Samantha Brown's Places to Love

-I'm traveling through Germany.

First up, a city that peacefully altered the course of world history and was shaped musically by one of the greatest composers who ever lived.

Then, to a small town that happens to have a 300 year reputation in the finer things in life.

There will be purchases.

And finally, on to the most excitingly diverse city in Germany, and center of creativity for all of Europe, I'm in Leipzig, Meissen and Berlin.

I'm Samantha Brown and I've traveled all over this world, and I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.

That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.

"Samantha Brown's Places to Love" is made possible by -- -Oceania Cruises is a proud sponsor of public TV and "Samantha Brown's Places to Love," sailing to more than 600 destinations around the globe, from Europe to Asia and Alaska to the South Pacific, Oceania Cruises offers gourmet dining and curated travel experiences aboard boutique hotel-style ships that carry no more than 1250 guests.

Oceania Cruises -- Your world.

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-Since 1975, we've inspired adults to learn and travel to the United States and in more than 100 countries.

From exploring our national parks to learning about art and culture in Italy, we've introduced adults to places, ideas, and friends.

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We make the world our classroom.

-Leipzig is a very important city in Germany, but also in the world.

It's also an old city.

Here we are on Saint Thomas Square, and there's probably been a house of worship here for well over a thousand years.

-And yet it's a pretty unknown city for Americans.

-It is.

-When you say "Oh, I'm in Leipzig," you kind of get this, "Huh?"

-I get that.

-"What are you doing in Leipzig?"

I mean, you know, and they'll even say, "You're Lutheran."

I'm going, "Excuse me, this is a Lutheran city."

-Right.

-It's Saxony.

We're all Lutherans.

-And Martin Luther actually came to this church.

-He actually was here probably more times than we know.

But here, Saint Thomas Church, had the Augustinian monks, and they said, what we need to make this city into a real city is we need to have a church, a school, and we need to have a choir.

And that set the tone for what this city has become as a city of music.

-But the reason why people are coming here in droves is because of this man.

When we see a person like Johann Sebastian Bach, of course, these figures just loom so large, right?

They're not even real anymore.

And yet, he was an employee of the church.

He had a job and Saint Thomas was his office.

-His job was titled Thomaskantor.

He was responsible for all of the music in this city.

Inside the wall.

-For all the music of the city?

-All the music of the city.

-Did they realize who he was, or was he a nobody at the time?

-Yes.

They knew who he was, but they didn't treat him with any awe, the way we do in our time.

-Sure.

-They did not recognize that something earth changing was going on in this place by what Johann Sebastian Bach was doing through his compositions.

-Robert, it is amazing being in this space, understanding that Bach composed music specifically for it.

He would have known what this room sounded like and how to really reach the people with his music.

How long was he the cantor?

-He was here for 27 years and died in Leipzig, still in office.

-Bach is also buried in the church.

So does that mean that his greatest masterpieces were composed while here?

-Yes.

-Wow.

-He saw himself as called to what he was doing.

It was he who had these talents.

And he knew how he wanted to apply them and what for.

-One thing you may not know about me is my love for porcelain teacups.

I even travel around the world with one.

And Leipzig is close to a 300 year old porcelain manufacturer.

So I took a day trip to Meissen, Germany, where they spilled the tea on how it's made.

-This is our raw kaolin.

-This is it.

-This is it.

-This is how porcelain, this is the baby.

-Be it in a cup or a large animal figurine, it all starts with this, well, at first glance, rather unspectacular whitish, porous mass.

I'm Heidi Deisonem.

I was born and grew up in Meissen, and now I work as a tour guide in the porcelain manufactory.

-Porcelain was once considered white gold, and every king in Europe wanted the recipe.

The king wanted to make money.

-He wanted to make money.

-Okay.

-But he had this special illness.

He called himself porcelain sick.

"I am obsessed with porcelain."

-Oh, he loved porcelain!

-It was also something that had a lot of prestige to it.

All the other European princes and kings had to import porcelain from China.

So how do you transport these fragile goods long distances?

Auguste wanted to have his own porcelain production, and he remembered, "Oh, I have an empty castle in Meissen!"

-And so work began to discover a formula for porcelain.

And after many years of failed attempts, they did it.

In 1710, Meissen became the very first porcelain manufacturer in Europe.

The porcelain is all handmade here and the handicraft, artistry, and mastery has remained largely unchanged for 300 years.

-People do not really respect manual work anymore, but here they see how much time, how much expertise, how much passion goes into the production of a simple, simple mug or a simple plate.

-Then there's the not so simple, like this four foot vase that takes three men continuously pouring three porcelain filled buckets, each weighing 50 pounds.

-And then we have to fill it in one after the other.

Then when you stop, you get a mistake, so you have to fill one after.

-Jonas Beyer is a fourth generation Meissen craftsman.

-When we open up the mold, then it's maybe the problem when it's a start to shaking.

Shaking?

-Yes.

-And then it's possible to fill in, and then we have to start the process anew.

-All over again.

-Yes.

-So when you remove that plaster mold, was there a moment where you're like, "Whew!"

-Often, yes.

[ Samantha laughs ] -Just as impressive as the artisans' work is the history this factory holds.

-We are here at the Mold Library.

It keeps the molds of 300 years of this manufactory.

-Lena has 700,000 molds going all the way back to that of Saint Peter, created in the 1740s, to draw inspiration in designing new pieces.

300 year old company?

[ Chuckles ] No pressure.

-This is a very special place where I come to when it's very when I need a quiet time.

And I found forms that I did not know that existed, and we revive them.

So it inspires me every day.

-Lena is finalizing a new collection called The Original, based on an iconic design known as the Onion Pattern.

Do you have an original of that so we can compare?

-Yes.

This is a plate that comes from the museum that is the painted onion pattern.

-So what is the date of this?

-1733 to 35.

-Oh my gosh!

And you're holding it with one hand?!

[ Both laugh ] The 290 year old pattern is getting a makeover.

-Now we modernize it by mixing it with very fresh and young and, um, and new colors.

We have 10,000 recipes at the color laboratory at this moment.

It's keeping a lot of recipes alive so we can go back and recreate all the colors that have been created in the archive.

But every day we are creating new colors.

-So did I pick up a new porcelain teacup for my collection?

Well, after passing my rigorous standards, this beautiful cup and saucer join me back to Leipzig.

Most everyone knows about the Berlin Wall and when it fell.

But it's less well known that the brave citizens of Leipzig and their peaceful protests were directly responsible for bringing down the wall and the Iron Curtain.

And the fascinating history of East Germany is here at the Leipzig Forum of Contemporary History.

-World War II ends, and Leipzig, where we are now, became part of the Soviet zone of occupation.

The GDR, the German Democratic Republic, was founded with a government, but that government was never independent.

-Ah.

-They always got their orders from Moscow.

I'm Yvonne Walter, I'm Head of Visitor Services here at the Leipzig Forum of Contemporary History.

East Germany became a dictatorship.

There was no independent judicial system, no freedom of speech.

There weren't any free elections.

In fact, this is the first ballot of the first East German elections, and as you can see-- -This is the ballot?

-That's the ballot.

-Okay.

I don't see like a check.

-You can't.

-Okay.

-Because the lineup of representatives was decided in advance.

So people just went to the polling place, folded the whole thing and put it in the ballot box.

So to vote became known as to go folding.

-The museum breaks up the history and decades with key historical moments in each, from Stalin's death and protests being violently put down, to the '60s and '70s, where life gets a little better.

-Life became a bit easier for people and a bit more colorful, but the economy in East Germany always lagged behind the West German economy, and that was quite obvious for people when they went to work every day.

-What does the West get wrong about everyday life in eastern Germany?

-Most people didn't think about dictatorship in everyday life, even though it was always there.

And there was free childcare in East Germany to get the women into the workforce.

90% of all East German women worked in the 1980s.

Another misconception that the Americans had about East Germany was that we were starving and there wasn't anything to buy.

You could buy everything in the shops.

However, there wasn't a big variety, so you had one brand of everything.

When I went to the United States, right after the Wall came down, as an au pair, my host mom took me shopping and she said to me, "Choose your cereal."

-Mm-hm.

-And I stood in an aisle full of, like, 50 different boxes.

And I was just, I was overwhelmed.

It was too much.

There was too much choice.

-In the '80s, Gorbachev ushered in reforms with glasnost and perestroika, but the East German government wanted to keep their strict reign, and this frustrated the people of Leipzig.

-Starting from the early 1980s, there were peace prayers at Saint Nicholas Church, one of the churches here in Leipzig.

And as the years went by, there were more and more people coming to the peace prayers.

And on the 9th of October 1989, there were between 130 and 160,000 people.

After the peace prayers in the streets of Leipzig.

-Then, on November 9th, 1989, a press conference was held.

The exhibit showcases a single piece of paper with scribbled talking points that changed the world.

-When he announced a new travel law that would give East Germans the chance to travel wherever they wanted to.

-Okay.

-And a journalist asked him, "When does this go into effect?"

And there weren't -- he didn't have any information about that.

So he looked into the camera, a bit puzzled, and he said, "Immediately."

And that brought the wall down.

-That's amazing.

-Because immediately people, East Germans went to the checkpoints in Berlin, and a couple of minutes before midnight, the first checkpoint actually opened the barrier.

And that was the end of the Wall.

-This wall coming down, people on top of it.

I mean, the images are just sort of ingrained in our mind.

It's people, in the end -- -Absolutely.

-Saying, "No, this is how we want to live."

And it will always be that symbol.

-Everybody has an idea about what the Cold War was and looked like.

For many people, that is something they can still remember watching on TV.

And there's still a lot of people in Berlin for whom this is part of their own personal history as well.

Like me, like growing up in the West, having to pass a checkpoint every time we wanted to go on a holiday, even if that was technically in the same country.

I'm Sasha Melling.

I'm born and raised in Berlin, lived here almost all my life, and have been a tour guide for the last 15 years.

-How many different sites are there that really represent and honor the Berlin Wall?

-This is by far the biggest and most extensive in terms of documentation and what's to see here.

The official memorial for the Berlin Wall.

Right.

-So if we're looking at this, this is the border of East and West Germany.

And that basically, that construct appeared... -'52 or '53.

-'52, '53.

-At the end of World War II, Germany was occupied by the winners of World War II and Berlin found itself in the middle of the Soviet zone.

The East's standard of living didn't really improve that much.

And on top of that, it was a one-party state with no freedom of press.

So thousands, hundreds of thousands of people ran away, left the country -- doctors, nurses, engineers.

And East Germany really faced a decision -- So either we give up on this idea of socialism and another way for Germany, or we just close down the border.

-And to secure that border, the 70 mile long Wall was constructed with the primary purpose to keep East Germans from escaping to the west.

This memorial sculpture pays tribute to some of the people who tried.

-Gnter Litvin.

24 years old, was the first person to be shot, just like 11 days after the border was closed.

-And so he marks the first person killed because of the Berlin Wall.

How many other people do we see here?

How many people?

-Around 150.

-This is so powerful.

I didn't expect to see so many young faces.

-In the end, the whole system was based on distrust.

Brothers spying on their siblings.

Wives spying on their husbands.

Kids on their parents.

You never knew who you could trust.

I was 15 when the Wall came down, so I lived like the majority of my forming years with an open border.

-And were you on the East side?

-I was in the West.

-So I guess the question always is for a visitor coming to Berlin, wherever I am, I want to ask, am I on the west side or the east side?

Is that still a prevalent question today within Berlin?

-For tourists it is, but people under 30, they don't even care.

-Taking a bicycle tour is a great way to enjoy Berlin.

There aren't as many cars as in most major cities, and the 75 degree sunny day doesn't hurt either.

-And there it is!

[ Samantha laughs ] Our symbol of unity.

-Wow!

You didn't tell me that we were coming upon the Brandenburg Gate.

Oh my gosh.

So the Brandenburg Gate is absolutely a center of the universe.

You really feel that energy.

Everyone wants to come here.

For me, this is the place where the Berlin Wall came down, because I vividly remember sitting at home with my mom, watching TV.

She just turns around and pulls out a 20 from her purse and said "Go.

You will regret it for the rest of your life if you stay at home tonight."

So when we arrived, there were already a couple thousand people dancing and singing Beatles songs on top of the wall.

-Okay.

-And just the next day, they started taking out pieces of it and creating an open border.

For me, even after all these years, it still feels special to be able to just cycle through it.

-One thing I love about Berlin is that not everything is on the street, right?

There are these courtyards, and you access them from the main streets.

But then these buildings just sort of open up and they create little alleyways almost, that you just sort of wander and take in this almost hidden part of the city.

And that is where we find the Otto Weidt Museum.

-Otto Weidt tried to help blind and deaf Jews here in this workshop.

And he had an agreement with the Wiemar so that his workshop was important for the war.

His idea was to save as many disabled Jews as possible.

-Small brushes to large brooms were made here in this small factory, now a museum.

A large photo of the workers hangs over the machines they would have worked at.

The Gestapo know they're here.

-Mm-hm.

-How does Otto Weidt protect them?

Why aren't they taken and deported or brought to concentration camps?

-The Gestapo want to deport them, but Otto Weidt could save them with bribing the Gestapo.

-Oh, okay.

-The Helper's Room highlights the fact that for every one person hidden, there would need to be 5 to 10 people helping.

-One person was organizing or making false identity cards, another person find new hiding places, if a person needed to change their hiding place.

We have a doctor, he came to the hiding places when someone was ill.

In the beginning of 1943, he needed to change the tactic because they don't want to have Jewish forced labors anymore, they want to deport them to the concentration and extermination camps.

-Mm-hm.

-Now he tried to find hiding places for the people, and one of the hiding places was here in the workshop.

Open the closet -- -Oh, wow.

-And then we have a small room, and one family with four members lived in this room for around nine months.

But this hiding places was betrayed and the people were arrested and the whole family was murdered in Auschwitz.

After the war, he founded a house for children, for Jewish children who lose their families.

So he was still a helper after the war.

And then two years after the war, he died.

-Does the museum know how many people he helped save?

-We don't know all the names of all the workers, but we are still researching for them.

-The Otto Weidt Museum is free and has a tactile path for the vision impaired.

It's where an unknown story of tragedy, empathy, and bravery are told in six small rooms.

[ Rhythmic thumping ] -Brushes are very important all the day.

You use brushes for cleaning your shoes, for cleaning your room, to put makeup on you.

-I've come to the shop of DIM or Die Inklusive Manufaktur.

All of their products are handmade here in the same building, and feature the works of 30 different workshops for furniture making, ceramics, paper, and yes, brushes.

The name of the workshop is Die Inklusive Manufaktur.

-That's right.

-So what does inclusivity mean?

-People with disabilities and people without disabilities work together and build these beautiful things that we make.

-This workshop has a very long, wonderful history here in Berlin.

-That's right.

-When was it founded?

-It was founded in the year 1864 as a school.

-Okay.

-And was changed into a spot for, for blind people to live and work in 1902.

-100 different types of brushes are made here by 60 employees.

Sabrine has been here for 12 years.

What is she making right now?

Do you know what type of brush?

-Yeah, that's a duster.

-It's a duster, okay.

-Yeah, made of goat hair.

She's done the work to put the goat hair in, and now she cut it in the right form.

She has to hear because the cut makes sound.

-Tiny little hairs.

And she is literally shaping that brush so that it looks like no hair is out of place.

-That's right.

-So they are putting out work that is of a very high level.

-That's right.

Yeah.

-DIM is a manufacturer known for inclusivity and quality for over 160 years.

Just around the corner, I am here to right a wrong.

Most people that go to Berlin think that their most famous street food is currywurst.

But if you ask a Berliner, they would say you have to have a Dner kebab.

Kreuzberg is the most famous Turkish neighborhood here, and this is one of the best places for kebabs in the city.

Slices of seasoned meat and pita loaded with vegetables and sauce.

What's not to love?

- Sauce, chili, garlic.

-Yes!

[ Laughs ] Berlin now has a thriving upscale culinary scene, but no European city does mouthwatering fast food better than Berlin.

[ Speaking German] A chai tea?

Alright.

Danke schn.

-Thank you.

-Berlin is a city where you need to earn to love it.

You've got to work a little bit for it.

It doesn't, like open itself up instantly and releases all your secrets.

So you gotta -- you gotta hustle a little bit for it.

-I've already seen some challenges.

I'm going to have to create a bib-like protection because I'm known as a messy eater.

-I love living in Leipzig.

It's a great city.

It's very green, it's full of culture.

And it's also not far away from Berlin or even Munich is just a train ride away.

-I've got this.

-Meissen is a wine growing region.

We have a beautiful medieval town, as well.

We have the river here, and of course, we have the porcelain manufactory.

-Mm!

Das Wunderbar!

When a city vibrates with energy, when traditions are mastered, but continually grow, when what was unknown to you becomes known -- that is when we share a love of travel.

And that's why Leipzig, Meissen, and Berlin, Germany are all places to love.

For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.

"Samantha Brown's Places to Love" was made possible by -- -Oceania Cruises is a proud sponsor of public TV and "Samantha Brown's Places to Love."

Sailing to more than 600 destinations around the globe, from Europe to Asia and Alaska to the South Pacific, Oceania Cruises offers gourmet dining and curated travel experiences aboard boutique, hotel-style ships that carry no more than 1250 guests.

Oceania Cruises -- Your world.

Your way.

-Since 1975, we've inspired adults to learn and travel to the United States and in more than 100 countries.

From exploring our national parks to learning about art and culture in Italy, we've introduced adults to places, ideas, and friends.

We are Road Scholar.

We make the world our classroom.