Finals are KAPUT! And so here's the long-awaited recap of my German adventures.
Alice and I awoke at the bright and shiny hour of 2:30 AM to catch a shuttle to the Ryanair airport, waited/pseudo-slept for another couple hours, eventually got on the plane, and finally crawled into our long-awaited hostel beds for a well-deserved nap. We woke refreshed a couple hours later to explore Unter den Linden, the part of the city populated by the most historic buildings and memorials.
This has to be one of my favorite pictures of all time:
We were leaving the Marx and Engels monument and I turned around one last time to find them staring contemplatively at the Fermsehturm--an interesting picture of East Berlin.
As the sky decided whether it wanted to rain or not, we also saw some other stuff, like the Berlin Cathedral...
...and the Brandenburg Tor.
We absolutely had to see the Reichstag, the German parliament building. It's (mostly) survived rounds of bombings, gunfire, and the infamous fire in the 1930s--you can still see the bullet holes in the columns and where they've had to patch it up a bit. It is truly magnificent.
In 1999, construction was completed on the new Bundestag dome. Pre-bombing and general hellfire-osity, it used to have your average, run-of-the-mill government-building dome on top, but they decided to make the new one all fancy and reflective and glassy to give a sense of transparency in government. You take an elevator large enough for a herd of cattle up to the roof, which provides some incredible views of the city.
Climbing up to the top of the dome itself was one of my favorite parts of the trip. See for yourself:
After enjoying our first Berliner Pilsener by the Spree River, we got all kinds of lost on our way to finding the Holocaust memorial and got a pretty good idea of just how awesome Berliner architecture is. The Sony Center is one of the shining stars:
The next day, after some wandering around some neighborhoods and seeing Greek and Roman sculpture at the Pergamonmuseum, we hit the club. We hit the club hard. Those Berliners sure can party.
When traveling, I try to avoid going out at night because then I wake up at 12:30 the next day feeling like an 18-wheeler has driven over my head numerous times. But in order to really experience Berlin, one needs to experience the nightlife. It doesn't start until 1 and it doesn't end until 7. And it is crazy. Hence why I was thankful to be flying home with no major injury and a couple hours of sleep under my belt.
It's probably worth moving away from chronology towards general impressions of the city (if for no other reason than I'm just sick of staring at the computer screen). I get the impression that Germans, Berliners in particular, are seriously invested in repudiating the legacy of the Holocaust. And, I mean, it's kinda true that people are quick to associate Germans, even modern-day Germans, with Nazism. Remember that whole uproar when it was discovered that Pope Benny was in the Nazi Youth as a child?
As a result, there are an abundance of museums and memorials commemorating the German Jewish experience and the Holocaust around the city, including the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe:
...and the architecturally stunning Jewish Museum. I didn't think the museum itself was all that great, but the building is just incredible.
Daniel Liebeskind (interestingly enough, he's also the architect chosen to build the WTC memorial) really just relied on light and angles and how they play out on plain old concrete. And man, it WORKED. There were two really--and I mean really--effective examples, one of which was the Garden of Exiles. It was essentially forty-some concrete columns, all tilted just slightly at the same angle. Walking through made me dizzy, unstable to the point of physical illness, and constantly on my guard to keep from face-planting...just as I imagine a refugee must have felt.
Liebeskind also put intentional unfilled spaces throughout the building. One void, three or four stories high, was filled with 10,000 iron masks. Another had a skylight that filled the void with eerie blue light. The most important void--the Holocaust void--was only reachable by a giant door opened by a museum docent. Once inside, the docent closed the door and you were left alone in the dark, completely unheated room, lit only by a tiny crack of light in the ceiling. I can't quite describe the feeling of seeing that door close on me and seeing all the light evaporate in the same way that I can't quite communicate what it's like to walk into a gas chamber. I mean, wow. That is art.
Another legacy that the city has to contend with is the Wall. It's kind of hilarious when you're just rambling around a pretty well-developed, pleasant, normal-looking city and you step over the line etched in the pavement that represents where the wall once stood. Like, what was the conversation that resulted in its construction? "Hey guys, our best and brightest are defecting to the American side." "I've got an idea! Let's build a giant concrete barrier around it."
As an AP history student, I have to qualify that last statement by saying that yeah, I know it's more complicated than that. But come ON.
But despite the darker sides of Berlin, it is really an incredible city. And if I spoke German, I'd be moving there in a second.
Why? Kreuzberg, the part of Berlin where we stayed, is a more relaxed--and dare I say, European--version of Brooklyn. Its streets are crammed with tiny breakfast cafes and Turkish restaurants. But off the beaten path, you find leafy streets and hippie families playing Frisbee in Görlitzer Park.
And hipsters. Praise Jeeeeesus for hipsters. It's so refreshing to see people with blue hair and bright red lipstick and piercings and tattoos. I thought there was a lot of social pressure at BC to dress a certain way, but the Dutch (minus Amsterdammers) really have no patience for people who dress differently. They even have a saying that essentially means "the middle of the road is the best way".
So when we went out on Saturday afternoon for the Fete de la Musique--live music of every genre and every volume on every street corner--and saw punks and goths and hippies and nonconformists and women with pin curls, it was just a breath of fresh air.
And the graffiti!
(It isn't just a Kreuzberg thing...graffiti is a serious art form in Berlin. We even passed a dentist's office that had graffiti murals of giant pop-art people brushing their teeth and flossing.)
There's a whole lot more I could say about specific things, but this entry is getting all kinds of long. Check out Picasa (did you notice those pretty, pretty links I added on the right?) for the kajillions of pictures. In this case, the images really say it all.
This week has been a big one. Had a vastly mediocre choir concert last night--did you ever think I'd be grateful to Neshaminy for part of my education?--and Iwan and Timo, two lovely friends from Amsterdam, stopped by on Thursday for one last hurrah in Nijmegen.
Today is the day, kids. The day where I start taking things down from my walls and moving clothes from the piles on my floor to neat stacks in my suitcase. That's always a big day for me--it signals the moment where the place where I live changes from a nest to a transitional room. Just four white walls and some bedsheets. It's sad. Really.
P.S. This is what the Dutch pass off as a sense of humor:
(Translation: "Michael Jackson has already been requested. That's soooo 2009.")
Scrawled on a wall at UNDRGRND when we went out on Thursday...literally two hours after his death was announced. You probably can't tell from all the way over there, but I'm shaking my fist at the sky. Not okay, Dutchies. Not okay.
