Berlin

(September 10 - 14, 2013)

Copenhagen, the departure and arrival port of our cruise, was an easy enough city to decide to spend some extra time in, but from there Joe and I could have gone anywhere in Europe. From the time Alicia and Manuel left until I had to be in London for my orientation we had over a week and a half; we knew we didn't want to go straight to London since we'll have to whole year to explore there. First we thought we'd head to Amsterdam, but then decided that we'd like to do the Netherlands in spring. Then we thought about Paris, but since it's only a short train ride away we decided that we could use some of our weekend getaways for the closer destinations. That meant choosing cities that were further east and may be more difficult to accomplish during my school term. We each chose one and decided to spend our 10 extra nights split between them (including 2 extra nights in Copenhagen to top that one up to 4 total). The capital of Germany was Joe's choice, the capital of the Czech Republic was mine.

The flight between Copenhagen and Berlin was short, cheap, and uneventful. We had chosen a hotel in Alexanderplatz in what used to be East Berlin (and is now just east Berlin). This location was fine overall, but if I had to do it again I'd pick somewhere else. We had a good 15 minute walk to Alexanderplatz (the actual plaza), which was basically just a mall and hangout for teenagers. There was a group of restaurants on the Spree River that reminded me of Restaurant Row in San Marcos (except more deserted and most serving the same food), but beyond that we had to travel to the other side of town to do much. Plus our hotel, the Leonardo Royal Hotel, felt very strange. It had a beautiful lobby and the room was nice, but we had to walk down a crazy long hallway to get to any rooms from the elevator. This wouldn't have bothered us much, but the lights in the hallways were motion-sensored and were almost always off, which made sense because in the 5 days we were in the hotel I think we saw one other person.  For days it felt like we were the only people in a deserted hotel, although we knew that couldn't be true. Plus the in-room wifi cost €15 PER HOUR, so we had to use the computers in the lobby (like it was 2004).

Our first full day in Berlin we jumped in by joining Fat Tire Bike Tours' All-in-One City panorama, a 4.5 hour wandering through the major sites of the city including a beer garden lunch between Tiergarten and the Berlin Zoo. This helped us get a sense of the layout of the city and ticked a bunch of the must-see spots off our list right at the beginning.

Ready to Ride!

bikes and St. Hedwig's Cathedral (seriously)

a stop in front of Humbolt University's main libarary in Bebelplatz, the site of the Nazi book burning in 1933 during which 20,000 volumes were burned.

From Wikipedia: Among the thousands of books burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine. To commemorate the terrible event, one of the most famous lines of Heine's 1821 play Almansor was engraved in the ground at the site: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also.")

Joe and a remaining section of the Berlin Wall (you can see where the metal is
exposed because pieces of the wall have been taken as souvenirs).

Watchtower that looked over the No Man's Land between East and West Berlin

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The large cement blocks are of varying heights and on an undulating foundation, some tipped one way or another, giving people who walk inside the feeling of being isolated and disoriented even within this organized grid. 

Riding into Tiergarten (probably shouldn't be taking pictures while riding a bike...)

Berlin is almost entirely flat, so cycling is rather easy.

The Reichstag

Day Two we took Alicia's recommendation and headed to the DDR museum, an interactive experience of life in East Berlin. I really enjoyed it and probably could've stayed for about twice as long as we did, but we had evening plans and had to get ready.

The Trabi, the only car available to East Berliners, was a symbol of status and freedom. It took years to save enough for one and even once your order was in, it could take years to get your new car.

A side-by-side comparison of East Berlin-made jeans the contraband Levi's.

This exhibit was meant to give the visitor the sense of being interrogated. When you placed your elbows on sensors on the desk, the voice of the interrogator asking you question and of your own terrified responses resonated within your own head. It was intense and bizarre but effective.

a prison cell

We enjoyed making ourselves at home in this Brady-style East Berliner model home.

In the evening we travelled across town to visit the Museum of Musical Instruments (Musikinstrumenten-Museum), where guests use a headset to listen to the various sounds of over 3,000 different instruments. Some were familiar friends, but others were total strangers.

"Serpentine"

early horns

Joe totally fan-girling over a synthesizer used by Pink Floyd

EMS-VCS3 (one of only a hundred) like the one used by Pink Floyd.
(Seriously - look at his smile. Totally excited by this.)

This museum visit was just a prelude to our real event for the evening, though: a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic at their concert hall, Philharmonie. The performance included pieces by Polish, Czech, and Hungarian composers; Joe knew one of the names and neither of us felt swept off our feet by any of the compositions, though the performance itself was beautiful.

Bert & Charlie attended, too. It was their first orchestral concert!

For our last day our goals were further afield, so we headed back to Fat Tire to rent bikes for the day (sans tour). With these we rode out to the Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum) to see their exhibits on dinosaurs, DNA, and the solar system.

The Guinness World-Record holder for the tallest dinosaur skeleton, a 43 foot Brachiosaurus.

The sun, totally not to scale. The German
word for Earth is "Erde," just fyi.

Crazy packed exhibit of living creatures. This was only one section of several rooms.

They provided this key with a magnifying glass attached to
help visitors figure out what they were looking at.

 Plus there was a bust of Charles Dickens, Charlie's namesake.

Charlie was excited to make new friends...

...until he almost became their meal.
(The other ones look like they're laughing at him!)

I also found a place called Princess Cheesecake and had to go there! (It was very good and had a lot of flavors I would like to try. The cheesecake was light and fluffy, not the New York variety.)

And we added a German edition to the International Harry Potter collection: German Order of the Phoenix!

Berlin, on the whole, had a different feel than any of the other cities we visited. It was colder, but still lively. Not as oppressive as St. Petersburg, or as industrial-but-beautiful as Gothenburg. In some ways it feels as though the city is still recovering from its history, and the reminders of the atrocities that happened here are still in the air. It was the first place where people weren't quite as ready to accommodate our English-only tendencies. The food was good but not sensational. The city lacked people in a weird way, but not like the rural back country of Norway where the charm made up for the silence. I would recommend that people see it, but I wouldn't necessarily put it on my list of top 5 cities. And so Berlin gets checked off our European To See list and off we go to Prague!