seekingmygreaterperhaps

People who live in Berlin actually call themselves Berliners. For some reason that’s really funny to me.

With that tidbit aside, I LOVE BERLIN. It’s a notoriously hipster city, but I only felt that in certain areas, so you could go to the hipster without being overwhelmed by being too mainstream. I’ll get to the alternative culture in a minute.

My first day in Berlin I was exhausted. I took an overnight train from Krakow, and was woken up by a nice Polish man saying “the train has crashed and we must move trains.” That’s right, I was in a train accident. All I was concious for was a heavy braking and then us not moving for a few hours- during which I fell back asleep. So I had to grab my bundle of things and step off the train (which is really high up when not on a platform, just saying) then re-hoist myself onto a train on the trains beside us. Add a heavy backpack and you make for a hilarious looking girl very precarious. I am fine and no one was hurt, but that’s a new story for the books. Needless to say, I was a bit mentally exhausted, so I had a hard time motivating myself to do anything.

Fear not- I solidered on and went up to the top of the TV Tower in Alexanderplatz. It’s a main part of the Berlin skyline and I thought it would be cool to go up at night. I don’t know how smart of an idea it was because I couldn’t really see much and also had no idea what I was looking at. But I still enjoyed my experience.

The next day I went on a free walking tour of Berlin! This is the Brandenberg gate. The French stole the statue of the goddess of peace from the top. Well the Germans took it back and renamed her the goddess of victory, and now she overlooks Parisplatz. The German sense of humor- victory is now always overlooking Paris.

Berlin is RICH with history. I really liked taking these tours and learning more about the significance of the Berlin Wall, while actually looking at the Berlin Wall. It makes it a lot easier to understand history when it is there in front of you. My tour guide is a history PhD student, so he was really excited about it, which made it even better. The above is a picture of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, which is a huge memorial. If you walk around it becomes very austere and makes an impact of how many Jews were murdered.

We also went to a parking lot! This parking lot sits above the bunker where Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The Germans do not want to call attention to it because they do not want it to become a NeoNazi shrine. I thought that was really interesting.

This is a memorial to all of the books burned in Babelplatz- the square right in front of the university. There are empty bookshelves enough to fit 18,000 books- the approximate number of those burned that night. An interesting quote from a philosopher from the 1820s- “you start by burning books and you finish by burning bodies.” It’s a strange kind of foreshadowing, yeah?

On a positive note- I learned that Germans are to thank for the way our modern universities work! They gave us the format for seminars, lectures, peer reviews, and more. Also, Marx, the Brothers Grimm, and Einstein all had relations with the university in Berlin. (students and teacher).

Checkpoint Charlie. One of the few places you could enter West Berlin back in the day. Fun fact- this is a recreation.

My guide ended that tour on an awesome note. He pointed out that Germans do have a really dark history, and it’s sad that the most well known German is Hitler. However, the thing that Germans do better than most is to acknowledge that past and try to rebuild. They have memorials to commemorate their wrongs, but also are doing things to try and point out the positive parts of German culture. Many great minds have come out of Germany, so we should choose to focus on those more often.

He also pointed me to this awesome currywurst place. When in Berlin… But to be honest, I mostly ate burritos and quesadillas. I found this awesome place near my hostel and ate there for dinner twice. (Thus, burritos in Berlin for the win.)

I should also add, I met some amazing people in my hostel. One stands out in particular and her name is Roisin from Scotland. We hung out every night, and we clicked super quickly- both liking to make fun of the same types of people. In a nice way, of course. Because of her, my experience in Berlin is very positive, thus further cementing my belief that the people you meet make all the difference.

Another cool thing I did in Berlin was go on alternative city tour. My male guide had long flowing hair and strong opinions and I wouldn’t have wanted anything less. He took us around to see all of these awesome street art pieces and I ate it up. I also know recognize the difference between street art and graffiti, even though this was never explicitly explained.

This is a really cool piece- guess what? It makes fun of tourists.

I also learned about what gentrification is. This is when an area is really poor so a lot of artists (and others) move there. Then businesses see that there are cool people there and move in, and then richer people see that it’s a cool place to move, and move in, thus forcing the price of rent up, and forcing the artists out. Boom. Knowledge.

This is part of the East Side Gallery- the largest open air art gallery in the world. It’s street art painted on a replica of the Berlin Wall.

To name drop for any fans of street artists- I saw works by Xooox, Sheperd Fairy, CBS, 1 United People, Blu, and a whole bunch of others who I didn’t write down.

This is my favorite piece from the East Side Gallery. It’s so busy and delicate.

I saw one piece of street art that made me think. It was a stencil and it read “How long is Now?” Does anyone really know how long this current moment is? If you are living in the moment, when does that moment end? I may sound like a hippie, but it tied in with my trip. I’ve been living in the moment, or trying to, but when does one moment end and the other begin? Hmm. Leave YOUR comments below!

Thanks for tuning in, here’s a fun fact. In East Berlin, all of their walking signals are different. The stop and go men are wearing hats. The go men are meant to look as though they are walking “with purpose.” This is because the government of East Berlin wanted to be different than West Berlin in every single way- so putting hats on their cross walk people were obviously symbols of communism.