Day 9: Berlin, City of New Old Things

Berlin is full of „old“ things (hehe...those quotation marks are silly :-P) - things that have been destroyed by war or for symbolism (see previous Berlin post) that have been rebuilt again to look old or things that arent so old that pretend to be. This includes pretty much everything we visited today, which is:

The red Rathaus (city hall - I don't actually know if it was rebuilt or not)

The giant German Cathedral (giant gorgeous church complete with 7000+ pipe organ and a crypt with dead folk from all the way back to the earky 1600s. Built in1905 but more weathered looking even than --

The Old Church (don't remember it's real name, but it's a tiny church, and also the oldest building in Berlin, built in the 1200s (?), surrounded by an area of houses that were bombed, rebuilt in a modern style, then rebuilt again to resemble the old houses that were there before. Also, there was a miniature book shop. As in tiny books. :D)

The Charlottesburg Castle (more like a château - originally from the 1700s-1800s, but destroyed in the war and then refurbished in the years that followed with original furnishings and newly made stuff to look like the original; absolutely beautiful, home of the German Kings starting around König Frederic I. Also, I wasn't supposed to take pictures but I did anyway and got in trouble, so enjoy)

And on a completely unrelated note, we also visited KaDeWe, Berlin's answer to Harrod's- a giant superfancy department store where you can buy all your diamonds and Chanel and Dior and that is literally all the fancy brands I know, but you get the idea. And on the top floor is the fanciest grocery store you have ever seen, selling mostly chocolate and bread and wine and cheese but also produce and pasta and classy stuff. We got some excellent dried strawberries and kiwis and pineapple and whole bananas (look up dried whole bananas - they look very unappetizing but they taste like banana bread). Afterwards we went to have spargel for dinner - German asparagus, which is huge and thick and white and usually covered in Hollandaise sauce. It was pretty good. :)

Next is Prague. Phew! :)

Day 8: Berlin, City of Symbolism and Sad History

Everything the Germans do, they do for a reason. I cannot tell you how many times today I have heard the word "symbolic". They destroy a 500-year-old castle because they don't want a symbol of feudalism in their city. They built their government buildings in a "Federal Ribbon" across the old wall site as a symbol of reunification. The Nazis burned books in a square surrounded by some of the biggest libraries and universities in the world as a symbol of dominance. There are captured canons built into the Victory Tower thing as a symbol of, well, victory. There are statues upon statues symbolizing division, reunification, diversity, futility, peace, borders, everything. Hitler (very symbolically) cut down a bunch of Linden trees on the famous Unter-den-Linden to make room for his armies.

Yep. It's a symbolic place.

For (yet another) instance - today as we walked to the Brandenburg Gate, we came upon a very impressive unmarked memorial - it was only after much searching that we found a small plaque listing the rules of the site, given by the Jewish Holocaust Victims Memorial Society or something that we concluded that it was the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. It was a huge square, a gigantic field of rectangular stone blocks laid out in a grid. They varied greatly in height, and the ground undulated beneath them, so as you walked between them you could never quite tell if they were as short as your feet or twice your height. It felt like descending into the ocean - just as dark and directionless and eerie. No color at all, and you could see far far away down the aisles but all of your sense of direction was gone. You felt alone, and lost, but exposed. It was a beautiful memorial, very evocative, and it seemed to capture the specific kind of dehumanization and horror and tragedy that was the Holocaust while being respectful and contemplative and meaningful.

After that, we moved on to the Brandenburg Gate (fairly impressive) and then to the Reichstag (even more impressive). We visited the preserved section of the Wall, which was strange. It's so...eerie, seeing something that was and is so hated standing as the destination for gawkers. But that's the thing - Berlin is certainly not sentimental about these chunks of wall; in fact, they're laying all over the city, shoved in corners and covered in graffiti, old and new. The line on the ground marking the old path of the wall is hardly noticeable if you don't know what you're looking for, and new buildings sit irreverently right over the top of it. People don't forget - the city is littered with reminders, from the constant construction to the many memorials and statues. But they don't let it weigh them down.

On a related note, a guy in military uniform was stamping passports with all the stamps you'd need to get from East to West Berlin - NINE stamps! I had him stamp a separate page for me. Later we went to Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing place between the two sides, belonging to America. I'm still inexcusably vague on that whole situation, but it seems crazy that stuff like that could have happened as recently as the 80s.

:-/

Sure, there's lots of depressing history in this town, but here are a few things that I love: The tiergarten, the royals' old game grounds, are now a huge recreational area making Berlin one of the cities with the most green space in the world. And they have a really old zoo with the most varieties of animal species in the world (I think) at like 1,600+. And in the 1700s there were four times as many French people ad there were Germans because the plague wiped out all of them and the population of Berlin dropped below 6000 before the king invited the French to come live there. And we saw an excavation site of the bottom floors of a castle that was torn down in the fifties. And this architect named Schinkel literally worked himself to death in the 18th century building a massive amount of buildings and bridges in Berlin - there's a Schinkel on every corner, the Berliners say! And all throughout town you see these huge, bright pink pipes sailing over the streets. They look like some kind of marker, but they're not - they're construction pipes, pumping the water away from the hundreds of constantly changing construction sites in the city. As our tour guide put it on the sightseeing bus your we took, there will always be construction sites in Berlin, so why hide from it? The pipes are as much a part of this city as the statues and the stores, and the city embraces them just like all the rest.

I think that's pretty darn cool.

Random Thoughts about This Strange Place

You know, some things about Europe are actually quite annoying - like the fact that one wine glass of water costs €2,50, and there are no laundromats when you need them. And German toilet paper is what we in America would call paper towels. :-/ But here in Germany, postage is cheap! Less than half of what it was in Belgium and significantly less than everywhere else. Yay for Germany!

There are also a lot of couples here i Europe. Maybe it's that they're more obvious than they are in the States, or maybe it's that these are the kind of places you go with your lover. Either way, almost every person that walks by is holding someone's hand, and couples talk and laugh and kiss on street corners (although I have yet to see anyone being gross). Really, I think it's because of the culture - people here don't frown on public displays of affection, and there are so many young people in these cities, so there are couples everywhere. I think it's cute. It makes me happy to see people being happy together - genuinely happy -instead of marching soullessly along like in New York and places. Enjoying each other, enjoying life. It helps that they're all beautiful and classy and stylish and speak pretty languages, of course, but still.

I also love the public transport in these places. Sure, I know that's a city thing, not a Europe thing, but I love it. Genius idea. I realize it would be totally ridiculous, but I wish Denton had a tram/metro/bus system that was actually useful. Siiiiiigh....

Hm. What else? Most people speak English. Seriously, there's rarely reason to say any Dutch/German anywhere because people just talk to you in English, at least in the touristy areas. People often address me in not-English, however - I guess because I don't often say much and I kind of look like the people here. That can be awkward. I enjoyed it when we were in French country - now that we're in German land I feel very much at a disadvantage.

Also, I found this lock and this flower and this happy crocodile and this weirdo, and because they don't have much to do with my trip today, I'm going to include them here. Enjoy the many quirks of Europe!

Day 6: On the Way to Berlin

Today was a loooong drive from Amsterdam to Berlin. We left at 10:30 and arrived at about 8:30, with stops in Hameln and for dinner along the way.

Hameln was a particularly adorable place. It has a story, which many of you probably know, about the Pied Piper. If you don't know it, it goes like this:

In the 13th century, the town of Hameln had a plague of rats. The Pied Piper (dressed in many colors) heard about it and offered his help for a price. The town counsel, desperate, agreed, and the piper played a tune, entranced the rat, and led them into the river to their deaths. When he came to the counsel to collect his money, however, they refused, saying it was too much. Enraged, the Piper played a different tune, and all the children of the town heard it and followed him. One child, however, was deaf, and therefore immune to the tune. She held back her blind brother as he tried to follow, and together they returned to the village as the Piper led all the other children, entranced, into a crevasse, which closed up behind them. They were never seen again.

So, dark as that story is, the whole town is devoted to it. There's a statue, rat pictures everywhere (in the pavement, on top of the bridge, made out of bread in the bakery...), a re-enactment by the town children done every year, and a Glockenspiel which goes off three times a day (that's a click with bells that also has a little automated puppet show that goes with it). We saw the statue (unfortunately under construction) and watched the Glockenspiel, which was adorable. But even without the Pied Piper, Hameln is a really cool town, full of buildings from the 1200s on. Also, I found a Kartoffelhaus, which made me happy because, according to Jackson, I am a kleine Kartoffel. So I thought I should probably live in the kartoffelhaus.

(btdubs - Kartoffel means potato. Don't ask me why I am one, but Jackson thinks so.)