Berlin

Berlin is GREAT!!! I love it here. Not only is everything really cheap compared to the rest of the places I've been, the people are incredibly friendly and the city it Beautiful. I got in at about 8:00 in the morning, found my hostel with ease, and asked the clerk where all to go. I went to a FREE bike tour around the city that lasted for four hours, and I got to see all the major sites while orienting myself and scoping out what else I wanted to see. It was really awesome. We saw all sorts of museums, monuments, parks, stopped at a beer garden for some GREAT German beer and a giant pretzel, and just had a good time getting to meet people. Two places in particular that I'll mention are the place outside the Humboldt University library, where 20,000 Jewish books were burned, and the Memorial of the Murdered Jews (Commonly and erroneously referred to as the Holocaust Memorial).

The first one that I mentioned has a neat little memorial that you can see. It is a clear piece of glass that has empty shelves beneath it to represent the books that are missing due to the burning. Somewhat prophetically, about a century before the Holocaust, a man (whose name has escaped me) said that burning books will always result in burning people. Not just regarding the Holocaust but other mass slaughters in history progressed as such. So, as a result, the glass at the memorial is very reflective so that the person looking at it sees themself, as a reminder that each individual is responsible for supressing hate. Pretty powerful idea.

The Memorial for the Murdered Jews was neat, HUGE, and interesting to think about. The person who designed it never let the meaning out to public in order to inspire thoughts. My impression was that each stone was without identity of any sort. Sure, they were all unique in their own way, but there was no way to distingquish one from the other. This is how the Jews were treated during the concentration camps, stripped of all their identity and anything that would make them unique, even wedding rings. The sea of blocks just felt so plain and lifeless. That was my interprettation anyway. Interstingly, when the memorial was going to be built, several ideas were passed around, but this one won. However, in order to prevent neo-Nazis from defacing it, each stone was covered with an anti-graffiti chemical. It was later discovered though that the same company that supplied the chemical had also supplied the gas for the gas chambers in the death camps. This caused a public stir, but eventually it was used because that had already done many things for reparations.

Speaking of graffiti, Berlin has TONS of it, and it is actually really cool. Very artistically done (there's a picture on Kodak Gallery).

Anyway, after the bike ride, I went up the street to a nice little German restaurant and had some great beer and food (it was a glorified mac & cheese, but very good). While I was eating, a Hungarian guy probably in his forties joined me. He was on a business trip to sell street lamps and bid on a project here. We had a nice chat.

Next, I went back to the hostel and showered and got ready for a barcrawl that ended up being quite rowdy and fun. So much that the police got called to the train station when we overloaded the trains. I went with a few guys from the States that I met at the hostel (a few of whom were lacrosse players). It was a pretty crazy night, and my favorite part was a bar that had a band outside and sand on the ground and just an overall great atmosphere.

Today I went to a science museum (I am kinda getting bored of regular museums), and that was a bit disappointing. It wasn't until I sat down to write this blog that I realized that I missed the kind of stuff I was looking for, so that sucks. However, I did get to see some Dutch windmills (the ones up in Holland are the modern kind, so ironically I had to go all the way to Eastern Germany to see the Dutch windmills). I walked around the city after that and visited a lot of the places that I had on the bike tour. I went in to see an Egyptian exhibit at one of the museums, and that was a bit anticlimactic. Oh well, can't alwazs come out on top, right?


Now, I am getting ready to head out for dinner and maybe shop a bit before I catch my night train to Munich. I am having a great time, and I hope everyone is enjoying my posts! (although, nobody is making comments, so maybe not) ;-) I'll try to write again in a few days!

See more pics of Berlin here