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Published: June 24th 2008
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the hostel was juat north of the Canal near Mehringplatz
kind of hard to see with the train tracks and construction, but it's there! Two days of Leipzig and already our feet were hurtin’ but bad. But we could not be stopped, we were determined. And so, Wednesday morning we rolled out of bed, amazingly enough on time, and caught the train to
Berlin. The jelly donuts are not as prevalent as one might think, but damn are there a lot of
Dunkin Donuts in that town. More than I ever see in the U.S. I bought a postcard of what Potsdamer Platz looked like
before the wall came down (or this one). And this is
what’s there now. I think the rapidity and certitude of Berlin’s reunification says a lot about the general attitude of the people. And Berlin is really great because it only acts like a big city when it has to. Kind of like me and acting like a big person. Y’know, we did so damn much there that it may just be worth it to only tell you to visit my links(appearing in the order I saw ‘em, of course.)
Our hostel was a very well outfitted and clean place, but on the expensive side (it runs a bit more like a hotel than most hostels I know of).
Bauhaus Archiv was an enormous letdown in my opinion, it mostly had
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention...
we also kind of had an ice cream fetish during the trip. No day was complete without Döner or ice cream. to do with little-known graduates of the school, and it was €3 for about 2000 square feet of exhibit space. Much better was the
Film Museum, in the Sony center at Potsdamer Platz. We got our share of WWII history with a stop at
Topographie des Terrors and
Checkpoint Charlie, and followed the same vein with a visit to the
Jüdisches Museum. The
Brandenburger Tor is *not* in Paris, as many people believe, but it is at Pariser Platz in Berlin, and is the gateway to the royal promenade of
Unter den Linden. Berlin’s
Dom (that means cathedral in German) is about half original and half reconstructed from the bombings, but totally awesome. The fact that someone spent time and money on that stonework *twice* is the only way to tell you how impressive it was. There are also a *lot* of dead people in that crypt. But my very, very favorite thing the whole time we were there was the
Pergamon Museum. It has got to be seen to be believed, it contains innumerable famous works of art and architecture. Yes, architecture. They’ve brought entire sections of ancient buildings inside there. The
Ishtar Gate is… everything I expected it to be and then some. Extremely cool. Extremely big. Extremely
The entrance hall to the Film Museum
was about the trippiest room I have ever been in. Exception of the City Museum in St. Louis. blue. While Oranienburgerstrasse may be known these days mostly for its artist community and seedy nightlife, it was formerly the Jewish quarter of Berlin (kind of a sad fate, but hey…), and the
Neue Synagoge stands in the same place it always has, though by no means in the same state it once was. It suffered numerous vandalism attacks and ultimately bombs as well, seeing as how Hitler was using it as a textile factory at the time. Only the street façade and cupola were rebuilt, the destroyed sanctuary is only present in an outline on the ground outside. The
Schloss Charlottenburg was so durn big that we opted only to stroll the gardens, and that alone was a lot - the street façade was at least a city block long, and that was the short side. Also heavily damaged by bombings was the
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche and it’s been preserved just the way the bombs left it. It stands dead center in the middle of one of the busiest shopping areas of town, but dwarfs everything nonetheless, as one of the steeples remains at about ¾ of its original height. Speaking of shopping, never, ever, ever go to
KaDeWe on a Saturday. But
do go, it’s a sight to behold.
And with all of that under our belts, we scuttled over to Frankfurt so the Jo(h)ns could catch their plane. A week is short for visiting a foreign country, yes, but damn, did we make good use of it.
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