Stop #3: Berlin

After enjoying the sun of Italy, I moved onward to visit some friends who are spending the year in the more humble climate area of Berlin. This stop was a welcome break from my site-seeing overdrive in Rome, and I was looking forward to catching up with Phil and Clayton.

Coming from the United States, a place that has thankfully not experienced a full-out war on its soil since the Civil War, and having been barely the age of 2 when the Berlin wall fell down, it was a sobering experience to discover that the East-West divide still very much existed in Berlin's culture. As a country, Germany has gone through some hard times in the past century, and Berlin is no exception to this. Berliners didn't really have any time to recover from World War II before being split apart and thrust into another confrontation. While the Cold War has since ended, it has taken a little longer for Berlin to reunify itself. The East is still very socialist-leaning, a natural historical legacy of the past 50 years. For better or worse, constant reminders of their past can be found just by walking down the street; a brick path marks where the Wall used to be; gold stars on the sidewalk symbolize where someone was killed; bullet holes can be found in old buildings; the old Soviet TV/Radio tower, the largest structure in Berlin, looms in the background. Clayton also mentioned that, perhaps as a result of the above, communities have tended to resist renovations, even to dangerously run-down structures, out of concern that such an action would remove its cultural and/or historical appeal.

Nevertheless, Berlin is not without its charm. The nightlife is amazing for anyone looking for anything from a warehouse party to an easy-going bar, German chocolate is a unique treasure, especially among chocolate-lovers, and (of course) the beer is wonderful.

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