After giving the final grant presentation in Kraków, I decided to spend the rest of my stint discovering Western Europe. The original plan in its most ambitious form called for travel to Berlin, Terborg, Amsterdam, and Paris, however, due to monetary and time constraints it had to be scaled back to - Berlin with an extra day.
Staying in a friends empty room, at her sister's apartment in a somewhat of a bar area in East Berlin turned out to be a great operations base. Not only was I close to all kinds of public transportation, great Thai and Indian food, and an awesome internet cafe, but also only three short blocks away from the one of the show promenades of the Communist East Berlin. The buildings there were huge in a way that can be exacted only by the Soviets. This picture was taken from across the street (including two very wide walkways, two lanes of trees and grass, two parking lanes, four lanes of traffic, and a two lane divider) and still I couldn't get the whole building in one shot. In fact this particular example of Soviet housing development had two wings sticking out the side, rendering it in practive about twice as long than one could gauge from the picture. A number of similar buildings lines this particular street. I heard a story that one of the inspections by the Party came on the projected date of the East Berlin having build one thousand apartments. Since of course the building development did not exactly stick to schedule, the one thousandth apartment was finished ahead of the other ones and a family was paid to stand at the window framed by flags and wave to the party leaders and camera crews in the streets.
Another icon of the East Berlin is the TV Tower, which can be seen in nearly all postcards in one form of another. Even if the shot is of a landmark in West Berlin, it has to include the tower in some distant perspective. I must say that I found the tower quite pleasant looking and really useful in always knowing which was was my apartment. On top of the tower (I'm assuming in the ball part) is a revolving restaurant. The one thing I keep thinking about is whether the kitchen revolved with the dining room, or whether the waiter always comes out in a different part of the restaurant.
Guarding the people from crossing over to West Berlin across the river Spree is East Side gallery - a section of the Berlin wall made famous after the fall by the artists who painted it. The artists have been asked to redo their work after it had been vandalized or suffered erosion, but unfortunately much of it has been graffitied over since.
The area between the wall and the river has been unused for years, until some developers came up with the idea of importing sand and setting up beach bars on the riverbank. It was interesting to see these imitations with more or less fake palm trees and Berlin signature electronica playing rather than calipso/reggae/California music. Oddly enough though sitting at a river bank, with my feet resting on a tied up boat, looking over at the industrial buildings across the river the slow electronica kinda worked.
One of the ways to get to West Berlin was through the famed and celebrated Checkpoint Charlie. The checkpoint hut itself is a replica of a replica of a replica, with the Russian and America guards charging 1€ per picture. Surrounding the checkpoint are souvenir stands, peddling anything from old East and West Germany flags, through Russian military caps, to American t-shirts.
Today's more common gateway between the unified parts of the city is the awesomely great Berlin subway. With the precision known only to German engineers digital displays above tracks count down the time to train arrival. The subway cars themselves are joined together like a one long articulated bus, offering the riders tv news and connection information in addition to nausea if anyone looks too far down the train during a turn.
A little past the Brandenburg gate is the Berline Dome - a fine example of a Protestant cathedral. While the Catholic churches offer their inside splendor for view free of charge, the spartan interior of the Dome demands and offering. Having only two hours for walking around, and running low on Euros after many a round, I decided to keep moving.
A little further down I was impressed by the effort a construction company has put into not turning their project into an eye sore. As the facade of the building is constructed, the covering of the building frame painted like the facade itself is removed.
However, not all of Berlin's aesthetic shortcomings can be covered up with tarp. A few steps down Unter der Linden I saw this old Turkish woman begging for money as the modern face of German society turns away its beautiful gaze. While Germans seemed very tolerant of alternative lifestyles (including Polish politics), there seemed to be a deep divide between the Germans and the Turkish immigrants. In fact, it seems to take more than two generations for a person to be considered German. Interestingly Germany today doesn't seem to have a strong national identity or patriotism. German's pride of who they are is driven by regional allegiances to culture, foor, and beer - rather than a national or ratial identity. My understanding is that the varying levels of intolerance against the Turks comes from their inability to assimilate to these local German culture, rather than a German culture as a whole.
The Bundestag is pretty much the only place in all of Berlin where one might see a German flag being flown. After years of suppression of national patriotism, Germans are only now becoming to say they are proud to be German, and as I'm told, this has much to do with the Soccer World Cup. The Bundestag was heavily bombed and burned during WW2 and rebuilt since with a brand new glass dome as a vantage point on the city. You can see the line of tourists lined up on the stairs to get in.
One of places I've found most interesting in Berlin was the monument to the murdered Jews of Europe. When you walk up to it, it looks like a bunch of rectangular blocks laid out on a large square - large, but not terribly impressive. As you walk into it, however, you realize there is much more to it than that. The ground sinks gently as the blocks become taller, rising all around you. You realize that what you saw from the outside was just the surface and that the only way to see the monument's enormity is from within. Another feature making the experience of being inside the monument even more interesting is that the blocks that look the same from the outside, are in fact very different from each other. Some of them lean on an angle or become slightly narrower near the top. In fact you realize that probably no two blocks are exactly the same. Looking through the alleys between the blocks, you can see the rest of Berlin, reminding you that even though one is inside this monument, one is also inside Berlin.
In spite of all the serious history tied to the city, Berlin is also a party town. I think the description is "sexy and poor," as the stage for one of the World's largest electronica party scenes, as well as rampant post-unification unemployment.
I ended up briefly checking out this club in Mitte, one of the cheaper and more hip areas of the city. The artists played a mix of electronica music supported by an accoustic guitar, spoken words, and videos projected onto them and a white screen behind. The dance area had room for about thirty people, who added a surprising amount of atmosphere and energy in spite of their small numbers.
After the club I ended up at a house warming party. Hours later, this is what was left of the balcony, which was prolly the cleanest place in the house at that point.
Finishing the night was Till spinning some electornica...
... and making fun of the past. After talking with him the next day, I was glad to discover that young Germans very much look forward to the future and see a unified multinational Europe, built when the older generations, those from the war, those from the Soviet era, and those from the Soviet era opposition finally leave politics.
After staying up the whole night, the next day I went with the people from the party to an electronica festival out in the fields about an hour outside Berlin. I was pretty excited as the drive in the second gen twinkie van took us on the autobahn through beautiful countryside. However, as we were getting close to the place, we kept driving around corn fields on unpaved roads, making me slightly concerned we might get stuck and have to walk back at night to the nearest town. When we finally got there and the guys deployed the VW with an efficiency equal only to the speed with which they've lost their shirts. The area was a huge field surrounded by forest and bordering a small beach and a lake. Before the music started we were hanging around on the beach drinking beers and catching some rays. To my surprise many of the people there were naked. However seeing nude as the law of the land and not having a bathing suit, I followed suit and jumped in the water. :)
Finally on the train pack to Poland I got a shot of these storks, a Polish symbol of homecoming after a long, exhausting journey.
Staying in a friends empty room, at her sister's apartment in a somewhat of a bar area in East Berlin turned out to be a great operations base. Not only was I close to all kinds of public transportation, great Thai and Indian food, and an awesome internet cafe, but also only three short blocks away from the one of the show promenades of the Communist East Berlin. The buildings there were huge in a way that can be exacted only by the Soviets. This picture was taken from across the street (including two very wide walkways, two lanes of trees and grass, two parking lanes, four lanes of traffic, and a two lane divider) and still I couldn't get the whole building in one shot. In fact this particular example of Soviet housing development had two wings sticking out the side, rendering it in practive about twice as long than one could gauge from the picture. A number of similar buildings lines this particular street. I heard a story that one of the inspections by the Party came on the projected date of the East Berlin having build one thousand apartments. Since of course the building development did not exactly stick to schedule, the one thousandth apartment was finished ahead of the other ones and a family was paid to stand at the window framed by flags and wave to the party leaders and camera crews in the streets.
Another icon of the East Berlin is the TV Tower, which can be seen in nearly all postcards in one form of another. Even if the shot is of a landmark in West Berlin, it has to include the tower in some distant perspective. I must say that I found the tower quite pleasant looking and really useful in always knowing which was was my apartment. On top of the tower (I'm assuming in the ball part) is a revolving restaurant. The one thing I keep thinking about is whether the kitchen revolved with the dining room, or whether the waiter always comes out in a different part of the restaurant.
Guarding the people from crossing over to West Berlin across the river Spree is East Side gallery - a section of the Berlin wall made famous after the fall by the artists who painted it. The artists have been asked to redo their work after it had been vandalized or suffered erosion, but unfortunately much of it has been graffitied over since.
The area between the wall and the river has been unused for years, until some developers came up with the idea of importing sand and setting up beach bars on the riverbank. It was interesting to see these imitations with more or less fake palm trees and Berlin signature electronica playing rather than calipso/reggae/California music. Oddly enough though sitting at a river bank, with my feet resting on a tied up boat, looking over at the industrial buildings across the river the slow electronica kinda worked.
One of the ways to get to West Berlin was through the famed and celebrated Checkpoint Charlie. The checkpoint hut itself is a replica of a replica of a replica, with the Russian and America guards charging 1€ per picture. Surrounding the checkpoint are souvenir stands, peddling anything from old East and West Germany flags, through Russian military caps, to American t-shirts.
Today's more common gateway between the unified parts of the city is the awesomely great Berlin subway. With the precision known only to German engineers digital displays above tracks count down the time to train arrival. The subway cars themselves are joined together like a one long articulated bus, offering the riders tv news and connection information in addition to nausea if anyone looks too far down the train during a turn.
A little past the Brandenburg gate is the Berline Dome - a fine example of a Protestant cathedral. While the Catholic churches offer their inside splendor for view free of charge, the spartan interior of the Dome demands and offering. Having only two hours for walking around, and running low on Euros after many a round, I decided to keep moving.
A little further down I was impressed by the effort a construction company has put into not turning their project into an eye sore. As the facade of the building is constructed, the covering of the building frame painted like the facade itself is removed.
However, not all of Berlin's aesthetic shortcomings can be covered up with tarp. A few steps down Unter der Linden I saw this old Turkish woman begging for money as the modern face of German society turns away its beautiful gaze. While Germans seemed very tolerant of alternative lifestyles (including Polish politics), there seemed to be a deep divide between the Germans and the Turkish immigrants. In fact, it seems to take more than two generations for a person to be considered German. Interestingly Germany today doesn't seem to have a strong national identity or patriotism. German's pride of who they are is driven by regional allegiances to culture, foor, and beer - rather than a national or ratial identity. My understanding is that the varying levels of intolerance against the Turks comes from their inability to assimilate to these local German culture, rather than a German culture as a whole.
The Bundestag is pretty much the only place in all of Berlin where one might see a German flag being flown. After years of suppression of national patriotism, Germans are only now becoming to say they are proud to be German, and as I'm told, this has much to do with the Soccer World Cup. The Bundestag was heavily bombed and burned during WW2 and rebuilt since with a brand new glass dome as a vantage point on the city. You can see the line of tourists lined up on the stairs to get in.
One of places I've found most interesting in Berlin was the monument to the murdered Jews of Europe. When you walk up to it, it looks like a bunch of rectangular blocks laid out on a large square - large, but not terribly impressive. As you walk into it, however, you realize there is much more to it than that. The ground sinks gently as the blocks become taller, rising all around you. You realize that what you saw from the outside was just the surface and that the only way to see the monument's enormity is from within. Another feature making the experience of being inside the monument even more interesting is that the blocks that look the same from the outside, are in fact very different from each other. Some of them lean on an angle or become slightly narrower near the top. In fact you realize that probably no two blocks are exactly the same. Looking through the alleys between the blocks, you can see the rest of Berlin, reminding you that even though one is inside this monument, one is also inside Berlin.
In spite of all the serious history tied to the city, Berlin is also a party town. I think the description is "sexy and poor," as the stage for one of the World's largest electronica party scenes, as well as rampant post-unification unemployment.
I ended up briefly checking out this club in Mitte, one of the cheaper and more hip areas of the city. The artists played a mix of electronica music supported by an accoustic guitar, spoken words, and videos projected onto them and a white screen behind. The dance area had room for about thirty people, who added a surprising amount of atmosphere and energy in spite of their small numbers.
After the club I ended up at a house warming party. Hours later, this is what was left of the balcony, which was prolly the cleanest place in the house at that point.
Finishing the night was Till spinning some electornica...
... and making fun of the past. After talking with him the next day, I was glad to discover that young Germans very much look forward to the future and see a unified multinational Europe, built when the older generations, those from the war, those from the Soviet era, and those from the Soviet era opposition finally leave politics.
After staying up the whole night, the next day I went with the people from the party to an electronica festival out in the fields about an hour outside Berlin. I was pretty excited as the drive in the second gen twinkie van took us on the autobahn through beautiful countryside. However, as we were getting close to the place, we kept driving around corn fields on unpaved roads, making me slightly concerned we might get stuck and have to walk back at night to the nearest town. When we finally got there and the guys deployed the VW with an efficiency equal only to the speed with which they've lost their shirts. The area was a huge field surrounded by forest and bordering a small beach and a lake. Before the music started we were hanging around on the beach drinking beers and catching some rays. To my surprise many of the people there were naked. However seeing nude as the law of the land and not having a bathing suit, I followed suit and jumped in the water. :)
Finally on the train pack to Poland I got a shot of these storks, a Polish symbol of homecoming after a long, exhausting journey.
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