French people like to go on strikes, did you know that? My friends and I learned that first-hand, when French air traffic control workers suddenly went on strike on June 11th, grounding most flights out of Paris--including, of course, the one my friends were due to take to Berlin. (Incidentally, never fly Air Berlin. They literally have no customer service--their customer service number is to a pre-recorded message directing you back to their website. Seriously. Never fly with them.) I had flown out from Paris the night before, in order to arrive back in Berlin in time for my German class. The plan was for my friends to follow me the next evening, and then spend a good four or five days in Berlin together. With the sudden strike called to last for three days, however, their time in Berlin would have been cut quite short. Luckily, I have some pretty super friends, and they opted to take a 14-hour bus ride overnight from Paris to Berlin to minimise the disruption. In the end, we only lost a day and a half or so together in Berlin, which did alter our plans a bit, but it could have been worse.
My little studio apartment was pretty cramped with the four of us sharing it, but of course we spent most of our time out and about exploring the city. Time restrictions (I have the final exam for my German course tomorrow!) mean that the best I can do for now is a photoblog of the tour of Berlin I designed for my friends (not in chronological order).
The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park:
The scale of this memorial, built after the war by the Soviet occupiers, is insane. It's all just so immense, and...very Soviet. Stark shapes and strong lines, and everywhere symbols of the triumph of the Hammer and Sickle over the Swastika.
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The East Side Gallery and Berlin Wall:
The East Side Gallery, which I have mentioned in a previous post, way back when, is a 1.3-kilometre stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been famously painted with murals and has been left, more or less, intact. Of course, land is too valuable to just let lie empty, and lately there has been a lot of controversy in Berlin over plans to develop some of the no-man's land that used to run between the Wall, including the picturesque, riverside stretch by the East Side Gallery. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. Instinctively, and as a historian, I'd want to say that of course they shouldn't build on that land. But there's so much land in this city that has strong associations with one dark period in German history or another that surely at some point one needs to simply plow doggedly onward. One simply cannot raze all of the buildings that once housed Nazi ministries, nor leave forever empty plots of land that once ran along the most infamous border in the world. It's just not practical, in the end.
In parts of Berlin, buildings have been repurposed--the water tower in Prenzlauer Berg, for instance, once served as an SA torture centre but now houses luxury apartments that are very much in demand. On the other hand, the Topography of Terror takes the opposite approach--this museum quite literally preserves the foundations of the Gestapo's headquarters and, along with them, the crimes that were dreamed up and carried out on that spot. Of course, many of these places are very important historical sites and they should be left intact, more or less, as they are. But in a city like Berlin, left ravaged by the 20th century, one runs the risk of immobilisation by constantly tiptoeing around history. It's a fine a balance, I suppose, that's needed. Overall, I think that Berlin has done a pretty good job with preserving the past while at the same time carving out a name for itself as a modern, cosmopolitan city. Invariably, dealing with the past is always going to be an issue here.
Berlin Zentrum:
We hit up most of the main tourist sites in the centre of Berlin, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag (FYI: there is no longer a "Reich" in Germany, but the building is still called the "Reichstag," while the institution of the parliament is known as the "Bundestag"), the Holocaust Memorial, etc.
All of the Birkenstocks:
All four of us have long loved these hippie, German sandals, and they go for nearly half-price here in the Vaterland. Hitting up multiple Birkenstock stores was therefore high on our agenda. I've been here for six weeks already, but have been waiting especially for these gals to arrive so we could buy our Birkenstocks together! We are a bit lame. But look at all those Birkenstocks! How could we resist?
And, finally, all of the eating:
Eating was a bit awkward for the four of us, because Robin and Tiff understandably wanted to try all of the German meat, but Lise has her own dietary restrictions and I'm, of course, a vegetarian. The result was that often we'd up going to two different places for dinner, one place after another, or we'd eat on the go at different places.
The place we came the closest to finding common ground was the Ritter Sports Schokowelt (literally, "chocolate world"), where we gorged ourselves on desserts and even made our own custom Ritter Sport bars!
BREZELN COUNT: 14
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