Berlin

my boss teases me for spending my weekends in different cities. I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I do it anyway. Last weekend I went to Berlin for about a total of 31 hours, excluding travel. It's a seven hour train ride from munich. I wanted to write about it, cause it's amazing.If you would like to hear about the trip, please read on. but it's long. Berlin is a city under construction. It's also dirty, for a european city and poor. There is construction everywhere you look, any skyline you look at has cranes everywhere. It's as though they have taken over the city. There are fancy modern buildings right next to very old ones and at times this old and newness merges like in the Parliament building. The building was originally built in the late 1800's, and then was burnt and damaged during WW2. It was then renovated and restored after the war. Recently (1990's) a big glass dome was constructed on the top of it, with a spiral ramp on the inside to allow people to walk to the top of the dome, white flooring and a mirrored cone in the middle. Very modern and futuristic, on top pf a building with greek pillars in front. As you walk around a ring in the middle, the story of all that happened to and in the Reichstag (Parliament) in narrated through pictures. Anyone is allowed to go up there, and this is the Parliament! The city is enormous, even from the top of this building it was impossible to see the whole city. I walked on all sides of the dome and every direction you looked out in, cranes popped their heads up. The Reichtag and the Brandenburger Tor are very close to each other. Interestingly, there is a bank building, DZ bank built by Frank Gehry, way back when, right next to the Brandenburger Tor. Last month, a memorial to 'The murdered jews of europe' was erected in Berlin, in the same area, beside the Reichtag and in front of the gate. There was a large controversy surrounding it, for a variety of reasons, but it was finally unveiled lst month. I won't try and describe it, but here is the link to what the architect, and American, Peter Eisenman, himself had to say about it. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/03/07/peterEisenman.html And here is a picture. You can see the dome and the the Reichtag in the top left hand corner as well if you look. http://www.aidan.co.uk/data_sheetDeBJewMemHiFlyVw4731.jpg.htm As soon as you get out of the railway station or 'Berlin Zoo', the one of the first things you see is the Broken Chirch - a church that was damaged during the war, one side and it's steeple is completely destroyed. It's surrounded by enormous buildings and shopping centers and the railway station with bright neon lights. The Mercedes logo from the top of one of the buildings reflects in the glass of the church at night. Makes quite a contrast. Potsdamer Platz. Again the same. Big fancy touristy Sony Center. Right next to it a piece of the berlin wall. Potzdamer platz is now the most modern area of the city, with theatres, restaurants, and business centers and the wall once ran through the middle of it. The location of the wall is marked on the ground throughout the city with red cobblestones. You can see where it was. In many places this line passes under buildings and continues on the other side. You can still see marks of the war on a lot of the buildings, broken stones where they were hit by shells, or chipped walls by gunfire. There is also tons of graffiti everywhere. The East Side Gallery is large part of the berlin wall which was restored in 2000. The entire wall is covered with writing, graffiti, and art of various kinds. If you ever take the train to berlin zoo, look on the right, just as the train is pulling into the station. There are some large murals about the UN. Of course, the east side of the city is completely different. Much simpler, and ghetto. The areas we went to were certainly also the kind f areas where people would warn you - "don't go there alone at night", which is obviously what we did. Going from east berlin to west berlin is like going from one part of new york to another, you find it hard to believe that it's the same city, especially if you take the subway and suddenly emerge from one part into the other. just the subway stations are so different, granite flooring at the sony center, and a old style platform on a bridge painted green at Prenzlaugerg. the whole city reminded me a lot of new york actually. it's really old and very small. carriages are really small, with maybe 2 feet between the seats, and they are also lengthwise much smaller. the trains take sharp right turns, make lots of noise, are un-coordinated and are all painted bright dirty yellow. the city has randomness - we found an antique bazaar (where people were selling old DM work 2 million marks (from the depression), and where we found a russian print of sgt peppers record cover), tons of street musicians, a cheap indian restaurant, a really cool cafe/bar (schwarzes cafe, near berlin zoo, open 24 hours! useful when you miss your 2 am train, which is what happened) and were chased by punks in east berlin. The city is just so real, it humbles you, makes you feel ashamed. It commands respect and leaves you awed. It presents both sides of itself to you at the same time - bare and naked, in a sense. There is little fakeness, the grandeur is not overdone, nor is the solemnity. You are not sure when to admire, when to be scared, when to be surprised or when to be silent, for fear of having the wrong feeling. Maybe it's just because it does it all to you at the same time. Being a tourist is bad enough, but being a tourist in berlin was particularly embarrassing. Yet not embarrassing enough to make me not go again and ask for directions in broken german again. I'm going again next weekend. (Pictures from the next weekend click here: walk along the old berlin wall.) If anyone wants more description, I'm happy to write, about this or other stuff i did in Berlin. just let me know. there is too much to write in one email, this was just an introduction. and there is too much for me to still discover.