Berlin

After Switzerland, we spent three full days in Berlin. Berlin is a fun and lively city with so much to do, and I would definitely go back if I had the chance.



Night 1:
We took a direct 8.5 hour train that left Zurich before dinnertime. We were in a six-person cabin that we had to ourselves for most of the time, so we watched some West Wing episodes and this really terrible movie called Idiocracy where this guy wakes up in a future and everyone is an idiot. International trains have train cars where one side is all cabins, and the other is a small aisle with windows. We were using global passes that gave us 5 travel days over a ten-day period, and we've been living in Europe long enough to make us eligible for the cheaper InterRail passes rather than using Eurorail passes.

We had planned on taking a night train since that would only use one travel day, but all the spaces allotted to InterRail travelers on it were booked (you had to reserve spaces on international trains).  After learning this, we made reservations for all our trains since we figured everything would be busy for Easter week. We took an earlier train from Zurich that used up an extra one of our travel days, so we just bought tickets from Geneva to Lausanne separately. This earlier train ended up being shorter than the night-train for some reason. Since we were now getting to Berlin at 1:30 in the morning, I found a hostel that was right outside the train station.  It was one of the nicest of the trip - 15 euros for a TV, ensuite bathroom, and lots of cabinet and closet space.

Day 1:
We bought a three-day travel pass to use for public transport. Instead of having to go through a ticketing machine, you use a machine to validate your ticket in case a cop comes on the train to do a ticket check. The U-Bahn (subway) cars are bright yellow and have outlines of the Brandenburg Gate all over the windows. Berlin also has the S-Bahn (an overground subway), street trams (which are also bright yellow), and buses. The city has an extensive public transportation system.

We went to check into the original hostel we had booked in East Berlin, Hostel Aloha. The hostel was in a building with a graffitied door, the walls were all painted with funky designs, and it seemed to be run by  twenty-somethings.

We planned out our day and decided to make it an East Berlin day. The crosswalk lights in East Berlin were so cool. They had little men in hats and serve as a nostalgic piece of life in old East Berlin. The little men are commonly found in the tourist shops.

We started at the East Side gallery, a preserved portion of the Berlin Wall. The western side just seems to be regular graffiti and has grass and river behind it. Apparently the city is working on beautifying that park area. Graffiti is all over the city, and a lot of it is pretty cool. It seems like it is more of an accepted thing here rather than a sketchy thing.

The east side is right up against the street and has works painted in 1990 by artists from all over the world. The paintings were restored in 2009. There is not barbed wire on the wall anymore.

We then took the S-Bahn to the next area we'd be doing things in and got lunch at a little cafe. I got this bread thing with spinach and cheese. I was expecting it to be more like spanakopita but it was just like cheesy bread with spinach pieces (though I saw it at other food stands, and it looked more like an actual spinach and cheese filling).

We went to the Stasi Museum, which was in the former headquarters of the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany. The exhibit showed entries in the SED party (the communist party of East Germany) dictionary that sounded just like entires in Mao's Little Red Book about using education, culture, etc. to build a communist society. The museum had a lot of information about educating youth and the Stasi espionage program. The Stasi had almost 200k people spying on others, and we saw how they would hide cameras and microphones in watches, ties, garbage cans, briefcases, etc. The Stasi would arrest counter-cultural people like punks and people with opposing ideologies, claiming this was in order to protect East Germany. We also saw the offices of some of the people who worked there. They were incredibly 70s looking.

Our next stop was Kunsthaus Tacheles, an art commune in a building that was initially a department store in the Jewish quarter, then a Nazi prison. It was taken over by artists after the wall fell. Someone on the Internet described it as 'sketchy-ass looking on the outside.'

It was an old, beat-up building covered in graffiti in a seemingly happening, yuppie, gentrified area. When you enter, the rooms are empty and covered in posters and graffiti. The stairwells and hallway walls look the same way. The rooms are full of artists selling stuff or using them as their art studios. Apparently it almost got shut down in March, since developers wanted to evict the artists to use the space for offices and apartments.

There is a sculpture garden behind the building where artists work and sell their pieces. There were also lots of collections of scrap metal and recycled material that would probably get turned into art.

Afterwards, we walked down the street and found a place on the same street selling one scoop of gelato for one euro. I got a scoop of marzipan. There were so many things in Berlin that came in marzipan flavor. We walked down Oranienburger Straße and passed the Neue Synagogue as we headed towards the TV tower, which you can see from many places in the city. The tower existed back when the wall was up.

in the be Berlin speech bubble - the symbol for the campaign to get Berliners to be friendlier

We then went to the DDR Museum, an interactive museum about life behind the Iron Curtain. The exhibits were about education (like group trips to the bathroom where nobody could get up until everyone was done), fashion, cars, products, music, vacations (four out of five people had bathed nude at a beach, as not wearing a swimsuit was a sign of rebellion), what a house typically looked like, and stuff about politics and the border. There was also an original subway ticket machine. The money was not connected to getting the ticket, but rather was there for social control; the person after you was able to see if you had put in money.

We went to Kreuzburg, an area with hip restaurants and bars, for dinner that night. We went to a German restaurant where I tried German beer (some sort of grapefruit beer) and a German dish called semmelknoedel. It was homemade bread dumplings with mushrooms and a salad. It wasn't that good, but it seemed very German. It tasted like a dense, heavy matzah ball.

Day 2:
After a late start, we went to get lunch in Potsdamer Platz, a place where the wall once went through but is now full of upscale restaurants and offices. We then went up a building with the fastest elevator in Europe - it took about 20 seconds to go up about 25 floors. There was a deck at the top with 360 degree views of the city. It started raining when we were up there.

Our next stop was the Deutsches Technikmuseum. It had exhibits about textile production, telecoms, and some of the first computers. There were also exhibits about boats, planes, and trains. Apparently jewelry in German is "schmuck," so the exhibit on jewelry-making was called "schmuckproduction" lol.

We then went to see the Brandenburg Gate, and the area was pretty empty because of the rain. The US Embassy was right next to the gate, so Yoni decided to go up to it and say that we are American and ask if we could go inside. The German guard gave him a stern 'no,' so Yoni asked, 'even if we were in trouble?' The guard said no because of security reasons; citizens needing help have to go to the consulate.

At night we went for dinner at a beer garden in a neighborhood called Mitte. On the way, we passed a bunch of people on the street looking through the window of a bar showing a soccer game on a big screen. It wasn't even near the end of the game, and there was already a large crowd outside the bar. The beer garden we went to had a huge outdoor area that was obviously empty because it was cold and rainy. I thought a beer garden would have tons of beer and those huge liter mugs, but they only had like ten beers and half liter glasses. I got a German dish of cheesy egg noodles with fried onions on top and a side salad. The side salad was good to have since the other part was pretty heavy, but not as heavy as Yoni's dish of mashed potatoes and hard boiled eggs in mustard sauce. This meal was much better than the German dinner the night before. I also tried rhubarb nectar, which just tasted like sweet apple juice. Neil and Zander got the traditional biergarten meal of wiener-schnitzel and beer. I got apple strudel for dessert. I was expecting some sort of braided pastry, but it was  actually apples, raisins, and spices in a filo wrap in a bowl of vanilla sauce. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't fantastic either.

I picked up a coke on the way home because Katherine said European coke is better, as it is made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup. I guess I couldn't tell the difference because I don't drink Coke enough. Before bed, we watched another episode of the West Wing.

Day 3:
Everybody wanted to do different things on our last day in Berlin like go to the zoo or go on a graffiti tour, so we decided we would all go out on our own and meet back up before dinner. I left in the morning to go to Tiergarten, the big park in the middle of the city. I picked up a pastry for breakfast in the subway. Many of the bigger stations are full of little food shops. I picked one that didn't look so sickeningly sugary and ended up with something that tasted like bad chocolate cheesecake.
It was lightly raining when I got off the subway. I walked through some of the park trails and saw some small ponds and rivers that went through it. Some of the park paths were styled to look like boulevards. I was trying to find the Victory Column but got lost because I did not realize that it was on an actual street that cut through the park. Instead, I was trying to find a path on the map. The Victory Column is on a long boulevard with the Brandenburg Gate on the other end.

I walked toward the gate and came upon the Soviet War Memorial built by the Soviets to honor soldiers who died in the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The memorial is located in the former British sector of the city. The memorial is built on a site where Hitler wanted to have his capital.

The Reichstag was basically on the other side of this memorial. This building is home to the Bundestag, the German parliament. You can tour the chamber and visit the big glass dome at the top, but I didn't know you had to register online at least a week in advance to go in. One side of the building is a small field, and the other is along the street near the Brandenburg Gate. It wasn't a particularly impressive setting.

Then I went back to the Brandenburg Gate, and it was much more lively and touristy since it was not raining. There were street musicians and people in costumes in front of the wall dressed like soldiers, Star Wars characters, and the Berlin Bear (there are statues of the Berlin Bear painted in different ways all over the city). I read the signs around the wall and learned that though it was originally built as a symbol of peace, it became a route for war heroes and invasions. During the Cold War, it was inside the death strip of the wall and was inaccessible. It now serves as a symbol of German unity.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was nearby. It was in a large square that had grey slabs of different sizes in it. The smaller, long and flat ones along the outside seemed to resemble coffins. As you walked inwards, the slabs became taller (taller than most people) and there were little hills. Being in the middle gives the feeling of being trapped, since you are surrounded by these massive slabs and thin little paths that lead to the end. You could be walking down the same path as someone, but then if they turn, it is like they disappear. There was an information center underneath, but I did not feel like waiting in the line to go in.

Next I headed towards Checkpoint Charlie and walked through Potsdamer Platz, where I went to look at the pieces of the wall placed where the wall once stood.

The ground is also marked in many places where the wall once stood.

I also walked through the Sony Center, which houses shops, restaurants, offices, etc.

Checkpoint Charlie, which is where people entered the former American controlled area, was incredibly touristy.

Around the corner, I passed a museum dedicated to the history of currywurst. I figured I would go into the restaurant next door and try some veggie currywurst. Currywurst is everywhere, but I was not expecting what it actually was. The sausage is just covered with ketchup (with or without chili in it) and curry powder on top, and it is served with a roll or fries. Overall, I was pretty unimpressed with my bits of German food tourism. The non-German places we went were great, though.

Net I walked up to what is supposed to be one of the prettiest squares in the city, Gendarmenmarkt. Right before I got there, I stumbled upon a fancy chocolates shop, Fassbender and Rausch, that had giant chocolate sculptures of the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, and the Berlin Bear.

I bought a few marzipan truffles, like apple strudel and dark chocolate with cherry flavors.

Gendarmenmarkt had one church that seemed identical to the church on the other side of the square. The first church, the German Cathedral, had a free German history museum in it, but I left after seeing that all the exhibits were in German. The inside of the building was cool, though.

The music hall was in between the two churches, and they had a glass door showing the beautiful concert hall. The orchestra was inside practicing, and you could kind of hear them through the glass.

I went into the chapel of the other church, the French Cathedral, and it was so sterile looking with off-white walls and seafoam green accents.

I kept walking north and ended up at Humboldt University. I went into one of the buildings and saw a cafeteria and lecture hall. The campus, if it can be called that, was on two sides of the long boulevard that led to the Brandenburg Gate.

The Berliner Dom was next to the university, and on the way I picked up a cheesy pretzel from a guy selling them on the street.

The Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) is a fancy church on a small river.

"Museum Island" is a UNESCO site along the river and has five museums.

I went into the Old National Gallery, which had art from classical, romantic, and impressionist artists. I liked the impressionist art, of course, and I also really liked the paintings of life among the German and royal elites that showed the fancy outfits, wigs, and musicians.

After the museum, I picked up some bubble tea (bubble tea shops seem to be really popular here) and started to walk north towards this place on the map that showed a graphic of a person and said something about an intelligence agency building site. I passed the Natural History Museum on the way, as well as a bunch of government buildings. At the point where I thought the person graphic was on the map, there was a a giant tower, perhaps a smoke stack (it was surrounded by some industrial stuff).

I then walked towards the Berlin War memorial. Pieces of the wall were still standing, and there were posters about the site, which was a cemetery destroyed so the wall could be built (the wall was actually multiple walls with an area in between for the guards -- the watchtowers are no longer standing). There were stories about people who died trying to cross the border, and the memorial showed things that were still in the ground, like casing for lights along the border.

After a long day of walking, I walked back to our hostel. We went to get dinner and then went to a cafe that Yoni's Berliner friend from his Ox college said makes the best cake in the city.

Day 4:
I left the hostel in the morning to go catch my train to Warsaw. The boys were leaving about an hour after me to head to Prague. Berlin Central Station is gorgeous and modern. It kind of looks like it could be an airport terminal.

More photos: here