Berlin is a very odd town. Very cool, but very odd. When I got in, I took the train from the airport on the outskirts to downtown. To get to my hostel I would have had to then take a bus, but looking at my map I thought I could handle the walk. Turns out that I should have checked the scale on my map. What looked like a 5 minute stroll turned into a 30 minute adventure through prostitute infested streets all the while paranoid that someone was going to sneak up behind me. The moral of the story is, don't arrive in big cities late at night when you're carying all your valuables. I was totally safe, but definitly on the paranoid side.
12/20: Day 1
So yeah, I said Berlin is odd ... it just doesn't feel like any other city I've been to. It's a weird patchwork of architectural styles ranging from the ugly to the hideous. You make your own judgement on where this building lies on the scale:
Those familiar with the UW campus should recognize this:
It's a town of weird sculptures ...
where lego giraffes can run free and wild.
Inside the Sony center, which apparantly was designed to resemble Mt. Fuji.
The "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" which is only a few years old.
Walking through it is a really bizarre experience. At the time there weren't many people in there, but you would catch glimpses of people out of the corner of your eye, sound would play really weird in there, and the ground was really uneven. It really evoked a very unpleasant feeling of paranoia.
The Brandenburg Gate, which is the only remaining of the old city's gates and miraculously survived the bombing and Soviet invasion. The gate was in the death strip on the East side of the Berlin wall.
Right next to the gate was the American embassy, French embassy, a fancy investment bank designed by Frank Gehry and a famous hotel. I can't recall the name, but you might recognize it from the following photo (not taken by me ...)
The Berlin Wall. The pipe on the top was put there so that it would be difficult for people to get a good grip on anything while they were attempting to scale the wall into West Berlin. Ironically, the pipe was purchased from West Berlin, under the guise of a irrigation project.
133 people were confirmed to have been killed attempting to escape.
"Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the traitors have often used."
The French Cathedral, which has its roots from when French Huguenots settled in Berlin.
A memorial to the Nazi book burning. It is a glass window looking down into the ground at the spot it occurred. Inside are just empty book shelves.
A statue of a woman with her dead son that was inspired by WWI. Yeah, Berlin is filled with uplifting monuments you can tell ...
Most of the above I saw on a free walking tour through New Berlin. Our guide was phenomenal and the tour really made the trip. He was talking a bit about some of the dumb questions he had received over his time giving the tours. His favorite was "Why would Hitler put his bunker so close to the Berlin Wall?"
Me standing in front of a segment of the Berlin Wall with a friendly looking dude posing to my right.
A sledding hill set up in the middle of town:
The stop light you see in the lower left corner is a recreation of the first stop light in Europe.
The interior of a Frank Gehry building next to the Brandenburg Gate.
That night all the museums were free from like 4 pm to 10 pm, so I went to the Pergamon Museum. Despite the fact that the name of the museum sounds like a childrens Anime TV show, it was a very impressive display of things Germany stole from the rightful owners. The museum name comes from the following altar which was "recovered" in Turkey.
The Ishtar gate from Babylon.
The animal here has the head and body of a snake, the tail of a scorpion, the front legs of a tiger and the back legs of a eagle. It is the only creature that can compete with the Liger's skills in magic.
A weird sculpture near my hostel.
And thus concluded my first day in Berlin. I was exhausted from walking, just as you're exhausted from reading.
12/21: Day 2
The next day I woke up early to go and see the Reichstag. The building was burned down in Hitler's rise to power. He blamed the burning on the communists, and used it as an excuse to jail political opponents. When the capital of Germany was once again made to be Berlin following reunification it was refurbished with a massive glass dome on the top.
The dome also allows visiters to look in on the legislative chambers meaning that the people can look down on their government as opposed to the other way around.
Berlin from the top of the Reichstag.
Some monuments to people who died attempting to cross the Berlin Wall.
There was a museum under the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
Heavy stuff written by a 12 year old girl ...
The Victory Column
Those are icicles hanging above me ... it was eff'n cold.
A statue near the Victory Monument ... I imagine he's reading some religious text or something ...
Oh, nope. My mistake.
More Legos inside the Sony Center.
I then met up with my flat-mate Ralf for a brief tour of a few last things before he escourted me to the Haufbahnhof (central station) which is an amazing structure. Here it is with all it's Christmas lights in full swing.
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