Berlin - Everything Else

This should be my last update about Berlin - unless there is more that you guys want me to talk about, in which case let me know.

This is one of many decorated bear statues found throughout the city. The bear is a symbol for Berlin and is featured on the flag, seal, etc.

This is the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz - it's kind of like a giant open-air mall with restaurants, shops, and a movie theater.

Inside the Sony Center

The roof

A giant Lego giraffe - they had a small indoor Legoland at the Sony Center - unfortunately I didn't get a chance to check it out.

Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) - one of the few old buildings remaining in Berlin, this church was heavily damaged in WWII and only partially restored.

The ceiling inside the church - the artwork commemorates the coronation of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The text reads "Wilhelm I: King of the Prussians, German Kaiser" "German Kaiser" is a clever title since it sounds a lot like "Kaiser of Germany" but it actually just means that he's a German who is also a Kaiser.

More ceiling

Former German Kings/Kaisers/Princes - I managed to cover up the caption explaining who each person is

A model showing what the church used to look like

The destroyed back half of the church

Schloss Sanssouci - this is one of Fredrick the Great's summer homes, located in Potsdam. It is heavily influenced by the French chateaus of the period, hence the French name, "sans souci," means "without worry" - a fitting name for a summer retreat. Sanssouci is a vinyard and the decoration reflects this with a lot of grape/vine themed paintings, molding, etc. as well as lots of Dionysos (the greek god of wine) imagery. Unfortunately, I wasnt allowed to take pictures inside but I would describe it as lavish and drafty - with all of the marble it was pretty obvious that the place wasn't well suited to being much more than a summer home.

The vinyard out back. I bet it looks a lot nicer in the summer.

a windmill near Sanssouci

This is the theater we went to on Friday night. The show was called "Das Versprechen" (the promise) and it was pretty intense crime story that was really hard for me to follow - there were some parts that were exagerated/metaphorical and I just took them literally because I was only catching every other word or so. It made more sense once Lutz explained it to me afterward. The show was pretty effects heavy (cap guns, fake blood, thrown bottles of soda) and we were sitting in the front row, so a few people managed to get fake blood on them.

Finally, this is a goofy dog that was waiting outside an Apotheke (drug store) in Kreutzberg.

As always, comments and questions are welcome and encouraged.

Berlin - Kreutzberg

On Saturday morning we took a 3 hour foot tour of Kreutzberg ("Kreu" rhymes with "boy"), one of Berlin's boroughs with an especially large immigrant/punk/artist population. As you can see from the pictures, it's a pretty interesting place, but not really the part of town you would want to hang out in at night. Despite the poor appearances, Kreutzberg is in former West Berlin.

The "We so cool like New York in the 80's" spray captures Kreutzberg's culture completely

This is part of one of Kreutzberg's many parks, which was built where a canal once stood. The big open space in the center is an iced over "pond".

ever-present graffiti

The only building I saw in Kreutzberg without some form of graffiti on it, St. Thomas Kirche

inside

the organ

inside an art school

the door to the school

A former train station which was decommissioned after the city expanded/the U-Bahn was built. There is now a park where the tracks used to be.

An abandoned playground - apparently they built it out of porous stone that couldn't handle the winter so the stones cracked and the place had to be closed.

A view of the streets. Because of it's large immigrant population, Kreutzberg has a lot of Turkish/Arabic/Indian restaurants. I had lunch at a falafel place that was delicious and incredibly cheap - a cup of coffee and a falafel for 4 Euro. I'm not sure why they have a Mexican restaurant.

Speaking of Turks and Arabs, here's a mosque.

a church

cool graffiti

more cool graffiti

and finally, some militant Ampelmänner

Berlin - Berliner Mauer und Checkpoint Charlie

Despite the fact that it has been 20 years since the Berlin wall came down, the memory of two Germanys remains fresh in Berlin. Throughout the city, chunks of the wall remain and across streets and sidewalks stretch lines of brick, marking where it once stood.

Throughout my stay in Berlin, the wall managed to creep up whether I was looking for it or not. Here are the pictures I took relating to it:

Our tour on Thursday morning let us off briefly at Checkpoint Charlie to look around and take some pictures. The area was pretty touristed up but nonetheless interesting.

The building on the left is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum

on the opposite side of the American soldier picture

A reproduction of the famous sign (the real one is in the museum)

...and the other side

The guy in the fake American MP uniform was charging a Euro to take a picture with him.

The line marking where the wall stood at Checkpoint Charlie

A chunk of the wall in Potsdamer Platz

Ampelmann

Ampelmann, the East German crosswalk guy, has become a symbol of DDR nostalgia. Not all East Germans were escstatic about reunification and the difficulties that come with entering a capitalist society without any capital, having to start back at the bottom, working your way back up again and sometimes falling through the cracks. For many, there is a longing for the structue and stability of the DDR*. Ampelmann was the crosswalk light used in the DDR, and upon reunification, there was a strong push to preserve this symbol of the DDR. After quite a bit of fuss, Ampelmann and the West German crosswalk lights coexist in Berlin, often with both lights appearing at the same crossing.

To show you just how big of a deal this is to some people, here you can see the Ampelmann store, featuring all kinds of Ampelmann merchandise.

And finally another piece of the Berlin Wall in Mauerpark. This place is interesting since it is legal to spraypaint on the wall here so all of the work you see is very recent


Finally, this is Susie, one of our German student assistants, attempting to commit Republikflucht (illegally fleeing the Republic). Unfortunately, she's going the wrong way.

* If this sort of thing interests you, I recommend that you check out the film "Goodbye Lenin" which addresses this frustration, albeit indirectly.

Berlin - Reichstag/Brandenburger Tor Area

It's picture time! I decided to start this off with the main attraction: Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) and the Reichstag. Since this area was so close to our hostel (about a 20 min walk) I actually ended up going there about four times, which explains why the time of day/weather is so different between some of these pictures.

The Reichstag and Brandenburger Tor are located right in the center of the city in a 'borough' aptly named Mitte (middle). Brandenburger Tor is located on Strasse des 17. Juni/Unter den Linden in Pariser Platz and the Reichstag is less than a block away. To the west of the Gate is the Tiergarten (animal garden) a giant wooded park in the middle of the city, which apparently used to be a hunting ground for the Kaiser back in the day.

Here is a statue right on the edge of the Tiergarten, on the way to Pariser Platz

This is the Holocaust Memorial which is across the street from the Tiergarten and a block away from Brandenburger Tor, officially called Denkmal für die ermorden Juden Europas (Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe). It consists of thousands of stone slabs that get taller and deeper as you move through the memorial. It is supposed to evoke a sense of the desperation and loneliness of the Jews during the Holocaust.





This is a plaque in front of a small memorial for the homosexuals which were persecuted and killed during, and well after the Holocaust. The memorial consisted of a small dark building with a window you could look through to a screen running a short video clip of two men kissing. Click on the picture to enlarge it.


This is the American Embassy (you can see Brandenburger Tor in the distance on the left). The building was just completed last summer, finally returning to it's original location.

The other side of the Embassy (from Pariser Platz)

Brandenburger Tor at night from the west...

...and from the east during the day (with snow!)

The Reichstag from the side...

...and from the front ("Dem Deutschen Volke" means "to the German people")

Here you can see the work done on the stones to patch up bullet holes from the fighting that took place here in WWII.

This is a memorial right in front of the Reichstag for the German politicians who were killed for opposing the Nazis. Each stone has a person's name, where they died, and what party they belonged to (most were communists).

That's it for now - let me know if you have any questions or want to know more about any of this.