luxemblog: Berlin

For Dave's 40th Birthday (note the "four-oh" hand gestures in some of the following photos) we went to Berlin. I was told by a Berlin resident that the city is a summer city and it's best to visit during the warmer months. So, late May and Dave's bday seemed like a good time to make the trip!

Berlin is a very very green, relaxed, culturally rich and fun city. We loved it. It felt like a combination of Berkeley, Brooklyn and Paris. There were so many parks and green spaces throughout the city, and loads of outdoor cafes, bars, art installations, and scenic paths to walk. I always thought of Berlin as being very gray and harsh but in the summer it's anything but that. It has changed dramatically since i was last there, a few months after the wall came down in spring of 1990. Sure, there is some vestigial Communist-era architecture and lots of concrete and pavement, but for the most part the city was very modern, had a very human scale and was really pleasant and fun to explore. Plus the people were very nice, hip and many of them rode bikes. Lucky for us, they all spoke english as well.

On our way...

We past many fields of the bright yellow rapseed flowers.

Upon arrival we immediately saw lots and lots of bikers. The famour East Berlin radio tower is in the background.

We heard that the East side of the city was the nicest so that's where we stayed. From what we saw, it seemed like the Eastern side was quieter, more green, and had prettier neighborhoods with older architecture and fewer high rise buildings. In general, there were very very few high rise buildings. This really surprised me. Berlin felt more like a big town than a large city.

People seemed to take advantage of any and all outdoor space. I loved this small "roof garden". Soil was place directly on the roof and plants were in it.

The garden styles were varied and mostly very casual. This reminded me a lot of Berkeley or Oakland, CA, or of Brooklyn, NY.

A friend told me about these "dark restaurants". You actually eat in total darkness and you get a waiter assigned to you and he/she shows you were your fork, and plate is so you can find the food! They say it heightens your experience of eating the food. It doesn't appeal to me at all.

Lots of bike riding and eating outdoors.

On our way to dinner the first night. It was almost 10pm but it wasn't quite dark.

A friend recommended this fabulous restaurant called Fra Rosa. It had funky atmosphere and felt very "local" in terms of the customers. The menu was small, and you had 2 choices for each course. Wine was self serve. The food was amazing and the crazy part about the place is that YOU CHOOSE how much to pay for your meal and wine! It's all on the honor system, and there aren't any prices listed anywhere. If you felt like your meal was only worth 5 Euros, then you could pay 5 Euros. We of course felt like the meal was outstanding and we probably ended up paying a little too much. But compared to the prices in Luxembourg, it was still very reasonable.

How much to pay?? How much to pay????

Hip people walking about.

Greenery taking over street signs.

The next day we walked down "Unter den Linden" (Under the LInden Trees) which is a famous street that leads to the Brandenburg Gate. At one time the street was completely lined with gorgeous old Linden Trees. Hitler started to cut them all down then the residents complained and he actually stopped and replanted many of them. The trees weren't huge but it was very pretty to have this green strip down both sides of the street.

Inside the Neue Wache buidling - after reunification in 1993 it was rededicated as the “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny.” In the center, directly under the oculus, exposed to the rain, snow and cold of the Berlin climate, is an enlarged version of Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture Mother with her Dead Son. This sculpture is symbolises the suffering of civilians during World War II.

We went into the Tiergarten park- one of the largest (if not THE largest) parks in Berlin. We came across this sculpture installation in progress. Read the description of the project below:

That is the artist, sanding one of the stones.

Again, the artist in the background.

Walking back through the park- everything was kind of wild looking. Very green and lush.

Near our hotel was this old cemetery. It was also very green, lush and kind of overgrown. I loved it and wanted to walk inside but it was always locked.

Asparagus was still in season. Germans love their asparagus. I had no idea there were so many different kinds.

Coffee truck outside of the Neue National Gallery art museum.

Inside the main lobby of the Neue gallery, which was designed by Mies Van Der Rohe. The carpet and chandelier were actually an art installation and were only temporary. The art gallleries are down below.

The lower lever of the museum, elegantly modern with Mies VDR's famous Barcelona Chairs.

One of the many paintings we saw -this one by Paul Klee.

Back outside, enjoying the greenery.

No tour of Berlin is complete unless you visit the wall. It's really so ugly and depressing, even in small doses like this, at the wall museum. I can't imagine how it looked (absurd and horrifying probably) when it snaked throughout en entire city, slicing through neighborhoods and parks. Insanity.

A photo of a russian soldier on the old Soviet (Eastern) side of "Checkpoint Charlie". the other side of this frame had a photo of an American soldier, facing the Western side.

At the Checkpoint Charlie museum we saw all kinds of fascinating examples of how people smuggled themselves out of Eastern Berlin into the West. See the body inside the storage compartment?

I liked this grafitti a lot.

We took a break for a currywurst and fries.

There were lots and lots of cool shops and interesting designerly things for sale. I really liked this lamp made from plastic cups.

"Twin" tourists. Both of them were eating ice cream - so cute.

Dave and I have really missed good sushi and we heard that there was some good sushi to be had in Berlin. We found this little place that was kinda close to our hotel and it was quite good. We even had fresh water eel from river in the surrounding Brandenburg region!

Sushi chef "in the zone", making delicious rolls.

We ate everything.

At the Pergamon Museum of antiquities- the Pergamon Altar (thanks to Wikipedia):

The Pergamon Altar is a monumental construction built during the reign of King Eumenes II in the first half of the second century BC on one of the terraces of the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon in Asia Minor.

The entire structure is 35.64 meters wide and 33.4 meters deep; the front stairway alone is almost 20 meters wide. The base is decorated with a frieze in high relief showing the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods known as the Gigantomachy. There is a second, smaller and less well preserved high relief frieze on the inner court walls which surround the actual fire altar on the upper level of the structure at the top of the stairs. It depicts in a series of consecutive scenes events from the life of Telephos, legendary founder of the city of Pergamon and son of the hero Heracles and Auge, a daughter of the Tegean king Aleus.

In 1878 the German engineer Carl Humann began official excavations on the acropolis of Pergamon, an effort which lasted until 1886. His chief purpose was to rescue the altar friezes and expose the foundation of the edifice. Later, other ancient structures on the acropolis were brought to light. In negotiations with the Turkish government, which participated in the excavation, it was agreed that all frieze fragments found at the time become the property of the Berlin museums.

Karl Humann's 1881 plan of the Pergamon acropolis

In Berlin, Italian restorers reassembled the panels comprising the frieze from the thousands of fragments which could be recovered. In order to display the result and create a context for it, a new museum was erected in 1901 on Berlin's Museum Island. As this first Pergamon Museum proved to be both inadequate and structurally unsound, it was demolished in 1909 and replaced with the much larger present museum, which opened in 1930. Although it housed a variety of collections, not least a famous reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon, the city's inhabitants also named the new museum the Pergamon Museum after the friezes and reconstruction of the west front of the altar. The Pergamon Altar is today the most famous item in the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities, which is on display in the Pergamon Museum and in the Altes Museum, both on Museum Island.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon (thanks Wikipedia):

The Ishtar Gate (Assyrian: ܕܵܪܘܲܐܙܲܐ ܕܥܵܐܫܬܲܪ translit: Darwaza D'Ishtar, Arabic:بوابة عشتار) was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city.

Dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the Gate was constructed of blue glazed tiles with alternating rows of bas-relief sirrush (dragons) andaurochs.

The roof and doors of the gate were of cedar, according to the dedication plaque. Through the gate ran the Processional Way which was lined with walls covered in lions on glazed bricks (about 120 of them).

Statues of the deities were paraded through the gate and down the Processional Way each year during the New Year's celebration.

Originally the gate, being part of the Walls of Babylon, was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the world until, in the 6th century AD, it was replaced by the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way was built at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin out of material excavated by Robert Koldewey and finished in the 1930s. It includes the inscription plaque. It stands 47 feet high and 100 feet wide (14 meters by 30 meters). The excavation ran from 1902-1914 and during that time 45 feet of the foundation of the gate was uncovered.

The gate was in fact a double-gate. The part that is shown in the Pergamon Museum today is only the smaller frontal part, while the larger back part was considered too large to fit into the constraints of the structure of the museum. It is in storage.

Parts of the gate and lions from the Processional Way are in various other museums around the world. Only three museums acquired dragons while lions went to several museums. The Istanbul Archaeology Museum has lions, dragons, and bulls. The Detroit Institute of Arts houses a dragon. The Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, has one dragon and one lion; the Louvre, the State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich, theRoyal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Yale University Art Gallery of New Haven, Connecticut, each have lions.

A smaller reproduction of the gate was built in Iraq under Saddam Hussein as the entrance to a museum that has not been completed. Damage to the reproduction gate has occurred since the Iraq war (see Effects of the U.S. military).

And a VW bus with a "D" sticker- brings me back to my childhood and the family VW bus, red, also with a "D" sticker from when we camped throughout Europe in 1972.

Some Tutes - fabric-covered cones that are filled with candy and toys and given to kids on their first day of school.

A friend suggested this should be a t-shirt- I totally agree!

We happened upon this interesting artist space. It looked like abandoned shacks but they were all metal smithing workshops and painting galleries.

"Bla bla" and garbage bags in blue.

Hot dog vendor will travel.

The new parliament buildings. I really loved them.

"Re-Reeducation" referring to

Crosses memorializing people who tried to cross over to the western side but were killed in the process.

Some people sunning themselves, having snacks and drinks by the river.

And more green.

At the Hamburg Bahnhof modern art museum. Dave giving us the big "FOUR OH" with Mao looking on.

A sculpture installation made entirely of ANIMAL FAT. These are chunks left over from the fat filling an entire space that were then cut out in pieces.

A felted wool ripple on the wall, pierced by a javelin-like thing.

Some stones scattered about.

An explanation of the kind of art displayed in this section of the museum. I think a lot of the impact is lost after the creation of the pieces themselves.

A video of a man spinning around saying "ummmmm ummmmm ummmmm". Two smaller video monitors showing the same.

At this point Dave took a snooze outside and i continued on in the museum.

Two fans, one plugged in and spinning the other that was unplugged. (know what i mean?). Anyway, it's ART. It did make me think about how one person can make another person act or move, etc.

A video of a man shouting "OWW OWWW OWWW!!!" Over and over and OVER again. Tres bizarre!

Dave enjoying a beer and his big "FOUR OH!"

These pretzels looked surprisingly similar to the Peace sign on Dave's tshirt.

At the Reich Stag.

A couple practicing tight rope in the park.

Marking where the Berlin wall was.

Alternative transportation.

You could rent some of the soviet era cars- can't remember their name but they are bascially total SH** boxes but come in cute colors and patterns now. There was a big group of friends driving these and they kept stalling.

Some propaganda poster at the huge and fascinating (and overwhelmingly dense) German History Museum. That place required at least 3 days to take it all in.