Thursday, February 19th 2015
Waking up before the sun is very much not a thing I enjoy… but when there is a plane to catch, I do a pretty good job rolling out of bed at 5:30AM. I am going to Berlin for the weekend! I am meeting up with Emily, a friend from Olin. We became close when we were on a UOCD team together in the spring of Sophomore year. Last year we were both NINJAs for Computer Architecture, so we had plenty of bonding time while grading.
I landed in Berlin safely (actually EasyJet was way better than Wizz Air!) and at 10:30 I was walking towards the terminal. Somehow, I managed to walk from the plane, down the stairs, outside on the tarmac, into the terminal, across the airport, down a long path and into the train station to catch a 10:44 train! Ok, the train was 4 minutes delayed, but I also had to buy a ticket and wait in line for that! I was seriously impressed with myself. I made it to FridrichstraBe and walked across a bridge into the old Jewish neighborhood. Right away I could tell which building was the New Synagogue. It looked remarkable from the outside with a large dome. I went inside and explored the exhibition. The actual artifacts in the synagogue weren’t incredibly interesting to me, what I found more remarkable was what was missing. I stood in a part of the building that was a combination of the actual new synagogue and the reconstruction. You could see parts of the walls where the painting had been destroyed. What I found most memorable was the part where the sanctuary used to be. There was just a completely empty courtyard with 8 cement poles to represent the ark. A theme that I noticed throughout my trip to Berlin was that the things that weren’t there were at some points more meaningful and important than the things that still were. Since this city suffered so much destruction, there are a lot of pieces that represent the history or places where things used to stand. It was pretty ironic that when I looked at the donation box, it was filled with American dollars and not Euros. Also, throughout my stay in Berlin, I heard Hebrew several times, which I was pretty surprised by!
Afterwards, I wandered the neighborhood, sat in a park to enjoy a snack and made my way to Hackescher Markt. I guess by its title I shouldn’t have been surprised when I ran into an Artist’s market. If you know anything about my pervious travels, markets are my favorite thing to experience in any city. Both the local food and artists show so much of the traditional culture. We made our way to quite a few of these markets in Berlin, but at this one I found a new leather wallet. Bettina had been making fun of me when I stumbled with my little card holder, so I bought one with much more organization (my bargaining skills were spectacular – it was originally 12e and I paid 7! WOO). I also went into a mask shop. They had some amazing costumes and masks that were beautiful! After wandering for a while, I made my way to the hostel.
I checked in and rested until Emily showed up! We shared big hugs and were very excited to see each other. We made our way to Tempelhofer Park. The area was an old airport that was turned into a large park for people to enjoy. It was the perfect opportunity for people watching. We saw some very unique sporting going on. The first was like cross-country skiing with wheels! We also saw someone kite skating!? They were using a kite that they were harnessed into to power something similar to a skateboard. It was amazing! There were at least 4 kites flying around as well. We were so impressed and surprised by the unique sporting events that we found in this park. Also, it was a very unique environment. The airport didn’t feel abandoned, but at the same time it had a distant feeling to it.
After awhile, we jumped on the U-bahn and went to Kreuzberg, a neighborhood in the southern part of Berlin. We found a German restaurant for dinner and went in. Throughout the weekend, we mastered the family style meals so we could try more things! We ate the restaurant’s specialty: Crispy Chicken, which was half of a chicken with very crispy skin served with mustard and bread. We also wanted to adventure into German food and tried blood sausage with sourkraut. The blood sausage kinda grew on me as we ate it. First it was kinda weird, but then it reminded me of chicken liver, which I love and then it was delicious! The chicken was just amazing. Although yes it was just chicken, there is a reason this restaurant is known for it, it was very good! We had a great time catching up at the restaurant. Goofy things like ‘a tingly sensation’ came from the heater beneath our legs. It was great to be with a good friend.
We then spent the night wandering the streets of Kreuzburg. It was a cute neighborhood with a lot of bars, so we figured we’d stop in a few! Emily doesn’t drink very much, but thought she would explore when she was with me. So we started at a Mexican bar/restaurant. Berlin is an incredibly international city. Since they welcomed everyone to move to Berlin, unlike almost every other European city, they now have many different cultures. Here we tried a spicy mango frozen margarita. The experience was ‘mostly positive’ as we described it. The combination was a weird marriage of spices with sweet mango, and then frozen. I think we enjoyed it by the end, but we were certainly confused for most of the time. We then found a bakery to enjoy some sweets. We tried a hazelnut cream cookie and a rhubarb tart. Both good, although nothing spectacular, but what can you expect from a bakery open at night. I then learned that Emily hadn’t had a hard apple cider and knew that she would love it, so we found a cute bar, called Zum Elephant and went in to enjoy a drink. She said the apple cider was delicious and like candy, just as I expected. The bar was also very cool. Lots of cool decorations and furniture.
We ended the night in the far part of Kreuzberg so I could show Emily my favorite drink, a white Russian. It of course was amazingly delicious. But, I think the best part was the two of us just exploring the city, going from place to place and seeing all different parts of this neighborhood, in half decent weather. We had a nice walk back to the hostel before calling it a night. (Don’t worry, we shared all our drinks! So it actually wasn’t much haha)
Friday, February 20th 2015
We met up with the tour group, and then made our way to Potdam. The first thing we saw was a nice old square in the middle. Potsdam did infact suffer some damages, and they are trying to rebuild it, but that means there is a lot of construction as well as the buildings that we were looking at are not the actual buildings. On one of the palaces, it had a saying written in French(cest n 'est pas un chátau): This is not a Palace. This was ironic because the building that stands there is actually the rebuilding of the palace. Some of the structures that were rebuilt look ok, others look like legos were used to build them. We jumped on a tram to the Neu Park (New Park). The park was really nice! I enjoyed the walk. We made our way to a bridge that reached between West Berlin and East Germany. West Berlin was American territory after the war and East Germany was Soviet territory, so you can imagine the tension of the area. This bridge was where spys were brought to exchange between the US and USSR. Although this bridge was also rebuilt… but you can see the old bridge’s structures. We spent a lot of time learning about the Hohenzollern family and the history of Prussia. Each of the Kings have built their own castles and palaces that we stumbled upon throughout the park (stumbled is the wrong word because our tour guide pretty directly led us there… but that’s ok). The theme of ‘missing’ things continued even its Potsdam. We saw a spot where they had a dock that used to be there and a major part of the city, but no there is just a sign representing it. We saw also a Norwegian gate, which was quite interesting in the middle of the German park.
One of my favorite castles was an English style castle (which was the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern) that was where the Potsdam conference took place. The reason this one was chosen was there were three entrances to the castle and three entrances to the conference room. This meant that Stalin, Churchill and Truman could go in through separate doors, have their completely own quarters and enter the conference room at exactly the same time. I thought the building was spectacular. The Russian entrance was particularly interesting. Although the red flowers weren’t there, you could imagine how the entrance would have looked with a garden of red flowers in the shape of a star. We saw quite a few more buildings before heading to the center of Potsdam. The street was so cute. It was the cobblestone street with shops and cafes that you love in every European city. There was one row of houses that was meant to look Dutch, and it really did remind me of David and Juliana’s house. They also had their own version of the Brandenburg gate, although this one was also clearly rebuilt. It looked magnificent from afar but sadly lego-style up close.
We made our way to the Sanssouci palace and put all of the pieces together of the Hohenzollern family rule. The palace was pretty… but I can imagine it is prettier with the gardens in the summer, not nearly as impressive in the winter. But nonetheless, we enjoyed the visit and took lots of pictures. From here we separated from the tour group and went to explore the windmill that we saw right next to us. We goofed around taking pictures and enjoying the winter evening. We then jumped on a bus then a train then a tram to get to Mitte, the downtown of Berlin.
We shopped through the streets of downtown Berlin for the evening. There were a lot of fun colors, some weird shops and some cute places. Emily found a dress that she loved and ended up buying! We went to the restaurant that had been recommended to us for dinner, called Berliner Marcus Bräu. It was a very fun restaurant with a lot of old decorations. They had an old sewing machine behind us and many steins hanging from the walls. The place felt authentic. We enjoyed their house brewed beer, the dark version naturally, and a hot wine. The hot wine came out with a sugar cube that was lite on fire! It looked so cool. This was Emily’s first try of both beer and wine… and she liked them both! Although, they were both very very good. Their hot wine was sweet and seasoned well and the beer had a really great flavor to it. For dinner we had schnitzel topped with tomato and cheese with fried potatoes and a meatloaf that was stuffed with feta and parsley with potato dumplings and green beans. They were both very good. I loved the meatloaf, it had a very unique taste from the feta and parsley inside that made it quite delicious. The potato dumplings were like balls of potato grain. It had a more course texture then I expected. The fried potatoes were also delicious. If you didn’t know, potatoes are a huge part of the German diet, mostly thankful to Frederick the Great (A King of Prussia who built the Sanssouci palace) because he encouraged them to be grown to feed his army. See I did learn something from the tour! After the long day, we made our way to the hostel for a good night’s rest.
Saturday, February 21st 2015
This morning we rented bikes for the day to explore Berlin. We started the day at a food market right near our hostel. The market was awesome. We saw lots of great artists and some very interesting food. There was one lady selling many different flavors of tofu. Did you know Berlin has a huge vegan population… in the middle of a country that is run off of meat and potatoes! It is crazy. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast of a mixed plate of three German dishes: meatballs and potatoes, garbanzo beans and okra and meat patty with salad and bread. It was all quite yummy. We bought a piece of poppyseed, fruit and cheese cake for a snack to have in a bit. We saw a musician who makes his own instruments out of wood. It was really cool! He had flutes in the normal shape and some rounded instruments. Emily, who plays the flute, played around with them and was able to make some cool sounds. She ended up buying one as a souvenir. Markets are a great way to start the day and always put me in a good mood.
We then biked to the East Side Gallery. It is a long part of the wall that has been painted beautifully. Throughout the weekend, we skirted the crossing of the Berlin Wall many times. Some of the sections are just marks on the ground while in others parts community efforts have been made to beautify it. Nonetheless, almost all pieces of the wall has a lot of graffiti on it as well as colorful paintings. It shows a very interesting side of the community and makes you realize how recent all of this history is. We then took our bikes through lots of cute neighborhoods, peaking around as we biked through. We made it to Pariser Platz just in time for our 11AM tour. Our tour guide showed us some amazing things as well as taught me a lot of history. | |
We started the tour at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. It was a beautiful gate and felt like the entrance to a beautiful city. We then made our way to the memorial of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Our tour guide let us walk through without much instruction. At first I felt like I was just walking past concrete blocks. The first few were almost in the shape of gravestones. I could see heads popping out from different parts of the memorial. I looked ahead and everything looked similar and predictable. Then all of a sudden, the ground sloped down and I felt more enclosed. The cement blocks were much taller, now reaching over my head. I couldn’t see any heads popping out, just those that crossed the memorial ahead of me. The ground began to rise and fall, like little hills as I wandered my way through the memorial. Finally, I felt like I was able to see over the blocks again and rise up on the other side. We had a discussion about the memorial which was very interesting and provocative. I felt like the memorial represented how the Jewish population of Europe didn’t know what was coming and very slowly sucked into the depths of the Holocaust. Just like history, in the memorial you couldn’t see how deep it was going to be until you reached it. There were others with different explanations. The tour guide said that the artist never announced an explanation because he wanted the individual walking through it to make his or her own meaning and not be influenced.
From there we went to a car park. Yes a parking lot. But what was under that parking lot was Hitler’s bunker where he committed suicide. Berlin is in a very interesting place, because they don’t want people glorifying what he did. They also couldn’t blow up the bunker, so they filled it and turned it into a parking lot. He mentioned that maybe one day it will be a place that tourists go, but history is too recent for people to be ok with that. I was very intrigued by this. The city is incredibly hurt by Hitler, to the point that they are incredibly anti-Nazi. Our tour guide said that if you are to see any swastika throughout the city it is guaranteed to be an anti-Nazi ad. Since people are so passionate about it, it seems there is much less anti-Semitism there than there is in America. On the way to the next spot I raced up to the tour guide to chat with him about it. He was interested to hear about my experiences in America as well as in agreement with how Berlin is treating it.
Another very thought-provoking moment was when we stood outside of a building that was clearly Nazi architecture. The building had somehow been spared in the bomb raids. Since it was such a well-made building, and the government needed a place to work, the government started to run out of there. It is actually kindof ironic, the government running out of a Nazi building. Now, it is a tax office, but it is certainly a thought of contention that the building still exists. |
As we moved to the next spot, the next thing I knew is I was straddling East Berlin and West Berlin. The border that we so gracefully walk across now was such a guarded and terrifying place for so long. Now, the remnants of the wall, and even the places where it used to be, plays such a quiet but strong role in the city. Also, when East Berlin existed as communist, everyone had the same type of car. They aren't efficient and are terrible, so what did the city do with them... they painted them crazy colors and made them a tourist attraction to drive them around the city. |
We visited another section of the wall, this one much more scary and dark than the ones before. It made me really think about what it would be like to be stuck on a side of it. We then visited Checkpoint Charlie, an American checkpoint. Who won the civil war is incredibly evident by the way the checkpoint is currently shown. There are no Soviet flags, but many American flags swaying in the breeze. It is a very Americanized area (lined with our national fast food chains) and has ‘American border guards’ there. We then saw how Berlin is becoming a very international city. Unlike the rest of Europe it asked people to move there after the fall of the Berlin Wall. To show this, they actually built a French Church in the square next to the Concert Hall (also very pretty!) But, the Germans wanted a pretty church also, so they built a German church which looks almost identical across the square from the first one. We ended the tour outside the University. Back during the war, the students of the university played a huge role in the book burnings, but to make up for that now, they always have a book sale outside of the university hall. There is also a memorial underground which shows empty shelves that could hold all of the books that were burnt during that time. This continues the theme of showing the missing parts of the city. |
After the tour, we made our way back to the Brandenburg gate to pick up our bikes. We decided to go by the Holocaust memorial to experience it once more. We then rode our bikes around Tiergarten Park before biking to Museum Island. We ran into a market on the way and enjoyed some currywurst and other German sausage and then headed across the river to see the beautiful museums. We only made a quick stop before biking to the wall memorial. We had seen two of the three major remnants of the wall, so we figured we’d see the last. It was nice and quite moving.
We then biked back to the hostel, but on the way ran into yet another market in Hackescher Markt. This time we actually found some amazing things. I finally found some beautiful and unique earrings and Emily found an awesome purse. It was a very fun stop. We enjoyed our walk around it and it is a very memorable afternoon.
For dinner that night, we walked around Friedrichshain, which was the area our hostel was in. It was very cute area, but we didn’t find anything we were in love with. We remembered a bar that I had read about online and went to find it. The bar is called Hirsch and was quite cozy and cute. We found seats at the bar and asked the bartender for all of his recommendations. We had Augustiner Hell, which was a light beer that I really enjoyed. Emily really enjoyed it too. I hope I haven't been too much of a bad influence this weekend. Oops! For dinner we had two things, Viennese Schnitzel, which was a piece of schnitzel with spätzle on the side and Maultaschen. They were both FANTASTIC. The schnitzel was absolutely delicious with some lemon squirted on there. The spätzle 100% redeemed spätzle for me after my not good experience in Salzburg. It was delicious noodles served with gravy. Both dishes were served with salad of cabbage, carrots, lettuce and potato salad. I was so glad there was potato salad, because I hadn’t ordered it yet in Berlin, but it was a very common dish. The Maultaschen was pasta stuffed with meat and covered in cheese. It was freaking amazing. I was in such a happy place while eating that food. Emily and I also had a wonderful evening chatting and celebrating our last night in Berlin. I also loved the atmosphere. There was a moose that had lights all on its horns. It was very fun all lite up.To end the night we enjoyed a glass of hot wine with pancakes filled with ice cream. I had been craving ice cream so the ice cream and whipped cream really hit the spot. It was a wonderful evening and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Sunday, February 21st 2015
I left early this morning to make sure that I got to the Jewish Museum very early. Even though I watched two trams drive past me, I made it to the museum before it opened. I got my ticket and was literally the first person to walk into the museum. They had some really unique exhibits. I learned about Jewish cooking in Germany and Albert Einstein in the learning center. I saw the Holocaust tower, which was just a massive enclosed and cold room. It was very impressive and shocking. Inside it, you felt cold and abandoned, just like I image many of the victims felt in the Holocaust.
I then went upstairs and saw the exhibit I came for… BIOS! Bios is a robotic arm that can write the Torah. Although it is completely un-Kosher, it was remarkable to see a robot write it! It was amazing. I do have to say, the writing isn’t as pretty as the handwritten versions, but it was very impressive and interesting to watch. My engineering brain was on fire. I could only think about how it is done and the skill it takes to have that control. I even scoped around to find the control box. The mechanism was incredible and it was amazing to watch. I then entered the permanent exhibit. I wrote my wish on a pomegranate and hung it on the tree. The museum was good, it had some interesting exhibits but it was fun to walk through. I really enjoyed it! |
That afternoon I went to Mauer Park for an incredible market. It was so large it was impossible to capture it on a camera. The foodie in me came out and I tried lots of things. I gave currywurst another shot, because it was the Berlin food. This one was delicious. I also had a hot white wine, which was a whole new experience. It was a Riesling and it was mixed with ginger soda. The market was so much fun! There were a bunch of shops and some very unique things going on there. I bought a spinach and cheese filled roll, which was very cool because the ladies behind the stand were rolling the dough and baking it right there! I saved that for the plane ride. There were also bands and lots of fun things at the market. Yes, I know I had a lot of food, but I didn’t eat all day before that! So on my way out I had a Berliner boulette, which was like a meat patty on a roll, and it was very delicious! By far my favorite thing from the market. To my surprise, although I should've expected it, there was a part of the wall right next to the park. There was actually someone drawing on the wall right before me. There was a band playing in the park and a great atmosphere of fun and excitement. It was a wonderful way to end the weekend. I made my way to the train station to catch a train to the airport. This entire weekend, I’ve noticed that trains and trams and every sort of public transportation in Berlin is on-time if not early. My train pulled out 1 minute early! It was crazy how prompt the Germans are! Very remarkable. When I finally got home to my kot in Belgium, I relaxed, wrote my blog and slept for 10 hours! Clearly an exhausting but exciting weekend. | |