I'm not sure quite what I was expecting the city to be...as a student of the German language, you can't help learning a good deal about the city over the course of your education. Berlin is, of course, best known to the world as the greatest representation of a divided Germany; a city that was split down it's center from 1961 to 1989 by an intimidating barrier of very real, physical proportions. For a student of German (and it is now hard for me to differentiate between what I would clearly remember from history classes--though much of this was, at some point, covered--and what I know from language study) the city's name also conjures images of post-war destruction and poverty, newspaper photographs of demonstrations and rallies, and the visits of dignitaries and celebrities as they peered over the wall from West Germany. In my Deutsch als Fremdsprache course in the fall, we covered post-war German history, and much of this centered around Berlin because of it's identity as the nexus of political and social struggle leading up to eventual reunification. There was a particularly moving song we listened to, along with its accompanying video, called "Mein Berlin" by Reinhard Mey. Unfortunately I couldn't find the video on youtube, because I really wanted to embed it here. It was written in 1990 by a musician who was born in Berlin in 1942 and spent much of his life there, and discusses his own memories of the great transitions that the city has undergone over the years, beginning with the freezing winter of 1946 and the occupation of the city. I guess with all of my exposure to the city in an academic and historical setting, I was expecting something...I don't know, a little grungy, maybe. Something vibrant, yes, but visibly scarred in some way. I wouldn't say the city is not these things, but it was just so much more.
One thing I will say about Berlin is that it does not, in any way, shy away from its history. We spent the morning of my first full day at the DDR Museum, which was definitely worth the visit and well put together, if extremely crowded. They have done a lot with a small space and present a very interactive and engaging look back at life in the DDR, including a perspective that is both critical and appreciative of the appropriate aspects of the government and daily life for citizens. We also visited the East Side Gallery--where select artists have been invited to paint on a preserved section of the well--and Potsdamer Platz, where a few individual sections of the wall still stand, separated by informational signs, and a dark strip of pavement runs through the square and sidewalk where the wall once stood. It was unbelievable for me to stand there and try to picture the square split along the linen of the wall...it just felt very unreal, and yet conjured up the photos of people dropping out of their first or second floor windows to escape into West Germany before the wall was completed and the adjacent windows bricked up.
The other great impression I had while I was there was that Berlin is the expat love child of Paris and New York that didn't feel like moving in with either of its parents and relocated to Germany. Some areas of the city were a little grittier, edgier...others were extremely gentrified, elegant, and heavily influenced with more established culture, and sections of it are also populated with tall, glassy office buildings...it has an old European feel with an edgy kick and some modern injections that I hadn't quite seen anywhere else. And the food---oh the food. After 10 months in Tuebingen, it was so refreshing to walk down the street and see restaurants labeled with the kind of Asian cuisine they were serving! Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian, African...Berlin had it all, and it was delicious. We indulged in Indian, tested out a vegetarian Chinese restaurant with enormous portions, and Josh and I had to give Burgermeister a go--the famous Berlin hamburger joint operating out of a former restroom hut under the S-Bahn track.
Brandenburger Tor
At the Holocaust Memorial, which looks deceptively low until you walk into it and discover the ground slopes downward
The inside view of an absolutely incredible memorial
Sections of wall in Potsdamer Platz
The world clock
Berliner Dom
...right next to the DDR museum!
I would love a Trabi....
I also discovered my current detergent brand was originally East German
It's Europe, so where would we be without fountains?
Burgermeister!
Josh's face spells out exactly how excited we were for our burger--they even cut it in half for us! This thing more closely approximated Five Guys than any other I have had in Germany. Ever.
A section of the East Side Gallery
My favorite section of the gallery
A view of the Reichstag over the water
At the Reichstag
I had to take a late afternoon train to Kiel on Friday, but I spent the morning at the Pergamon Museum and the Altes Museum on the Museuminsel. The city has it's own "Museum Island", which houses several different museums with enormous art and archaeological collections. I wish I could have spent two full days here, but just didn't have the time. As a student, you can get a ticket that gets you into all museums on the island (minus the special, temporary exhibitions) for 6.50. Not bad! The Pergamon Museum boasts a large collection of architectural sculpture from the temple at the site of Pergamon, as well as some other artifacts, and a huge reconstruction of the temple facade. It also has a great collection of material from western and central Asia.
The Altes Museum is the place to go for Greek, Roman, and Etruscan archaeology. They had a number of famous sculptures and pots that I had been dying to see, and after four hours of museums, I was very happy but a bit weary.
The reconstruction of the temple at Pergamon
More unbelievable reconstructions (this time of the gates of Babylon)
I just nerd out for this stuff--way too much fun
Cheramyes Kore, real, in the...marble. Unbelievable!
The Berlin Kore, arguably one of the most famous pieces in the collection, in my opinion
My favorite vase by the Berlin Painter...am I boring you yet? We'll move on!
I arrived in Kiel on Friday night to visit my very dear friend, Ute. She was my brother's au-pair during my junior year of high school, and then spent another year with a family nearby afterwards. I wish he'd been younger and still needed an au-pair so she could have stayed with us longer, but alas, it wasn't in the cards. It was absolutely wonderful to see her, and she surprised me by getting off of work for the night and picking me up at the train station! We dropped my things off and went to have dinner and drinks at the (absolutely wonderful) restaurant where she works. It's always nice being somewhere with a person who works at the place...a lot less thought has to go into ordering, and we let Ute take care of selecting our drinks!
The next day, we slept in very late (hey, we had been up late, alright?) and then went for a long walk around the city, which is a really wonderful place right on the water. It doesn't have the height profile of some of its counterparts that I've visited, which I greatly appreciated. There was a lot going on, but not too much congestion or traffic, which is a huge plus in my book .
We went down to part of the harbor to see the water and have some fish!
At the waterfront...they have a rowing club!
A large cruise ship leaving port
My fish with fries made fresh out of three different types of potatoes (those are purple, not burnt!). The fish guy was very knowledgeable, chatty, and had some very impressive stuff. This is high quality friend food, my friends, I promise!
Ute, with her shrimp toast. Did I mention it was cold??
On my final morning, we headed out to see the university and took a walk through the botanical gardens. They have a beautiful outdoor area, organized by world geographical region and exhibiting some stunning stuff. The real gem was the greenhouses, where we got a reprieve from the chill and even acquired some plants for Ute!
You can just see the humidity in here
Ute checking out the varieties of tree in here
It's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks since that trip, mostly just getting work done in Tuebingen and trying to buckle down between taxing Biergarten time with friends. Things are going to pick up again, though, and I have only five weeks left at this point! This coming weekend it looks like I may be taking an impromptu trip to Paris to visit with family who are vacationing there, the following weekend I'll be going back to Neustadt to see my friend, Friedie, her family, and my brother who is on a school trip to Germany! The following weekend I have my birthday, then I'm spending another few days up visiting two other au-pairs, Melanie and Carina, in Hannover and Muenster. Then I have one last week in Tuebingen, and I'm off back to the States on the 23rd! I can't believe how close I am to the end of this year...it feels like just a few weeks ago it was freezing winter and I felt like I would never hear back from my grad programs and figure my plans out. Now I'm running out of time in Tuebingen, and it's incredible how nostalgic this makes me and how much I'm appreciating all the parts of life here that have just been mundane and normal since October or so. Ice cream cafes, cheap grocery shopping, beer, the Biergarten, lying in the sun, but mostly food and friends. I have to be careful otherwise I'll blink and be home!
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