that bunker, I felt that I was catching a rare glimpse of a city untouched by the passing years — a virtual time capsule of World War II Berlin.


travel@washpost.com


Rigney is an American writer living in Berlin.


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