Birthday #22: (from Paris to...) Berlin (day 3)

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So eventually we arrived in Berlin on Friday morning at 8:20am. Our station was the Zoological Station in Berlin as opposed to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Upon arriving we immediately found a place to store our luggage. We had two options for storing our belongings… one was the lockers at the station, for 48 hours we could have payed 5 euro, or we could have them checked in at the luggage holding window for 2.50 euro a day. Opting for the cheaper alternative, we handed over our bags and checked with the guy behind the desk the opening times of the office. We asked him if it was open 24 hours and he said “yes, 24 hours!”

So with our bags all secure we left the train station and orientated ourselves outside with where we were. Our first destination for the day was the East Side Gallery, and not being able to locate it on the map we eventually asked one of the station information people. Needing to catch the train there we purchased two daily tickets for the train and bus system. So we jumped aboard the train we needed and got off shortly thereafter at our stop.

The East Side Gallery was just across the road from the station, so we crossed the road and started at one end of the wall and walked along the majority of its length (approx 1km) looking at the graffiti art. We stood at each work of art and tried to decipher its meaning… which was made harder by all those inconsiderate losers who think it’s cool to tag the wall. There are some great works on display; the wall is a 1.3km-long part of the Berlin wall that remains today near the centre of Berlin. There are approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world, all of different subject matter to convey a memorial for freedom and make it the largest open air gallery in the world. It is a real shame that people have to come along and destroy someone’s art with a useless scribble in black texta. The wall is restored every 5 to 6 years and it’s no wonder why. We noticed that the majority of the tags were dated during the World Cup months of 2006, obviously tourists with no sense of respect. But enough about those inconsiderate people… the art that was there was generally political and quite deep in its meanings. Then there were other pieces, like the first photo, which was just some comic relief among all the deep insightful messages.

When walking along the East Side Gallery, not only should you notice the art on the wall but also the traffic lights! Why? Because they are unique to Berlin… here’s a little history lesson for you all on the origin of the traffic light men in Berlin:

Ampelmännchen (a German word meaning little man on the traffic signal) is the symbolic person shown on pedestrian traffic lights at crossings in Germany. The red Ampelmännchen extends his arms to signal "stop," and the green Ampelmännchen confidently strides ahead to signal "go." The shapes of the Ampelmännchen are standardised, and indeed are conceptually similar to those used in other countries. Prior to German reunification there were different forms used in the two German states, with those originating in the former East Germany being particularly distinctive. In contrast to the generic human figure used in West Germany, the figure in the east is generally held to be male, and wears a hat. In the Communist East, the Ampelmännchen became a character on an East German television program used in drivers' education. The East German man arguably has a bit more character and gusto.

Following German unification, there were attempts to standardise all traffic signals to the West German forms, leading to calls to save the East German Ampelmännchen. It thus became a kind of mascot for the East German nostalgia movement, known as Ostalgie. The protests were successful, and the Ampelmännchen returned to pedestrian crossings, including some in western districts of Berlin.

The East Berlin Ampelmann was created in 1961 by traffic psychologist Karl Peglau. He theorised that people would respond better to the traffic signals if they were presented by a friendly character, instead of meaningless coloured lights. The spring in his step is reminiscent of typical communist imagery of the enthusiastic worker advancing to an utopian socialist future. However, Peglau is said to have feared initially that the design might be rejected because of its "bourgeois" hat.

In 2004, a female counterpart, the Ampelweibchen, appeared in Zwickau. It can now also be found in Dresden. (Our last day trip will be to Dresden shortly, so we will endeavour to find a female pedestrian signal for the blog.)
Ok so history lessen over… back to our day in Berlin.

Once we had seen the East Side Gallery we made our way back to the train station and back to the Zoological station from where we would make our way to the main attraction of the day: the Bauhaus Archiv. We arrived at the station, got our coordinates and walked in the Bauhaus direction finally finding it at approx 11am. We entered the museum which I had been dying to see and looked around for approximately 2 and a half hours. Unfortunately no photography was allowed inside the gallery, so we can’t show you how cool it was, so you’ll just have to take our word for it.
The reason why I was so interested in the Bauhaus Archiv was because I had studied the college and it’s influence on design at school in graphics. And I was really intrigued by the way they were thinking back in the 1920’s and 30’s and how modern their products were for the era they lived in.

So being able to finally see the gallery, it was very cool. We hired earphones so we could listen to all the explanations in English and hear what the ‘artsy’ people had to say about their work. Once we had made our way around the gallery, which wasn’t very big, we looked in the gift shop, which in some respects looked like items from Ikea, so you can understand just how modern their designs were, considering how old the college was. I bought the gallery catalogue to add to my art/graphics collection, and thanks to the Louvre and the Bauhaus my book collection is now International!

Leaving the Bauhaus at about 1:30 we made our way to the Reichstag to go and look in the Dome. Upon arriving there, there was a massive line to get in. We decided to stand and wait, because we weren’t going to be back in Berlin any time soon, so if we didn’t do it now, we might never get the opportunity again. We were told the line was approx. a 45 minute wait, but it seemed to move quite quickly thanks to some interesting buskers that came along…

A group of five people came waltzing (not literally) along the street and stopped at the line in front of the parliament building to give us a show. They each had two sticks to operate, which were strategically attached to a big orange man with no stomach. They were so well coordinated and in synch that they could make him do all sorts of movement and actions really well. So this orange-stomachless man caught every ones attention and distracted us from our long wait. They had him walking up the stairs and shaking peoples hands, giving people hugs and even calling a man out into the open space so he could (like a human would) make his way up the mans body and stand on his shoulders. They were a very talented group of people. And when they had finished their little performance they gave a quick spiel in German and came along asking for money. Now if you have read the previous blogs from this trip you’ll remember how I went on about the buskers in Paris giving us involuntary shows and then asking for money and how I didn’t like that style of busking. Well these people had just done the same thing, but they were very good… they actually had talent. So we gave them a few coins, and continued our wait in the line.

We made our way through the security checks and up to the dome after about 30 minutes. We walked around the base of the dome and then went inside to make our way up the ramp to the top of the dome. From the outside it looks somewhat like a beehive. And from the inside I think it looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie with the massive cone being the brain at the centre and all the people walking around the ramps going from place to place. So we made it to the top and sat for a moment, looked at the view out over Berlin then went back down the ramp and back to ground level. We managed to get out of the hustle and bustle inside the parliament building lobby and headed towards to the Brandenburg Gate.

We walked around the corner from the parliament building and towards the gate to see it once again, but this time without all the World Cup Fan Fest hooligans that were there the last time. Instead this time there were just tons of tourists happy snapping and handfuls of tour groups in various languages all getting history lessons. And your usual buskers dressed up and painted to look like statues. There was even a guy who had one of those musical carts that you wind for the music to come out. We took some photos of the gate once more before I spotted one of the greatest places on earth: Starbucks! It had been nearly 6 months since I had had a coffee from Starbucks (it was in Malaysia actually at the airport waiting for our plane to Germany). And believe me 6 months felt like an eternity for me… I was used to having Starbucks weekly at uni in Melbourne then I came to Europe and they don’t seem to have such a good friendship with the American Coffee giant as the Aussies do. So of course we had to stop for a coffee break, and I ordered my usual: Grande Caramel Latte. We sat and waited for my coffee, giving our legs and feet a chance to recover from all the walking and standing we had done. My coffee was finally ready and I was so excited that I burnt my tongue. I drank and we rested before heading off on our adventures again.

With rested legs and java in my veins again we headed in the direction of the Berlin University. When we got there after quite a distance we came across a group of people all congregated in a circle with microphones and video camera in front of them. We were curious as to what was going on so we went closer for a better look and we discovered that it was ‘the table of free voices’.

here is a little about it from a german newspaper, Speigel...

Over a hundred big thinkers from all over the world got together in Berlin to spend a entire day answering questions on the state of the planet. It's not often you would expect to see an ex-Rolling Stone wife turned celebrated human rights activist sitting at the same table as a Tibetan monk, a Hollywood actor, an iconic film director and the mother who took up camp outside George Bush's ranch after her son was killed in Iraq.
But anyone walking through the center of Berlin would have noticed, among others, Bianca Jagger, Palden Gyatso, Willem Dafoe, Wim Wenders and, all seated round a table the size of a football pitch.

A total of 112 leading thinkers, artists, philosophers, activists and scientists met up in the German capital to take part in the "Table of Free Voices," an open-air, nine-hour marathon session of answering questions that is part of the Dropping Knowledge project. American actor Willem Dafoe and Nigerian human rights activist Hafsat Abiola moderated the event, reading out 100 questions, while the participants, sitting opposite cameras and microphones, had three minutes to simultaneously respond to each question. Although it is doubtful whether three minutes suffices for anyone to really answer questions like "What is God's religion?" "Is it murder to kill a murderer?" "Would there be war if the world was run by women?" or "Can dancing change the world?"

The whole thing started back in 2003 with the US-led invasion of Iraq. Looking at the anti-war demonstrations on the television, co-founder Ralf Schmerberg said it all seemed "very retro" and "rather sixties." So he decided to found something which made use of the Internet to bring the peace movement up to date. Since then people from all over the world have been sending in thousands of questions, which have been whittled down to 100 relating to technology, the environment, ethics and the future.


The symbolism of the location was certainly well chosen. The event, supposed to encourage the culture of asking questions and spreading knowledge, was held at Berlin's Bebelplatz, where the Nazis burned books in 1933.

Growing tired of the massive table, we ventured towards the Berliner Dom just down the road. On our way we came across some street gamblers, who we immediately detected scamming passers by. They were playing the simple game of 3 cups with a rock under one of them. They were taking bets of 50 euro to guess which cup the rock was under. Now for someone walking past, and the many people who got caught by this scam you would see a guy doing all the work and a crowd being drawn in to see what was happening. But if you watched carefully and stood there for longer than 10 minutes you would have noticed 4 people who were there constantly, betting and nearly always winning. The entire scam was being run by 5 people: 4 guys and a woman. They would take it in turns to bet and in most cases pick the right cup and win 50 euro, they would continue betting and keep on winning, only losing occasionally. So the interested tourist would walk past, see people winning 50 euros at a time and want a piece of the action. They would bet and lose. And the ‘crowd’, the other 4 scammers would encourage him or her to bet again. If they said no, they would bet and show them how easy it was to win, convincing them to play again and once again losing 50 euros. This scam caught out a lot of people and we were growing tired of this bunch of dodgy people, so we continued on our way to the Berliner Dom.

We looked at this massive church while we rested on the grass for a while before going in to look at the interior.
To the side of the Dom we also came across another one of the massive sculptures for the ‘Germany: Land of Ideas’ exhibition. This time it was a large display of E = mc2, and you wouldn’t believe it, but we found where they had been creating Rogers and keeping them… there were heaps of him there. LOL - you need to look at the last photo to understand that line.

From there we walked around a bit looking at the architecture that was near by, and we crossed the river where we found an Ampelmann gift shop, all to do with traffic light dudes filled with souvenirs and the like. And next door to that we found and Australian chocolate shop (run by Germans of course), they sold pieces of chocolate with aboriginal drawings on them each to symbolise a different flavour. Way too expensive and a bit tacky we continued on our adventures.

We started walking back towards the centre of town were we found our scamming 3 cup friends again, but this time in a new location… they must have been caught out and forced to move. Funny hey… the same crowd of four were still there. I was itching to loudly explain the real game to all the genuine watchers, but Roger, fed up with watching these rabbles started walking off and I followed not wanting to be left behind. So if you scam artists do read blogs and you’re reading this one - we’re on to you!

Walking towards town we opted for the easier version and stoped at a bus stop to wait. We caught the first available bus back into town to our starting point: the zoological train station. It was now around 7pm and we had until 1am to kill before our train. There was one location that I really wanted to go see, but sine it wasn’t a priority we kinda forgot about it… it’s Europe’s largest department store: KaDeWe. I have no idea what it stands for if it does or what its name means, but it was very big. It would probably be the equivalent of Melbourne Myer (and I think about the same size). But unfortunately we got there at 7:50 and it was closing at 8pm. So we went in for a quick look around the ground level, which was make-up and perfume. At 7:58 we were being ushered out by the loud speaker but we made a last minute decision to make a purchase so we ran back in and found what we needed and went to the last cashier left open. And we were out again at 8:00 sharp. It was amazing how quick and eager the store staff were to leave, they were packed up and out the door before the customers. So it as now 8pm and we had some time to kill again, so we thought of going to watch a movie to pass some time. With that in mind we headed towards Potsdamer Platz where they have a cinema that plays films in their original language: English. So we got there to see a crowd starting to leave and the red carpet all set up. Wondering what was going on we went in closer to scope it out, and we worked out that the opening of Perfume or in German ‘Das Parfum’ and the actors had just arrived and walking into the cinema for the first screening. The likes of Dustin Hoffman were there and young teeny bopper girls were all excited as they had their posters signed. We looked at the screenings for that night and decided it wasn’t worth our money as there were no good films showing. So we sat for a while, while we decided what we were going to do next.
We walked to the nearest train station and found a supermarket which was just about to close, so we ran in and stocked up on chips, biscuits and energy drinks. From there we caught the train once again to the Zoological station and went to McDonalds across the road. This was the beginning of one very long night, as you’ll read about…

We went and sat upstairs in Macca’s for what seemed like an eternity. We were both tired and trying to stay awake. We had not much to talk about as we had been chattering like two little budgies all day and all we wanted to do was sleep. We ended up playing paddocks on a scrap piece of paper to keep each other awake. Getting sick of the scenery of the zoological McDonalds we opted for a walk and ended up on another train this time heading towards the Hauptbahnhof.

We knew this surely had to be open so we went in and found refuge at yet another McDonalds. This one was a nice new one so and it had a plasma screen in the kids room which was screening Madagascar (in German) so we went and sat in there on little chairs and watched what was left of the movie. Once the movie was finished we migrated to the ‘big peoples’ part of the restaurant and each had a sundae. The time here went by pretty fast and the ice cream gave us some energy to go on. It was now midnight and we knew our train was at 12:40 so we decided to head back once more to the zoological station and collect our baggage.

We arrived at the baggage office at 12:30 to find the lights off and blinds down. Seeing this we were not happy little vegemites, the guy from yesterday had told us that it was open 24 hours, and clearly it was shut. What was worse was it wasn’t due to open until 6:15am! That meant we were out in the cold for another 6 hours until we could even have access to another jumper led alone a train to take us home.

So in frustration we walked around the streets of Berlin freezing and came across out favourite place for the night - another McDonalds. So we went and sat down, without buying at the back of the restaurant and waited. We were now feeling tired again and we were cold and agitated. No games of paddocks were exciting enough to keep us entertained and we occasionally nodded off here and there. We must have looked like homeless people to everyone else, we were exhausted from walking all day, we were cold and we had out collection of bags with us everywhere we went. We sat in this Maccas until closing time - 4am.

Where we were once again left on the freezing streets of Berlin until sunrise. We again wandered the dead streets and found our way back to that place we had seen so many times today, yes you guessed it - the zoological station. And if you know German stations they are absolutely shocking for seating. There are never any seats for passengers either on the platform or in the main concourse. You may find 2 or 4 seats on each platform but that’s slim pickings when your waiting with 100 or so other passengers. So as you can gather our favourite station in Berlin was no different. Not a seat in sight that was available. The entire station had 12 seats, which was in the main lobby area and since it was night shift, they were genuine homeless peoples beds. So from about 4:15 until 6:15 we stood around in the station watching the occasional police officer strolling around. And as you can imagine by this stage we were beyond tired and going a little crazy. I was pacing the empty locker concourse and Rog was staring at the locker office window not saying a lot.

This part of the night/morning went the slowest, we had drank our way through our 4 energy drinks, eaten our chips and half of our biscuits and they were supposed to be for the train ride. We stood staring at the clock counting down in frustration: ‘1 and a ½ hours to go’, ‘1 hour to go’, ‘1/2 an hour to go’, ‘15 minutes to go’, ‘10 minutes to go - hurry up you lazy guy, get to work early’, ‘5 minutes to go, surely he’ll be here any minute now’, ‘4 minutes’, ‘3 minutes’, ‘2 minutes’, ‘1 minute’ ‘times up, where the heck is he?’ as you can see we were rather angry at this guy. And to top it off, had he got to work on time we could have caught a train by the skin of our teeth at 6:17am. But this lovely (with a lot of sarcasm attached) decided that hey, there’s no hurry… so he strolled into the locker concourse at 6:25, seeing us he smiled all smug like and walking to his little room locking the door behind him. We were fuming, we could hear our train rolling away from the platform above us while he took his sweet time. Eventually he decided to roll up the blinds and greet us as if he had never seen us before, he obviously knew he had jibbed us, you could see it on his face.

Roger somewhat demanded our baggage back immediately and asked why he had lied to us the previous day about the opening hours. But it was as if he was deaf, he stood there just smiling all smug like. He clearly understood us but was just out to annoy us. All he said was ‘5 euro’. Roger handed him 2.50 euro which was what we owed him and he just stood there and kept saying ‘5 euro’. Roger wasn’t about to pay him any extra after the night we had had. If he could I think he would have pulled him through the little holes in the glass and taught him how to answer a simple question like opening hours with his fist. But since that wasn’t the right way about it he kept passing him the 2.50 and the guy kept refusing and just stood smiling. By this time I had to walk away, I couldn’t look at him anymore.

Five minutes had passed and we still didn’t have our bags. By this stage Rog demanded to speak to his manager. So the guy made a phone call and came around to the front of the office and took Rog to the main information desk of the station. He took him to a guy and Rog explained the story… we put our luggage in yesterday and asked if would be open at midnight, he (pointing at the guy) said yes it was open 24 hours. So we came back - to a closed office. We have been standing outside all night thanks to him (sense the tone - not friendly) and we have missed 3 trains. Had he actually turned up to work on time we would have only missed 2. Now I have to wait another hour before my next train.
The information guy - a sandwich short of a picnic - didn’t listen to a word Roger had to say and had the guts to serve other people while her was trying to explain. He didn’t even care. So Rog walked off in a huff back to me at the luggage desk. He haded over the 5 euro just to shut this loser up and we finally got our bags. But it wasn’t over there.

We went back to ‘information guy’ because he told Rog to come back as he had called for a translator. So we wnt back to him, he looked at us and asked what we wanted as if we needed some information. We had to retell him the entire story because he had forgotten in the space of 2 minutes. He then called again - which no one ever came. This time I was standing at the desk with rog and the ‘info guy’ looks at me and asks what help I need, I told him ‘I am fine, I here with him’, he then asked who (can you see how dumb this guy was?) I pointed at Rog, which led to us re-explaining AGAIN! He then asks us to wait a minute, he looks around (as if he was looking for an escape route) and comes back to us, he asked me again what I needed. Telling him I was fine he grabbed the timetable out of my hand and tried telling me that the train I needed to catch wasn’t leaving from this station but instead the main Hauptbahnhof. I told him I knew that and he kept insisting I was at the wrong station. I told him 5 times ‘I know what your saying, I am here with him (Rog)’ and then he went and printed me out a new timetable with exactly the same information I already had and circled it slowly as if I was the dumb one. AGHHH! So we stood and tried to explain our story one last time. The reason we were so persistant was Roger wanted to get the point across that ‘if you don’t understand what I’m asking you, don’t just tell me anything. Tell me you don’t know’. (that has happened all too often to us here in Germany - you ask someone for help and if they don’t know they’ll just tell you anything to get rid of you) so in retelling him the story, this guy had the guts to walk off and serve other people waiting in the line behind us. Roger called out to him and got his attention, asking him ‘are you understanding what I’m telling you?’ we got a reply ‘yes’ then he walk away again. Rog called out to him, this time with smoke evident, and asked ‘are you even listening to me?’ he answered ‘no’.
This got us so angry we didn’t know what to do, no one was coming to assist us, and this guy was just an idiot.

So not wanting to miss another train we left… with nothing resolved.

We caught a train to the Hauptbahnhof to finally catch our train home at 7:35am. We were so relieved to be finally sitting on a train that was heading in the direction of Bremen. I fell asleep almost immediately, waking up every now and again and almost missing our stop. Our train went via Schwerin and Hamburg and we finally got back to Bremen at 5:20.

We caught the tram home and stumbled into bed almost immediately. It had been 48 hours since I had had a proper sleep - minus the cat naps here and there. And it was very nice to finally sleep in a bed.

So that was my birthday surprise - Paris and Berlin. We had a fantastic time on our adventures and it was certainly an awesome birthday.

And this is one of the last blogs for a while from us… we are now heading down to Switzerland to explore the Alps before heading home to Australia via Amsterdam.

We will add our Switzerland photos as soon as we can. Tchuss. 😊

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Photos

East Side Gallery
This is a piece from one of the many artists who contributed to the East Side Gallery in East Berlin.

Tagging is not cool...
This is another part of the wall, which like most of it has been attacked by idiots who thing its cool to tag the wall. Obviously they dont understand the meaning of the graffiti art and its history. It has really ruined the great art that is there on display.

Original art...
Every 5 or 6 years the original artists come back and redo their artworks to keep it fresh and visible. But this part of the wall has not been retouched and is in its original state.

The traffic light dude.
Here is another part of the Gallery, but what we wanted to show here is the traffic light men. Berlin is famous for their individual design of their stop go men. And until today East and West Berlin still argue over who had original men first. (you can see the 'stop' man in the previous photo)

The Bauhaus Archiv
This is me in front of the Bauhaus Museum of design. It is particularly special to me as I studied it at school and had always dreamed of going there. So with the Louvre and Bauhaus ticked off the list she was very happy!

Dem Deutschen Volke
Here is the German Parliment Building in Berlin. We stood in line at the front to go inside and have a look at the glass dome roof.

Berlin Buskers
While we were waiting in line, we had the pleasure of more buskers. This group of five were controlling this puppet. Their timing and coordination was fantastic.

The Dome
This is the very top of the dome where you can rest once you have spiraled up the inside wall of the dome. Surprising to us, the dome is actually open at the top and pigeons also enjoy the location.

The spiral ramp.
Looking down from near the top of the dome to the base of the dome, you can see the spiral ramp that takes tourists up and down the domes facade.
To me it looks like some inteligence head quarters from a sci-fi movie.

The Brain...
At the centre of the Dome is what I like to call the 'brain'. It extends nearly the entire height of the dome, and cones outwards at the top. It is made of mirrors to create more light and illusions.

Tourist Headquarters
This is the base of the dome, looking up at the spiral ramp and the mirror cone. It is a very nice design in contrast to the rest of the building. A good balance of old and new!

Dome Exterior
Here is the dome from the outside. As you can se its quite a massive structure.

The wait.
This is the line to get into the dome. As you can probably work out: it's a free attraction, thus the 45 minute wait.

Brandenburg Gate
The Berlin Gate, this time without all the World Cup FanFest activity in the background.

Can you guess we were in front of the Uni?
Humboldt Universitat in fact! This is one more of the "Germany: Land of Ideas" scultpures that are scattered around the city. You may remember the giant soccer boots and Audi TT from our first visit to Berlin a couple of months back.
But the main symbol of this sculture is it's location and the locations history. This tower of books was in Berlin's Bebelplatz. This was where the Nazi's burned books back in 1933.

The Berliner Dom
Here stands the Berliner Dom... it's a massive church and it's really quite lovely.

The New Headquarters for the Berlin Art Gallery
This is the new location of the Berlin art gallery. I'm afraid I cant tell you too much about it - as I dont know anything about it.

Dom Interior
Here is the inside of the Berliner Dom. It's very detailed and very ornate.

Dom from a different angle
Once more, here is the Berliner Dom.

We found his clones...
Look at what we stumbled across in Berlin!