We scored big time through Mehron, who hooked us up with her friend Mael in Berlin. Mael offered to put us up at his apartment in Kreuzberg, just south of the main tourist sites. Which was incredibly generous and hospitable, especially in light of the fact that he was out of town the entire time we were there. In fact, another of his roommates was also out of town, and the remaining dweller of the apartment we saw all of twice in four days, so in fact, we scored essentially a private apartment in Berlin!
That being said, it was a sequence of incredibly random events that ended with our successful arrival to the apartment. First off, we had to get from Schoenefeld airport to Kreuzberg, which appeared fairly simple on the metro maps. However, when we got to the metro station, we could not figure out for the life of us how to find our train. We knew our train number and we knew we were at the right station, however, there was no board posting which train would go from which platform. Margaux somehow deciphered a secondary train code from a yellow piece of paper of fine print on platform four, which somehow informed her we should go to platform seven, where indeed our train appeared.
Arriving to Kottbusser Tor station in Kreuzberg a good while later, and having not been fed on our easyjet flight, we could help but notice our energy was dwindling and we had yet to search for the actual apartment. It was nearly instantly agreed upon that we would stop for kebabs at the recommended Hasir restaurant on Adalbertstrasse, and true to reviews, it was ridiculously delicious! Feeling refueled and ready to set out, we prowled Adalbertstrasse for the retrieval location of the apartment key: the corner store. Yes, really. Apparently when our hosts are out of town, they sometimes leave their keys with the convenience store for others to pick up. Passing by three drunk Germans on the picnic table outside the store (picnic tables and benches line the streets outside of shops here for the public drinkers looking for a place to people watch) who either tried to hit on us or panhandle for money, I entered the shop and announced I was Holly and was there a key for me. The cashier started looking around with little success, and we were getting nervous, but then her mother appeared from the back of the store and they exchanged some hurried German and a key was produced. Check.
We had no trouble then finding the apartment building, however, we belatedly realized that Mael had not mentioned the apartment number or floor. The directory listing was under his roommate, who last name I didnt know, so that was no help. Guess who got to go door to door trying the key in each lock until they found one that opened? One man heard us trying to get in and hurried out to eye us suspiciously. Thankfully, he didnt call the police on us.
In case you are curious, it turns out Mael lives on the sixth floor.
Our first priority for sightseeing was to do the free New Berlin walking tour, which was as excellent as people said it would be. Sights seen included Brandenburg Gate (whose Victory statue sits over Pariserplatz/Paris Place and stares ominously in the direction of the French embassy in the courtyard), the Adlon Hotel (better known as the baby dangling hotel of MJ infamy where the presidential suite costs 12,000€ per night), Tiergarten and the Reichstag (the government buildings in Germany now all include a lot of glass sections of architecture to emphasize their renewed focus on government transparency), the memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe also known as the Holocaust memorial, the site of Hitlers suicide bunker, the tax office (a former Nazi building, then used by the Soviets, now by the revenue service), the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Bebelplatz (site of the Nazi burning of 20,000 books), the Kathe Kollwitz victims of war memorial, and Museums Island (home of the Pergamon museum, Berliner Dom, and many others).
Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and struck a great balance between communicating the history of Berlin and Germany and the struggle to come to terms with its past, while still providing humour and pop trivia about this place and people as well.
We also went inside the Pergamon museum to see the Pergamon Altar and massive frieze depicting the war between the ancient Greek gods and the Giants, a famous market gate whose name escapes my memory at the moment, and the reconstruction of Babylons Ishtar Gate. We saw other things in the museum as well, such as Assyrian and Islamic artefacts, like the towers from Mshatta, but the big three were the standout items for sure. We then picnicked in Tiergarten (we self-catered a lot in Berlin knowing Munich and Oktoberfest was going to kill our bank accounts shortly), wandered through the Holocaust memorial at our leisure once more, and then walked over to the Kulturforum to check out an art gallery, only to realize we were WAY behind schedule.
The tricky thing about Berlin is that it is very spacious. The blocks go for half a kilometer or longer sometimes, so what looks like a 10 minute, 4 block walk on the map in fact is a 2km 30 minute journey. We kept forgetting this, so our schedule had to be amended constantly. Plus our priority on this particular day was to go on a pub crawl.
We made it to the first bar just ten minutes before the free beer was done, so just in the nick of time! The crawl took us to four bars and a nightclub, and I was suitably impressed with the variety and quality of atmosphere in the bar scene here. The first bar was a backyard beach junkyard, if you can imagine that. The second was the worlds tiniest hole in the wall with great music, the third was arrayed with a cheesy disco ball and winding black leather couches, while the fourth was all white and red. The club was pretty average and took almost half an hour to get to, so I was less impressed there. Didnt help that two guys looking to rumble knocked my beer out of my hand and it smashed on the floor. Margaux and I also spent a good deal of time avoiding an undaunted very short Irish man who continued to chase us around despite being repeatedly told we would under no circumstances be going home with him. Sigh. This is why Im getting too old for clubs. But the dancing was spot on, so we overcame and stayed out late dancing our brains out.
The other thing that greatly impressed both of us was the Jewish Museum, which I had as a mandatory outing since studying it in my Masters program, when we were looking at the different ways the world has tried to commemorate and educate people about genocide. We spent almost four hours in this museum, which had two massive floors portraying the history of Jewish people in Europe from medieval times until after WWII. But for me the most engaging and affecting part of the museum was the underground level which was an intersection of hallways named the Axis of Exile and the Axis of the Holocaust. The architecture was the most outstanding feature of the museum and I was truly overwhelmed at how successfully the architect had made voids and empty spaces refer to the absence of the missing victims of the Holocaust. Standing inside the base of the Holocaust Tower, the voided void, was unforgettable. And the Garden of Exile, a series of 25 blocks with the ground tilting at an angle causing dislocation and a real loss of equilibrium, was equally thought provoking. I had to wonder when it was built in relation to the Holocaust Memorial (which allows you to see what you see and works on a lot of levels of understanding), since there were similarities between the two.
Were also greatly enjoying the German language, which inevitably sounds incredibly serious or incredibly silly. Our favourite game lately is to random read sentences we find aloud to each other with an exclamation point. Weve mastered the following essential phrases:
Wilkommen - welcome
Gutentag - good day
Bitte - please or youre welcome
Danke - thanks
Bier - beer
Nein Deutsch - No German
Ausgang - exit
Ampelmann - traffic light man (who is revered by Berliners and is totally adorable with his hat and strut. They have whole stores of Ampelmann gear here)
Will try to expand vocabulary more for Munich and Oktoberfest, where we are meeting up with Margaux's friends Chad, Bronwyn, Trevor, Taylor, Greg and Ryan to revel in the beer halls. Wish us luck!
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