The first thing I can say with certainty about Berlin is that it is the ever-changing city. From any view over the city you look one direction and see construction & cranes, turn to the next to see the same...and the same. It´s young, vibrant, active and very much an alive city. Definitely tied with London as my favourite city so far. Recently they asked themselves what Paris and London have that they don't. Apparently the answer was a huge, old cathedral, because they have now built a huge one that was designed to look old and grand. Now the "fun and kind, but a very bad politician" mayor is reconstructing the old Berlin Palace...a 32million € project for Berlin. We are told 1\8 are unemployed, and it doesn't exactly seem popular. Berliners are also very keen on rules. Nobody jaywalks, even if it's huge crowds waiting for no cars. We're told it's because it sets a bad example for children, as well as for safety. Bus passes are something everybody buys, though it's mostly on an honour system (if ticket patrol jumps on to check tickets and you don't have one you get fined). They are also exact in their timing and transactions. Keelin and I are actually taking a break from hostels to stay with her sort-of relative Alison, husband and clown Sven, and their two adorable children. Not only do they give us a comfy place to stay and hot showers, but they feed us delicious suppers (Sven's a former cook), give us loads of advice and help, and together we drink and chat the evenings away. We owe them BIG.
Most of Berlin's museums are located on Museum Island, where we had to decide between them. We visited the National Museum with its vast history of Germany, and strong focus on the Nazi impact. Next we went to the Pergamon Museum on Alison's recommendation and were very impressed: huge ancient Greek columns & mythical statues covered the walls, and there was an enormous room that was covered floor to ceiling in an ancient bright blue gate that had some new parts, but was modelled after the ancient Uruk metropolitan palace. Most of the exhibit focused on ancient Uruk artificats, from the city that is thought to have made huge original contributions to language, writing, and administration. The Jewish Museum was very modern and artsy, containing lots of dark voids in the walls with jagged edges representing the loss of Jews to German society. It also included The Tower- a dark, stone room with a high ceiling and a sliver of light at the top, giving the entrant a cold, fearful & hopeless feeling that starts to creep in. Another impressive piece was The Memory Void: Fallen Leaves, a sea of 10,000 metal faces with mouths open in screams that you can walk over and hear the clanking and rattling. We went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where over 60,000 people were imprisoned and mostly used for labour if they were strong enough. The remains of Tower Z was most emotional because that's where people were shot or gassed and exterminated. Even once liberated by the Allies, the building was still under use but this time by the Soviets. We also went through an underground tour that took us through the bomb bunkers and huge underground system of just one section of Berlin.
On our tour we hit the main Holocaust Memorial, which is a large cobblestone area with huge grey columns of varying sizes in rows to walk around. We walked along the remaining pieces of the wall separating East & West, and all across the city the former lines are marked on the ground in plaques. Tiergarden is a huge park with monuments, rivers, and a nudist section full of jolly old men. We met up with a group of backpackers and strolled through the huge Sunday Flea Market (sorry cousins, way better than Port Elgin's), beside which was a huge green field full of different musicians and performers in every direction: people salsa dancing, jugglers, Reggae, and our favourite, a huge stone staircase full of young, sweaty, and usually drinking & shirtless happy people singing & swaying with karaoke below them going on over loudspeakers.The alternate city tour took us through an amazing exploration of Berlin's famous street art, an exhibition, and the incredible graffiti of the East End wall. We went to a community beach bar there, and another night did a beach bar and at 2:30am a very popular club right now called Suicide Circus in the local club area under subway tracks. One room is neon, bright and electro, then the next is open air, vines, canopy's and Reggae. When we finally went home at 5:30 the locals were lining up to go in.
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