Hello all, I am currently in Munich.
I left off my tale in Berlin at about 4:30 a.m. I let myself sleep in rather late, in time to grab a coffee and croissant and meet the New Europe free tour at 11 a.m. in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Berlin is where the free tour company started, so this tour was very popular and I would have to say very excellent.
My guide, Mary, was very infectiously interested in German history. From the Brandenburg Gate, we made our way past the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe". I put that in quotations because I think it is significant that the memorial only commemorates a certain group. The memorial consists of stone blocks of varying heights on uneven ground, probably to make the viewer feel uncomfortable. A central theme in the tour was the way that German society grapples with the theme of the Holocaust and how best to remember what happened.
Our next stop was the remaining section of the Berlin Wall. Not going to lie, I was actually kind of disappointed! There is so much buildup for the Berlin Wall that it is almost impossible for the remaining segment to meet your expectations. We also saw "Checkpoint Charlie", among other sites. Our tour took place almost exclusively in East Berlin, which is where more of the sites are. It is hard to actually imagine, a city divided by a wall, West Berlin in the middle of Soviet East Germany. I'm not the world's biggest history buff, but it was pretty incredible to be walking the streets of probably the most influential city of the 20th century. 90% of the city's buildings were destroyed in World War II, and you can very definitely still see the scars. I guess that's a major contradiction; I was underwhelmed by seeing the Berlin Wall yet seeing the history on the streets of Berlin was amazing.
One of our next stops after a lunch break was Bebelplatz, the square outside the library of Humboldt University where students and professors started burning books that went against the ideals of the Nazi regime. The memorial is underground, visible through a window in the middle of the plaza and consists of empty bookshelves, that would be filled by the destroyed books.
The tour was three hours and I'm not looking at a map of Berlin, so I don't remember every stop in detail, but the tour definitely communicated strong themes. I suppose the free tour in Amsterdam tried to show how the "openness and toleration" of that city seen today in coffeeshops and the Red Light District evolved from its history, but in Berlin you really felt like you understood the city so much better after the tour. Berlin is not the most beautiful city in Germany, but it is very real and liveable, and it probably is the most interesting city in Germany.
From there, I made my way out to the Olympic Stadium. It was my first experience with the public transportation system in Berlin, which is quite obviously excellent. On my way out to the stadium I noticed the destroyed Kaiser Wilhelm II Memorial Cathedral and hopped off the train to have a look. The church was severely damaged during World War II and has been left as is, its damaged towers a beautiful reminder of that era. There is now a separate sanctuary built in a very different modern style, but there is an interesting exhibit of "before and after" photos below what remains of the towers.
I got back on the train and got off at the Olympic Stadium. As I approached, I noticed there were a lot of people dressed in all black. When I saw a young child with an extreme mullet, I started to think that there must be some sort of event at the stadium. Indeed, there was a Depeche Mode concert later that evening, so I couldn't get in. I made my way back to the S-Bahn, disappointed but amused by the crowd chanting "Depeche Mode" in a very German accent.
I went to the exhibit in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is free. The intent is to make the stories personal, centering on individuals and families rather than throwing out the mind-boggling statistics, which we can become numb to after a while. In one room, it is dark, with names and dates projected onto the walls. A narrator tells a brief story about that individual. I was very disappointed when a group of high school students was being obnoxious. The guard had to ask them to leave, and one of them made a commotion. I would say, ah, teenagers, what can you expect, but I really can't understand because even as a "rowdy teenager" I was very quiet...especially in such situations that really warranted such respect. There is really nothing funny about hearing the life story of someone who died in a concentration camp.
From there I walked to the Reichstag, the German parliament building. The Reichstag was not really used until the Weimar Republic. A suspicious fire in the early 1930s was used as pretext by Hitler to seize power as a dictator. It sat unused again until Germany unified. Today, there is a striking glass dome on top, that is supposed to represent "the transparency of democracy". Anyone can take the elevator up to the top for free. There is also a free audioguide, and I SWEAR mine wasn't working. I went back to the desk, and the employees didn't believe me, laughing and telling me that it was automatic. It is more high-tech than your average audio guide, but I did exactly what they said multiple times and nothing happened. I was so frustrated that the employees couldn't even be bothered to try to help me. It colored my experience on top of the Reichstag, which affords you a panoramic view of the entire city.
After that, I got some falafel for dinner and just made my way back to the hostel. I used the internet for a while and went to sleep...or as much sleep as you can get in a room with 49 other people. It actually was a decent setup, all of my stuff was in my locker on that floor. The only problem is that, as in any hostel dorm, your roommates and their consideration of your need to sleep determines your ability to sleep. That night the annoying Spanish guys from the night before decided to call it an earlier night...and had a long conversation in the dorm. Earplugs are a godsend, but they don't block out everything.
I got up early the next morning to go to the Olympic Stadium again. Berlin is my host mother Cristina's favorite city in Europe, and she has told me many times how the thing that impressed her the most was seeing the track where Jesse Owens ran in 1936, winning the gold medal and challenging Hitler's theory or Aryan superiority. I arrived at the stadium at 9 a.m., just as it was slated to open. It had been raining when I left the hostel, but I hadn't gone back to get my umbrella, or stopped for any coffee or breakfast, to make it there at that time. That morning I noticed a sign that had been blocked by the concertgoers the night before: the Olympic Stadium is closed to visitors from June 5 to June 15, because of two events, one of which was the Depeche Mode concert. I couldn't believe it. I could understand the day of, maybe even the day before or after having to close, but...
As luck would have it, I had been making my contingency plan on the way there on the S-Bahn. Most state museums are open until 10 p.m. on Thursdays and free after 6, but the Hamburger Bahnof, the contemporary art museum closed at 6. I ran back to the hostel for my umbrella (good life decision), and would have made it to the museum shortly after it opened at 10 a.m. except in my fury I couldn't spot the entrance and ended up walking the entire perimeter of the building first. The building is in a former train station (no d'Orsay though), and is under construction, so only a portion of the museum was open. They have a good collection of Warhol, and some Kiefers for Diane. There is a big section on fluxus, so there was a lot of Beuys. I wish I'd had more time to look at the pieces in detail, but I didn't. Patrick, look up "I like America and America likes me" and let me know your thoughts.
I ducked out of the museum at 10:45 to make it back to the Gate with a coffee to meet another New Berlin tour. That day I took a paying tour, again with Mary, to Sachsenhausen, the model concentration camp outside of Berlin. I'm going to stop here so I can devote enough time to writing about that, but it was quite an experience, probably furthered by the gray skies and off-and-on rain.
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