745...
Meet at the front of the penzion... and we are off in a group of 25 to the train station. Big group and needless to say that we got separated on 3 different occasions.
Finally we arrive at the station in one large group and board the train. I sit with Laura-Nelle and chat her up and in mid speech fall asleep for the entire 6 hour train trip.
Ahh Berlin... Where the people wear liederhosen, sell bratwurst on the street and drink beer anywhere, any time, and any way... I love this city.
We first checked into our hostel which was filled with Italian kids (not my fave)and then we headed out on an excursion to Schoneberger Suglande Nature Park:
The park consists of a fascinating combination of nature, train relicts and art which weave themselves in harmonically creating this stunning park.
Visitors are asked to walk on elevated pathways which run along the former railway tracks. This allows you to explore and experience the park on railway tracks and from the perspective of an old steam engine.
It sets you back in to the past when the park was filled with hundreds of freight trains.
Next we headed to the Sony Center in Potsdamer Potz and saw the awesome work of Peter Walker and Partners.
Next was a beer at this building that was taken over by squatters in the early 90s and now has become this artist studio and gallery colony type of thing.
Following that was dinner at the mall and back to the hostel for naps. Around 11 or so I got up and headed out with Jeremy. We went to a beer store and got great advice from a couple of locals who spoke no English so there was a lot of pointing. They opened our beers at the store and off we went to the streets to find a club. We ended up at one that had four different dance floors and met some really nice Berliners and danced with them till 4 am.
That definitely made it harder to be ready to go by 930 the next day but we did it. Firstly we headed over to the longest remaining portion of the Berlin Wall.
From there we walked across a bombed out bridge to the Jewish Museum which has an amazing addition that you can't access from the street and all of this symbolism in the materials and layout of the landscape. Also a playground...
Next to the graphic design museum where we had lunch and riffled through their amazing bookstore. The Germans know graphic design...
After lunch we headed to Checkpoint Charlie... This was East Berlin's allies, the Americans and the French. My only complaint was that there was a German dressed as an American soldier charging a Euro for people to have their picture taken with him... poser.
Next we checked out the rest of Potsdamer Potz including an intense green space, a eco rain garden over a parking deck! and other things...
Following that we walked a couple of blocks to another Jewish Memorial. It was pretty amazing and vast... There were all of these identical gray rectangular tombs at different heights and the grade changed so people would get lost... lots of different meanings to that monument.
We followed that up with some more sight seeing and ran into Green Peace protesting nuclear power...
So we went home from there for a nap... woke up, ate and I took the rest of the kids to the club I had been the night before and we danced the night away... I have the bruises to prove it.
The next day we woke up and went to a museum that had ripped of all of these crazy statues and parts of buildings from ancient Greece... not that it wasn't cool to be in a building of buildings from ancient Greece but I am not sure if I liked them being in Germany..
We then went to a museum in honor of the Berlin wall... it had the only remaining portion of no man's land left in tact (West Berlin side. It was pretty amazing to peer through the cracks and see the wall that separated you from freedom... it made me thankful for the things we take for granted... oh lets say.. like moving from one side of town to the other...
Located in no man's land stood a church that was reconstructed from the rubble of an old church that the soviets had demolished as a last stand... very simple, very beautiful tribute to the congregation that has lasted...
The final image is from a monument to the falling of the Berlin wall and an adjacent playground...
The river front around all of the federal government buildings...
The architectural god Mies van der Roe building... hello curtain walls!
And the Bauhaus Muesum... where the design thinking of NC State is based off of...
So after many of hours spent walking the city of Berlin... I can honestly say I loved it and would move there at a moments notice... Its like NYC but with Germans everywhere!
For more pictures from the this entry check out
http://picasaweb.google.com/allen.lorna/200903_Berlin#
a few of the smaller cats, and the 3 toed sloth...
