Ah, this town has seen it all! Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Berlin has seen destruction and disgrace but came out the other side with style and grace.

The idea for the trip came from Monica, who wanted to do an architectural tour and asked if Jason and I would like to join. I got so excited that I immediately started doing research on places to go, bars to check out, and interesting monuments to see. I am really glad Monica invited us!

The best overall day has to be the New Berlin Tours of East Berlin. It is a free tour that starts at the Brandenburg Gate, walking from site to site for 4 hours. Now had it not been for our incredible guide, Glynn, it could have been the most tedious four hours of my life. But instead, we had lucked out and got an energetic, hilarious, good story teller. The day was mixed with serious information and monuments and funny anecdotes.

It is hard to keep things from getting heavy when you are staring at the former Nazi Luftwaffe building, Communist oppression, or the Holocaust memorial but Glynn managed to do it. He included hopeful insight and light humor that helped keep the facts serious without me slipping into a depression. Here are some of the most haunting but beautiful images from our tour.

Our second day, we ventured out on our own. We started with a visit to the Reichstag. We had been warned to go early, or experience a three hour line to get in. So we got up early, headed down with our coffees, stood in a fairly small line, and congratulated ourselves on beating the crowds. Then a surly guard came out and told us something (in German) that ended being “Hey idiots you are in the wrong line. This entrance is for people who have appointments with government officials not tourists wanting to see the bloody building”. Uh…whoops. So around the building to the real line already fairly long (but surprisingly fast). The glass dome in the middle of the building is the only part that visitors are allowed to see, but the cool thing is you can look down on the floor of parliament. And as Glynn put it the day before, Parliament can look up and see up women’s skirts.

Next we hit the Kulturforum and the embassies of the Nordic Countries. All I have to say is that I think Jason now wants to visit Norway.

Afterwards we headed to Bernauer Strasse. A famous street where the Wall actually cut through the street, buildings, and lives. It was the site of people jumping from buildings on the east to get to the sidewalk which was the west, a church stuck in the “death zone” between the two walls, and countless sad stories. The church was knocked down during the Cold War, but when the Wall came down, people wanted to rebuild. The Chapel of Reconciliation is the monument to the church and to its story. It is a beautifully sad building. In most of Berlin, the Wall was knocked down and destroyed, most people never wanting to set their eyes on it again. But in order to teach the future, one must see into the past, so part of the wall on Bernauer is preserved. It is a small section, but both walls still stand and the “death zone” between them. It is eerie to stand from the observation tower and peer down into this empty land sealed in a box.

Our last stop was the Jewish Museum. Daniel Libeskind designed an amazingly creepy building with very few right angles and some disorientating rooms.

The building is very distinctive from other museums, since it does not respond to any functional requirements, but is rather constructed to create spaces that tell the story of the Jewish people in Germany. The museum itself is a work of art, blurring the lines between architecture and sculpture.
The view from above is that of a large zig-zag line, which earned it the nickname “blitz”, German word for thunderbolt. The main building is covered with zinc plating, and the windows are just lines that cross the surface in a random fashion. These lines were created from connecting different sites in a Berlin map that are important to Jewish history. This building has no access of any kind from the street. The entrance is located in an adjacent building, a museum of German history, through a staircase and tunnel embedded in a concrete tower that goes through all the floors of the German museum. This symbolizes that German and Jewish history are inseparable, violent and secret. The entrance to the museum is intentionally made difficult and long to instill in the visitor the feeling of challenge and hardship that is distinctive of Jewish history.

The highlight of the museum was the Garden of Exile. This is a disorienting space all of angles that are close to ninety degrees but not quite there. The ground slopes, and tall pillars rise up at just the wrong angle. The tops of the pillars, far away, are covered with olive trees, but down at the bottom, they seem like an unattainable goal.

Friday we took things a little slower. We visited the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche. A very old church destroyed by Allied bombings in 1943, which is now encircled by the new chapel and bell tower leaving the old shell still standing. The inside of the new chapel is an amazing blue, it is incredibly peaceful.

We had paced ourselves for a reason…Monica and I were going to a music concert! Rufus Wainwright was in town and playing at the Volksbuhne Theater. It was an unusual concert. Most of the audience stayed perfectly still in the their seats, only clapping, very appreciatively, between songs. Monica and I must have looked ridiculous clapping and bouncing our heads to the songs. It was a great show, nice to see a music concert in a real theater where you can drink in the foyer and feel a little classy (unlike the concrete arenas where you drink out of a plastic cup and feel like you are at a sports match).

Afterwards we met back up with Jason and watched him purchase a bottle of absinth. Which, of course, involved much sampling of various wares and story-telling with the owner of the shop. The store, The Absinth Depot Berlin, was very interesting, it felt like we were in Paris in the 1800s. The variety in absinths is pretty huge, between the Swiss varieties, the French varieties, the shitty Czech ones, and the American artesanals.

So all in all, Berlin is one cool town! And, of course, also check out our write up of what we did during our evenings in Berlin!

And, go check out some more of our pictures!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 6:31 pm by Corrie and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.