For Mick’s birthday this year I decided it was time to take a trip! We had been talking about going to Berlin for a few years now. When Jessica visited last September we were determined to take her up on her offer to be our host for a weekend.
“Noisy, hectic and chaotic. Alexanderplatz is not the kind of square that invites lingering…oddly cluttered, soulless square that’s all concrete and no trees…”
This didn’t exactly sound like the first glimpse of Berlin that I was hoping for. So we got off the U-bahn a bit early, in an industrial looking area and started walking. Before long we ended up in a big concrete, soulless square. Alexanderplatz. It wasn’t all bad, as it is near to several of the sites we were looking for. At this point we thought it best to get a Hop-on Hop-off tour bus around the city to get our bearings. We thought a two day bus pass would be good as there was live tour guide on board. The first day we’d drive around the West side of the city and the second day would go to the East. We actually purchased the tour quite late in the day so we decided it would be best to just do the entire 2-hour tour without getting off and we could explore more on foot over the next few days.
We drove by a lot of the top sites including; Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburger Tor (Gate) and the Reichstag to name a few. However, we weren’t very impressed with the tour guide, no enthusiasm, no real history, just naming out buildings as we drove by. So we hopped off at Brandenburger Tor and went for a little walkabout. To avoid the rain, we popped into the DZ Bank, which is a very plain looking building on the outside, but once inside you’re standing in an interior designed by Frank Gehry (same Architect who did the EMP in Seattle) which was amazing. Both myself and Mick were incredibly impressed and I think we finally realized we were in for a good trip to Berlin.
We woke up later than planned (my alarm didn’t go off) to more rain. Mick had a bit of work to do, so I played with the cat (that Jess was kitty sitting) while we waited out the rain. We headed into town and immediately got lost, but we discovered may sites along the way. There is a lot of construction going on in Berlin so many of the streets we headed for were closed off and we had to detour around. Eventually, after walking circles around it, we found the German History museum. We headed in and were greeted by free entry (not sure why but they wouldn’t take our money when we tried!) We walked straight through to a red carpet and a big hall, from here we found several more rooms with small exhibitions and other pay exhibitions. We were thoroughly confused, as we had a pamphlet in our hands showing artifacts from German history back to 500bc. Annoyed we headed to leave, but as we were going we saw a stair case with the numbers 500-1939 written above them and we figured we’d give it another look. We were glad we did, apparently we had missed the museum entrance entirely. We spent the next 2.5 hours going through the museum right up to modern days. I was pleasantly surprised when I turned a corner and found one of my favorite (most studied) paintings, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. Another item that caught my attention was the Malleus Maleficarum also known as the Witchhammer.
After the museum we headed for some lunch, Lonely Planet recommended a pizza place around the corner, but when we got there their pizza oven was closed so we settled for pasta, which did the trick. We then headed to the Holocaust Memorial which consists of 2,711 stone slabs where we had more fun than we felt we should have. After our fun was over we went through the memorial reading letters and stories from people who were murdered. Very sad but striking memorial.
We then headed around the corner to Potsdamer Platz which is the newest square in Berlin. It homes the impressive sony centre with a several other modern buildings. We decided it should be viewed from above as well as form within so we headed across the street to Panoramapunkt and took Europe’s Fastest Elevator to the top were as expected we had a great view of the city.
We were hungry! I met up with Jess and Norbert for some €6 sushi that was delicious! And then of course… more beers.
The Museum für Naturkunde was amazing (as they always are). It holds the Guinness Book of Record for the tallest, mounted skeleton in the world. This being 13.27m (43ft 6in) high, 150-million-year-old Giraffatitan Brancai! They also hold the most famous fossil in the world, the Archaeopteryx. On of these there are rooms dedicated to meteorites, all other types of gems and stones, a room full of things suspended in formaldehyde and so much more.
After our brains were so full we couldn’t take anymore, we stopped for a quick hot dog and then headed on to meet Jess and Norbert at a place called Tacheles. This place is basically an abandaned building that has been ‘taken over’ by artists, however the banks view them as squatters and are constantly trying to oust them. Unfortunately, it looks like they have succeeded as nearly half of the place was empty (from when Jess visited last). In talking to some of the remaining artists we learned that they had been issued an eviction notice for the end of the month. This not the first notice, however, this time it will be backed by a police force. We wondered around the lonely graffitied walkways and up the winding stairs. In between lights being turned off and generators being turned on we pondered over the work of the remaining few artists.
From here we were in desperate need of ice-cream. We made our way towards the river in search of some Eis once we found some we continued to the river to take a boat tour to the other side of the city. This only took about 20 minutes, when we departed the four of us then strolled over to Kreuzberg and walked past the remains of the Wall. At his point Mick and my feet were going to fall off (after 15 hours of walking) so we stopped into Yamm, a reggae bar, for a beer. This “bar”was more like an adult playground. As we entered there was a basketball game going on the the right and a skatepark just beyond, the bar was just a grass hut serving bottles. We grabbed 4 beers and headed over to sit on the rivers edge. We drank our beers with the smell of hash lingering in the air.
Over the Oberbaumbrücke (bridge) we made our way towards a park were (with a few more beers in hand) we watched the sun on it’s way out for the evening. After our feet were feeling a bit better we headed off for some dinner.
Vietnamese restaurant were once again we didn’t pay over €6 for delicious food. Then we couldn’t break a tradition, so we went out for more beers!
I was very disappointed. It was hard to sort out any recognisable narrative to the exhibits; the range of objects was disappointing; but above all, there was a culpable absence of any placing of the Bauhaus movement in relation to its influence on subsequent architecture and design. We weren’t there for longer than 30 minutes and felt a bit ripped off by the €7 entry fee. We figured we’d make up for this by heading to the Aquarium, however at this point we were running out of time and figured we’d leave the €20 entry fee fro another time. Okay lets head to the Kadewe, I hear the upstairs is amazing! What’s that, closed on a sunday? Boo! By this time we figured we’d only 2 hours to spare until we had to leave so we decided to head back and spend a bit more time with Jess and Norbert. We met up with them at a little place for some delicious cake and coffee.
We lounged around and said our goodbyes an then off we went on the S-bahn headed in the the same direction we had just come from only a few short days before.
My overall impression of Berlin? I LOVED IT! It reminded me so much of Portland, the mentality of the people, the fashion, art and bikes. The history of the place hit us everywhere we went, a city that has been at the heart of so many wars, torn down and rebuilt, divided and united. The architecture ranged from 1220 (St. Nicholas’ Church) to the ultra modern Potsdamer Platz with everything in between and a lot more being built.
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