Springtime for Laura-Nelle and Germany!
...okay, I'm done with musical references...for now.
I got back from Berlin yesterday, and I had a great time! Berlin is a very cool city, but very different than any other European city I've ever been to. I thought it was interesting to see what happens when you can start a city over.
We got up early on Friday morning to catch the train to Berlin. It is a 5 hour train ride through some lovely country. We went through Dresden, a very modern city. Since it was flattened during WWII, there are ZERO old buildings. We arrived at the Berlin train station around 2 and headed to the hostel in East Berlin.
Pegasus Hostel was not super amazing. Although it was cute on the outside [painted blue and yellow, big courtyard] the actual hostel part of it was not awesome. We had to walk up 5 flights of stairs to get to the room and we had to share the bathroom with a bunch of Spanish teenagers. The bathroom was quite the adventure. Let's just say that I never had felt the need to wash my hands after getting out of the shower before. Gee-ross.
That afternoon after we settled in, the entire group headed out to a local park. Since the trip was headed by Fernando, a land arc professor at State, this was the first of many parks that we visited. This park was very unusual. It is adjacent to where the Berlin Wall stood and is on the land of an old train station. There was a no-man's land around the Berlin Wall, so this station was completely abandoned for the entire period that the wall stood. When the wall fell, landscape architects came in to create a public park. They decided to create a very natural space...no plantings, just letting nature take over. They filled in the train tracks with fine gravel to make perfect walkways through the park. We saw our first sculptures of the trip placed throughout the park [they wouldn't be the last...Berlin is big on sculpture in public spaces].
We continued walking through the city, studying landscape architecture. We went to the Sony Center, one of the coolest buildings that I have ever seen. I have attached a picture... how awesome is it? We got dinner at the food court because we were desperately hungry and headed back to the hostel for the night. On the way back to the hostel, I saw a prostitute, the first one I had ever seen. I then proceeded to see my second, third, fourth, all the way up to my twenty-second. Yes, I saw twenty-two prostitutes on one street. It's legal here, in fact they are in the process of creating a union! They seem to have a uniform: a puffy coat [can't get cold while a-walking], drawn in by a corset, leggings, knee-high patent leather boots and long straight hair extensions. Seeing them was quite the experience.
The next day, we headed to the longest section of the Berlin Wall that still exists, about 1.8 kilometers. Halfway down, there is a little shop that sells Berlin Wall memorabilia. I bought a little piece of the Berlin Wall, which I have always wanted to do. I felt a little naughty. We continued to walk through "spaces" as the landscape architects call them, wandering down a bridge and through some residential neighborhoods. We ended up at the Jewish Museum, the most unique building I have ever seen. Actually it is two buildings. The original is a Baroque building that houses the Jewish history in Berlin up until the Holocaust. The Holocaust Museum is in a separate contemporary building, connected through an underground tunnel. The building itself is wild. I can't really describe it; I am attaching a photo of it. We didn't have time to go through it...I really wish we had gone. We had lunch at the Museum of Modern Art, again, we didn't go into it...notice a pattern? We walked around for a few more hours, looking at lots more SPACES.
The highlight of the day was the Holocaust Memorial. It is a grid of rectangular blocks of granite that all have different heights, but they seem to be about the same size due to the extensive grade changes [see all that land arc has taught me?]. I have attached a picture, but it can't really show it well. We walked through the Brandenburg Gate, one of the most famous sites in Berlin [an important landmark very close to the wall]. We finally went back to the hostel and went to dinner down the block. It was a typical German restaurant, i.e. delicious. I got chicken and potatoes...yum!
On Sunday, we got off to an early start and headed to the Pergamon. The Pergamon is a museum that houses Greek monuments that have been reconstructed. No, really. The building was built to house an ancient Greek temple...very cool. I really like Greek sculpture, so I really enjoyed this museum. Afterward, we decided to get lunch at a bratwurst stand. Yum! Now I know why they are famous. Delish. The bratwurst stand was at one end of a flea market, so we wandered through.
After looking at some more "spaces", we ended up at Checkpoint Charlie, the most well known checkpoint in the Berlin Wall. There was a cool exhibition about it, explaining how people escaped. It was a pretty intense place. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I didn't understand the complexity of the Wall's implications. When it was built, no one thought it would be both a physical manifestation of the Communist regime and a symbol of hope of what was on the other side. We went to a museum about the wall, where they have not only kept the wall up, but kept the no man's land and a few of the watchtowers. It was pretty sobering to see the incredibly defined "Us vs. Them" mentality of the wall. Next to the museum was a memorial church. See, there was a beautiful cathedral close the wall. In the early eighties, the Communists tore it down just to show that they could. This new church has earthen walls, made from the rubble of the cathedral. It is stark and beautiful.
After the Wall museum visit, we went to a famous park [I forget the name] that had a playground at one end. Clearly, we were drawn to this playground. We found a merry-go-round...you can guess what ensued. After, we walked along the Spree, the river that goes through Berlin, looking at the new architecture. This is such a cool city! The architecture is so rocking... juxtaposing 18th century buildings with contemporary buildings in a seamless way... it should be the model for cities with lots of new growth [ahem...Charlotte].
For dinner, we went to another German restaurant. Unfortunately, the menu was only in German, so we had quite the adventure deciphering the dishes. Every time we encountered a word we knew, we would shout it out to the table...Shockingly, this approach didn't work so well, so we ended up ordering things with not a clue to the ingredients. It ended up fine though, we all got some good German food.
On Monday, we had to catch our train, so we had a short day. We got up early and went to the Bauhaus museum. The Bauhaus is an art school that focuses on basic art training to create everyday items. Everyone [except me] knew that the Bauhaus philosophy is the basis of the NCSU Design School. A lot of the art exercises that were on display at the Bauhaus are exercises that State students do in their introductory classes. Pretty cool!
We took the bus to the center of town to see the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church that had been bombed in WWII. The Germans decided to keep it as is, bombed out and all to show the horrors of war. It was pretty powerful to see how Berlin must have looked after the war. I have attached a picture.
We got Italian food for lunch and headed back to the train station to go home.
Final Berlin wrap-up:
1) I have been saying 'danke shern' for the past week. In Prague. I have serious issues.
2) Berlin was different from any other European city I have ever been to. The contemporary buildings are so well designed that they aren't an eyesore compared with the older buildings.
3) German food is awesome. No lie.
4) In Germany, they choose the best design bid for a new building. In America, they pick the cheapest. You can tell.
This week's adventures up next!
Jewish Museum
Holocaust Memorial
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
