Ich bin ein Berliner

But now I'm back to being a Freiburger. The week in Berlin was fun, although the 11 or 12 hour bus ride each direction was somewhat less fun. Berlin is definitely an interesting city, very different from any I've ever experienced. It's so strange to think that 60 years ago so much of it was destroyed. Of course, there's still evidence of this, since some building were never really rebuilt. We went to at least one museum or historical attraction every day that we were there, and I'll very briefly try to describe a bunch of them.

We arrived Sunday night, but Monday we took a tour of the city in our bus. That wasn't much fun, because it was 2 hours long and it's impossible to pay attention to some woman pointing out about 3000 different buildings and sites in a brand new city. Especially when she's doing it in German. The part where we got out for a bit was much better, especially since we saw this crazy frog sculpture thing come to life--I got a couple pics, so when those ever go up hopefully you can see a little bit more what I mean. Speaking of pics, I have around 70 from the trip, and most are just of different sites and so forth, so I'm not sure how enjoyable they'll be, but whatever. After the bus tour we had the rest of the day free, so a bunch of us just wandered around for hours. We saw Checkpoint Charlie, which was cool, but the souvenirs were cooler.

Tuesday we went to the Bundeskanzleramt, which is where people like Chancellor Schröder work, so naturally it was a very cool building. After that we went to the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz. Let me explain. This house is gorgeous, it's on a beautiful lake, there's a beautiful garden, etc. Lots of Nazis used to vacation there, Nazi officers and such. But the Wahnsee Konferenz was when the Nazis got together at the house and organized, planned, discussed the "Final Solution"--the final solution to exterminate all Jews. Needless to say, it was a disturbing and depressing place, while very interesting at the same time.

Anyway, after that we had free time again, which is how every day went. Coincidentally, Hennie was in Berlin for a couple of days, and of course Kay lives there. So around 6 PM Hennie came and picked me up. Hennie studied in Berlin for 3 years, so he's basically an expert on the city, at least the important stuff like bars and clubs. We drove around for hours, stopping at different places to check some stuff out and have a beer, and he gave me tips on places to go when I had the chance. It was pretty awesome to get a chance to see the city like that, driving around and seeing different places I would never have known about. Then at like 9:30 or something we met up with Kay and Carston for dinner at a pizza place, which had the huuugest pizzas I've ever seen or eaten in my life. One of them even had truffles on it--truffles are really expensive, and I had never tried them, but they were really interesting, in a good way. So, we ate and hung out for a while, which was really nice. Hennie left the next day, and Kay and I didn't get another chance to meet up, so I was glad I got to see them both, and Carston too, who's really cool.

Wednesday we went to some place where they have information about the Berlin Wall, and we had a tour which wasn't very good, and the whole thing actually wasn't very interesting--it was much more fun to see a different part of the Wall that's still standing elsewhere in the city, because it's still very long and completely graffittied and everything. After that we could go to Museum Island to check the Goya, but it was pouring out and the line was incredibly long (it's usually no less than 5 hours, I don't know exactly what it was then, but we weren't about to wait). So we went to the movies instead, which is a learning experience in German anyway! We saw Alles Auf Zucker, which was an awesome, hilarious movie. That night we went into Kreuzberg, which is the Turkish section of Berlin. Hennie explained to me that it's actually more like Turkey than Turkey is, these days. The people who immigrated in the past were less educated, poor, and so they clung to a lot of the old values and religion and so forth. Turkey, especially Istanbul, is more modernized now, so Hennie said that if people want to connect with their roots they actually travel to Kreuzberg a lot of the time. Pretty funny. It's a totally cool place, too.

Thursday we went to the place where they held the Potsdamer Konferenz, which is where Truman, Churchhill, and Stalin met to discuss war-related issues. It was an interesting, short tour, and it's a very beautiful place, especially the gardens. After that we went somewhere that I have no idea what it's called or anything, but it was some sort of castle slash art gallery deal, and it was pretty extravagant and sweet. The tour guide was really cool, and he also taught us a bit of Berliner dialect--they pronounce "gut" like "yout," if you say the word you with a t at the end. Also, to walk inside the place, we had to put these massive slippers over our shoes, and it was so slick that you could basically ice skate around the floors, which was wayyy too much fun.

Friday we went to the StaSi Gefängnis (prison). This was also a bit disturbing, but also really cool. We checked out the U-Boot (submarine), as they called the area below one building where they had built tons of cells ("they" being the DDR police force during the years of Berlin separation, and I use the term police force lightly, because they did horrible things and locked up everyone they could). The normal cells were bad enough, but they also had a few torture ones, such as the Chinese Water Torture room. They had tons and tons of interrogation rooms upstairs. There was even one open-air cell outside. Very unsettling stuff.

Saturday we had all day free, so we went to the Jüdische Museum (Jewish). It's not just a history of German Jews during the war, it's also like a comprehensive history of the Jewish people, so it was a massive museum. We were there for hours and couldn't process more than maybe half of it, probably less. There was some really cool and interesting stuff though.

And that's just the historical type stuff. We went out every afternoon and night. We had to buy lunch and dinner, but breakfast was provided for us (and was awesome). We were close to Oranienburger Strasse, which was a good place to be near, because it had tons and tons of places to eat, and also shops and whatnot, so we ate something different for every meal. We checked out news bars and and clubs every night too, but you can probably imagine what happened at those, so I'll refrain from detailing. A couple of bars were really cool though, especially one at the top of an art building. This building used to be where squatters lived, but now it's sort of a historical building that the government charges like €1 a year for. Artists get scholariships to go live in a room for a year and just create art, and they have to keep their doors open when they do so that people can always check out what they're doing. That's cool, and the building itself is 4 floors of absolute graffiti--there's not a non-graffitied surface to be found. At the very top there's a bar with one open wall that face behind the building. They project huge movies and stuff on a building back there--they were like weird homemade music videos. It was a sweet setup. There was also a secret bar that Hennie told me about--it had no markings to tell you what it was, and you had to ring a doorbell to be let in. He said there used to be passwords required, but that was a long time ago. It was a creepy place, but cool at the same time.

Okay, I'd better stop now. In (seriously this time) brief other news, classes started today. Yesterday was the holiday for the Berlin Wall coming down, so most things were closed, but we did go to the movies--we saw NVA, which is a comedy about the National Volks Army in East Berlin before the wall had come down, near the end of the 80's, so very fitting, and it was hilarious also. So far we're 2 for 3 with German films--Stadt Als Beute has been the only let down. My IPod has stopped working for some reason, but I do have warranty that covers all expenses still, so if I have to resort to that I will.

It's Opa's birthday today, so Happy Birthday Opa (although I doubt he reads this), but I'll be emailing him, and you should too, unless you're a friend of mine who has no connection to my grandfather, in which case maybe just don't. Well, it's been a long post. Maybe see ya tomorrow. And enjoy your amazing weather that everyone seems to be having, since it's dreary and dismal here.