BERLIN

05 MARCH - 07 MARCH

Now that I am recovered (mostly) from my weekend trip to Berlin, I guess it’s time to pass it on to you guys!

We set out Friday morning, taking a bus to Stansted, one of London’s smaller airports about an hour and a half away from the city’s center. Once we were in Berlin (at this point, late afternoon), we faced a bit of a language barrier as we tried to buy tickets for the public transportation (the only ones we bought all weekend; honor systems – yes please!) only to find out we couldn’t find our stop on the map because it had changed names! Clearly. We got off at Zinnowitzer Strabe/Naturkundemuseum (Germans are not ones for brevity) and found our hostel behind creepy gates and massive doors surely heavy enough to block out the sounds of torture.

After climbing stairwells strewn with chains and lit only by the dusk coming through small windows, we figured out how it all worked, checked in, and were feeling mostly comfortable with the digs, until we turned the key into room 408, the Beetle room, and found this:

There was a reason it was called the Beetle room. The reason was huge and metal and on our ceiling. What? I love Berlin. We went across the street to a little café where we got bockwurst and dinner rolls for €1 (no, seriously, I love Berlin) and then next door for bottles of wine, which we took back to the hostel common room, where we found flyers for the 666 Anti-Pub Crawl. “An alternative Berlin night tour” that visits “a goth horror rock bar; an upside down bar; fluffy pink shagpile carpet; what about a rave or old school hip hop in a bombed out train depot?; a ping pong bar” for “10 euros, includes club entry, shots at select bars, and a massage from me?” Uh, yeah, duh, we’re there.

We got the goth horror rock bar, owned by metal band Rammstein (which I didn’t even know was possible but I’m down). Obviously a totally new scene for yours truly, but I still managed to take over the dance floor, probably much to the dismay of the crowd standing and nodding their heads apathetically. I can nod my head when I’m fallin’ asleep in class; it was time to party.

We also got the ping pong bar, where we paid a deposit for a paddle then joined the rotating crowd that operated on a knockout-basis; a few of our crew were holding it down for awhile! Berlin: we came, we ponged, we conquered.

The next morning, we headed out with our new hostel friend from New Zealand to the guided tour, that helpfully left directly from our hostel; we needed all the help we could get, after not nearly enough hours of sleep. And, ze tour!  

Brandenburg Tor (this is where I act pretentious and fake fluency in German), aka Brandenburg Gate. The expert translating is really my pleasure. When Prussia was defeated in 1806, Napoleon snagged the structure on top (called a “quadriga”) and took it with him to Paris. It came back a few years later and was plopped back on the top, before the Gate then became a symbol of Nazi Germany. It’s unfathomable to me how much change Germany has seen in such a short amount of time. Because even being the ignorant American that I am, with my propensity to believe the world hardly existed before 1776, I can still recognize that it’s insane how much has happened in the past 200 years.

Also in Pariser Platz (which was largely destroyed in World War 2 and has since been rebuilt), is Hotel Adlon, where dignitaries and the general fancy-pants population stay when they come to Berlin. And, where some of these fancy-pants people do things like this:

Siegessäule. I took this picture through Brandenburg Gate; on either side of the street is Tiergarten, which according to Google Images is (believably) gorgeous, but not when Berlin is having a rougher winter than usual. There was gravel all over the sidewalks because that was their method for dealing with the slippery ice, which works I guess but do they not have salt in Germany? Anyway, this statue started (sans gold crap – GOOD CALL GERMANY) as a monument to victories in the Prussian-Danish War, but then they kept winning and so they figured the only way to communicate that was by… gilding. I swear, Europe. You kill me. This whole statch actually started out in front of Reichstag (stay tuned) but was moved to this location in the late 1930’s, during the “Redesign of the Third Reich”. Our tour guide told us a slightly different history, that it was moved here for Hitler’s birthday party, and I like that story slightly more, so Brian from Ireland, I’m taking your word.

Reichstag. Built only in the late 19^th century (baby!), this is the seat of German federal government. An unexplained fire in this building in 1933 was the reasoning Adolf Hitler, at that point a small character, gave for needing to remove certain members of government that were, duh, unfit for ruling entire countries. This was the point where I first got a sense of, Oh my God, it all started here. I’ve studied it and been fascinated by it all for longer than I can remember, but it’s never seemed real. He walked on these streets, I can see the building where he planned and organized and made decisions and changed the history of the world.

The stones in the road demarcate the Berlin Wall. Again, unfathomable that only 20 years ago there was a nearly impenetrable wall right in that spot, and now delivery trucks drive over it with no second thought. And the presentation is so nonchalant: “Yeah it’s here but there’s a road now.” I guess it’s incredible to see people, 20 years later, living life almost as if it had never happened – it gives me hope for the expediency with which we can institute HUGE change if we work for it – but at the same time, I wonder if it shouldn’t be memorialized more. Perhaps not to keep history from repeating itself (is that going too far?), but just to keep everyone aware of where we’ve come from.

Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, or The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Made up of 1,998 stone pillars on an undulating floor, walking through this is an experience. You sink down unexpectedly, the grey stones rising above you all of a sudden, intimidating and a little claustrophobia (but it’s orderly enough to keep from being overwhelming in that sense). The artist never gave a story for the piece, wanting to leave it up to the audience, so here are my thoughts: more than having any sort of “this is what it must have felt like” experience, I was more taken by its size. It’s deceptively massive, once you’re in amongst all the rows, and the hills make it deceptively tall as well in spots. Later in the afternoon, we went to the museum that’s underground, below the structure itself, and there is one room in which the stones seem to extend down into the museum. I’m sure they’re not the same ones from above, but it gives an illusion of there being more than meets the eye, of it being so much bigger than you could ever imagine. Which is, tragically, not unlike the Holocaust. The museum put things in human terms, focused on putting faces onto the victims, with heartbreaking excerpts of letters sent out of camps, diary entries written on the packed trains headed for camps, even a goodbye letter from a 12-year-old. And this was just three people. Three, out of six million. But then, I began to think about the other side: how did so many people find the evil in them to carry out these wretched, unbelievable crimes?

This picture was taken while I stood on the ground 60metres above the infamous bunker, where Hitler spent a huge part of his time while his country was in the midst of a brutal war, where he later married Eva  Braun (how nutters must she have been) and then they killed themselves a day later. Unfortunately (maybe?), the bunker has been shut, for fear of neo-Nazi interest in the sight as almost a place of worship. The buildings themselves are where the upper crust of Nazi power would have lived, since the buildings are “beautiful” examples of classic Nazi architecture. (Personally, I think they looked like projects. And I owe the Nazis nothing so I don’t apologize for that statement.)

Bundesministerium der Finanzen, the Federal Ministry of Finance. Fitting, no, that the only remaining building that was used by the Nazi government now houses the country’s Finance department? As if finance needed any worse of a rap. I love my major! The building itself was incredible though; huge columns and long windows were intended to make the individual feel small in the presence of government, and it was effective, even for me standing there 75 years later with no direct contact with any of the Nazi rule, which I’m sure was not the most sunshine-and-butterflies of environments.

Money shot! It’s a little like Stonehenge in the underwhelming department, I can’t lie. Like so many of the other things we saw, it totally snuck up on us, no fanfare to be had; this section is pretty much behind some nondescript building tucked away. I guess part of my bias comes from living in a place like London, where we have Horse Guards that serve literally no purpose except for tourist snapshots, cheeky Brits, but it seemed so odd that all these places are not really all that hyped up. Someone brought up the point, though, that so many of these places are tied into pretty bad things that have happened in history (communism: great in theory, awfully executed) so it makes sense that they wouldn’t be into too much glorification.

So I talk about how they don’t hype stuff up and make you think tourists don’t exist and then I show you this picture of Checkpoint Charlie with people galore and guards (blocked by the people galore) that obviously aren’t going to actually turn you away from crossing over. Poetic license, yo.

Now, in Gendarmenmarkt, what is said to be the most beautiful square in Europe. I haven’t seen but a few (though London does love their squares), but I could perhaps get behind that distinction. The building on the left is the Konzerthaus (sound it out; I love German, seriously) and the left is the Französischer Dom, or the French Cathedral.

Not to be outdone by any Frenchies, the Germans threw up a Deutscher Dom, that looks pretty much exactly the same. You show ‘em, Germany. (I had to use a Google image because I was dumb and didn’t get a picture of the cathedral face-off – poo!)

And so begins the Cathedral Fandango, I guess. A few steps along, in Bebelplatz, this is St. Hedwigs, but not a place of worship for you Harry Potter fans out there – unless you also happen to be Roman Catholic. Also in Bebelplatz is the Berlin Opera House, and Humboldt University, the site of a Nazi book burning.

Berliner Dom. So huge. Apparently it’s a controversial building, because it doesn’t really follow any architectural rules but instead pulls in all different styles in ways that don’t always make sense, but look, I am an accounting major and write bad papers for my architecture class so whatever, I like it. It could use a scrubbin’, I will give you that. Off to the side is Fernsehturm, Berlin's TV tower and the second tallest building in Europe. Also, part of the World Federation of Great Towers - thank God that exists. I was worried.

Then we went into the museum next door to Berliner Dom to warm up and get some €3 hot chocolate (which was only a few euro more than I spent on food for the entire weekend, but okay whatever), headed to The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, then had to lighten the mood with a trip back to the hostel for a quick nap. After having had my first currywurst experience during our lunch break on the walking tour, I didn’t complain when we ended up at Curry 36, home of the best currywurst in Berlin, for dinner.

Currywurst is a) delicious, b) mindblowing, c) just so good, and d) for the technical definition, a grilled sausage sliced, covered in tomato sauce (let’s be real, ketchup) and curry powder. If I were at NYU-Berlin, this would be my everyday. I found some packaged versions in the airport and strongly considered it, but had to draw the line.

Saturday night found us at Lido, a club in Kreuzberg (“the outpost of counter-culture in the west” according to my guidebook) that played funk music all night. We crawled home after another night danced away, I filled myself with a delicious chicken kebap (ruining the “sausages only” quest I had so far accomplished), and we laid in bed for about 40 minutes before hustling off to the airport, where we had fun with delayed flights and missed busses but made it home safe and sound to sunny London no more than 60 hours after the adventure began. Best weekend so far!