If I travel in January, I shouldn’t expect good weather. I wasn’t, in fact, expecting good weather, but somehow I think I ended up both over and under preparing for it.
My journey to Berlin began on the tail of my journey back to the UK from California. In a moment of glorious impulsivity in December, I had peeked at flight prices to Berlin from London and the results would’ve convinced me to beg the airlines to take my money. Seriously, its incredible how easy it is to jet around here. The small gap between my return from California on a Thursday (Wednesday is the cheapest day to take off from an airport, in my experience, and cheaper is better when you’re planning a long journey like that across the pond) and my return to my program on the following Monday afforded a neat window of time to explore the historic city of Berlin and visit my friend Michael, who was studying abroad there on extension from UC Davis.
My tight logistical planning resulted in a complicated dance of airport navigation. I arrived at London Heathrow after a relatively short 9 hour flight from California, immediately went to collect my larger luggage and drop it off at the ‘left luggage’ desk for later collection. I then hopped on a bus to London Luton, the second of three London airports I would visit on this trip.
While Easy Jet’s prices certainly are easy, its luggage restrictions are not. Despite no increased advantage in saved space, I was asked to consolidate my backpack and laptop case, and my attempts to appease resulted in a Frankenstine’s monster: I stuffed my laptop into my track backpack and strapped the laptop case around the front, securing it with its own shoulder strap and copious amounts of anti-physics magical thinking. While I did then have one piece of luggage, I cannot say that the resulting sphere of mashed personals really made my presence any easier on other passengers or on space conservation. As it happened, no one sat next to me in my row of the plane, so I’m not sure it was entirely necessary anyway.
The flight to Berlin was uneventful, apart from a group of young British persons who decided to speak across the length of the plane in loud voices, and the headache I discovered when the altitude decided to get into an argument with my head cold. In any case, it was only an hour’s flight, and when I arrived in Berlin Schönfeld, I made it through airport security with a total of (1) suspicious looks, (1) nonverbal requests to remove my hat, and (0) questions about my intentions in the country.
With very little sleep and approaching 30+ hours of travel time, I was very proud of myself for navigating the German Bahn system to the section of the city my friend lived in. In fact, I only managed to go the wrong direction when on foot, after leaving the long train ride, and even then didn’t make any further wrong turns and was able to find my way back to the station to be picked up like some lost and very tired luggage.
Fortunately, it wasn’t snowing, but as Michael had somehow managed to lead me to believe Berlin would be embanked in snow, I was dragging around some very heavy, though warm, Scottish harris tweed. Somewhat over prepared…
On Friday, Michael took me on a walking tour of Berlin. If you ever have the chance to be walked around a city by a history major, I highly recommend it. They acquire the most amusing factoids, and actually pay attention to the significance of the area they live in.
Our first stop was Humbolt University, where he was supposed to go for class that morning. While we totally missed the class, it was still worth stopping in for a look at the “thought stairs” and an attempt to find the Marx stained glass window somewhere in the building (we didn’t find it). The thought stairs are a large set of steps up to the next level of the university building that start on the ground floor and split half way up to travel in opposite directions along the wall for the upper portion. The words “Mind your step” are written in German on each and every step as you ascend. While there is no official interpretation of these words, several come to mind… It could be that the steps are a comment on the “ladder of success”, an admonition to watch your step with each and every upward motion, because you could fall at any time. This could apply equally to the individual students who come to the university to better themselves or to the German nation as a whole, which for historical reasons, might fear falling yet again as they, being quite a prosperous and powerful nation as a whole, rise up again to the ranks of leading nations. The steps could also be an admonition to watch where you step: the implication being that climbing the ladder of success should only be done with the utmost caution for the cost or the consequences. Again, obvious implications for individuals and for the German nation.
In the other direction, such repetition of this phrase could be ironic: in watching yourself be warned to watch your step, you no longer are watching where you step. Are we so distractible that our own self-warnings can prevent us from actually being warned? I think so- I certainly wasn’t watching the step, but rather the words.
Another irony might be the omnipresent warning ignored… Hundreds of students tromp over these steps everyday with nary a thought to what they say but focused rather on where they’re trying to get to. Perhaps no matter how many times we warn ourselves, we will lose the meaning we try to grasp if it loses its novelty, only to be gained again by the unexpected fall? But then, do we really need the written warning?
Another significant commentary on self-awareness and the value of knowledge lay right across the street from the University. The square was the site of a famous early-days book burning before WWII, and a memorial featuring empty bookshelves placed under glass below the street level provided an understated marker of the event and its consequences.
The opera house situated on the square was under construction, but the construction walls separating the work site from the public space featured some very interesting historical information about this location in Berlin, including surrounding buildings like the domed cathedral or church where a famous German Catholic had made a political statement by praying for the Jews after Krystalnacht. As with most large cities, there seems to be perennial construction in Berlin, but interestingly, most sites like this one made an effort to detail some aspect of German (WWII) history on the walls, including displays of old photographs and maps.
I saw this use of construction walls again near Checkpoint Charlie, where the city displayed photographs of the area from before the fall of the wall. The checkpoint is most prominently marked by a large billboard on which a soldier from each side is displayed on opposing sides of the billboard. These soldiers weren’t guards at the point or even from the same era in which the point functioned… According to Michael’s accumulated local trivia, the American soldier was actually a tuba player in the army. Also according to Michael’s Accumulated Local Trivia (MALT), the men who spend the day dressed in soldier’s uniforms, carrying flags from each side of the checkpoint, and taking pictures with tourists are also employed at night as strippers...
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| The Tuba player... I think. |
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| Other side of the Tuba player. |
Anyway, on our way to checkpoint Charlie, we passed two very similarly constructed buildings that double as memorials… the first was a dome built in the 1700s for the significant French population living in Berlin at the time. The second was the same building, built for Germans, just a few meters taller, though supposedly built from the “same” plan. I imagine someone got envious.
On our walk around the city I also started to notice the numerous bear sculptures scattered along the streets, each seemingly dedicated to a different culture living in Berlin. We also stopped in an amazing chocolate shop: indescribable, only tastable. As I don’t suggest you lick your computer screen, I will recommend to taste with your eyes:
Beyond Checkpoint Charlie we found the museum “Topography of Terror”, a display of the buildings and documentation of the activities of the SS and other secret police organizations involved in the Nazi party domination of Germany. The building itself was situated on the site of the former SS headquarters and featured a bleak, stark landscape and a glimpse into the brick basement of the former building.
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| Basements from the ruins of the SS Headquarters at the Topography of Terror Museum |
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| I was really fascinated by the various stamped bricks used to construct this basement. Who made them? |
Thoroughly sobered by the neat documentation of a systematic program of oppression and extermination, we decided to lighten the mood and burden our stomachs with one of Berlin’s favorite foods: currywurst.
currywurst (noun): a bratwurst with a bun, drowned in ketchup, seasoned with a mysterious brown saucy of a soy-sauce like consistency, and uniformly overlain with a fine curry powder. Confusing, yet German and oddly delicious.
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| THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a Currywurst Truck. |
I’m not kidding. They love their currywurst.
Another food related bit of MALT: quite near the former SS headquarters, the location of Hitler’s former office is now occupied by a generic Chinese food restaurant. Revenge is glorious.
We were extremely fortunate that the currywurst stand was just across the street and covered: just as we were leaving the Topography of Terror, the rain started and the wind picked up. Having left my umbrella behind (why?!) we could only take shelter and wait it out. The weather, however, had no intentions of letting us off easy, and as the rain started getting even harder and the wind picked up even more, blowing postcards off the stands nextdoor and scattering them about on the muddy sidewalk, we decided to make a break for the S Bahn.
Too late!! As soon as we got a few feet out from under the currywurst stand, the hailstorm started, and we had to dash for shelter while being pelted by little beads of ice and shouted at by thunder gods. We only just managed to hide under an office building’s overhang before it turned into this:
We were a bit underprepared for this. But why would anything go right?
By this time, it was nearly dusk, but I had one more sightseeing location on my itinerary: the Brandenburg Tor (Brandenburg Gate). The hailstorm and most of the rain had passed, leaving the entrances to the underground S Bahn system a bit flooded, and we braved the lingering idea of rain to venture out of the S Bahn which opened straight in front of the gate. The Brandenburg Tor is beautiful, especially when lit up for the approaching dark, and even in heavy rain again and thunder.
Apparently, MALT informed me, Napoleon stole the statue on top of the gate when he conquered Berlin, and while Germany got it back eventually, it was then destroyed (along with everything else) during WWII. What sits there now (to my small disappointment) is a replica.
Once we had returned to Michael’s, dried off, and gotten dinner, we headed out to a local Berlin cafe/bar to check out the nightlife. Or as much of it as we could stand… I really loved the artwork on the walls, and the atmosphere was great. I’m still confused about the mixed beer and lemonade though- it tasted like yeast and lemonade, as you might at first expect, though you dismiss this expectation as ridiculous (for seriously? Why would that be one of the most popular drinks in the city. There’s really something strange about Berliner tastebuds). |
| We're sopping wet with melting hail. |
Next up: Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum and the Berlin Wall
