Think About It

 

I knew the whole debate about ripping down part of East Side Gallery to build a luxury housing complex was a big deal here in Berlin, but I was pretty surprised to see it had made the front page of NY Times. Though I suppose when you think about it, it is a big deal to tear down the longest last remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, and not just because it would be replacing history and art with a purely capitalistic endeavor- alone a deep insult for many Berliners. The word for monument is German is "Denkmal," a compound word that when separated, turns into the imperative statement "Think about it." Different monuments serve different purposes, but East Side Gallery serves many. It is the most important historical monument that exists from the BRD/GDR days- one of the city's most complicated and painful eras. It also serves as an open-air art gallery, where international artists come to paint messages of peace and hope along what before could not even be touched (remember the death strip on the East Side?). But when you think about it, this whole situation is quite symbolic in another way. Most of last week's protesters would have been the same ones championing tearing down the wall a mere 25 years ago when it still separated the city (some probably did), but now they are fighting to leave it standing. It's not only a symbol of the past, but of how far the city has come, and this reminder serves as great a purpose as the history of the wall itself.

 

Berlin's Bizarre Birthday

Uh, not sure how to begin this one. I suppose some context: back in September I had run into an open-air exhibit called Stadt der Vielfalt (City of Diversity). The exhibit was one of several to commemorate Berlin's 775th birthday this year that culminated with last night's celebrations.

Twilight installation in Nikolaiviertel

A little more background: Berlin turned 775 yesterday, but this is only his? her? her. her 4th birthday celebration ever. The first one to celebrate 700 years was in 1937, put on by the you-know-whos, and then two 750th birthdays were celebrated respectively in West and East Berlin in 1987. In a way, this was Berlin's first "unsoiled" birthday and the city took it as an opportunity to acknowledge the past but make a statement about the way it sees itself today and where it wants to go in the future.

Yes, this moose in stripper shoes was part of the celebration

I walked into the entire celebration a bit blind, expecting something like a typical Christmas market minus the Christmas. You know, Bratwurst and Gluehwein and live music and cookie hearts and the occasional Dirndl or Lederhosen. Your usual German festival fare. Instead I was greeted by excessive amounts of open flame and interpretive theater. I suppose it was nice that the planners mixed it up and threw in some social commentary about global warming and whatnot, but it kinda freaked me out a little. I just wasn't prepared! And the fact that I was still nursing a Sunday hangover, it being Halloween time, and there being a full moon just didn't help things.

Moose in stripper shoes approaches baby alien in ball

Berlin's only "medieval" quarter, the Nikolaiviertel, was covered in fire. A bunch of metal circle cages with inflamed flower pots and little men with clocks as heads, lightbulbs on fire as hands, rolling back and forth on unicycles on tightropes... I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. My very insightful friend Kelly put 2 and 2 together: fire to represent light during medieval times and metal men with clocks as heads moving back and forth represented us moving from past to present (and then maybe back to the past? making the same mistakes? that was my only contribution). My "ooh cultural differences!" brain kicked in and I couldn't stop thinking how the US would never put so much open flame in a public space for fear of being sued after some drunk idiot got too close and burned himself or tossed his beer into the fire leading to a few people losing their eyebrows.

Nastya, Kelly, and I staying warm by the medieval lighting

A wounded tree and some magical creatures

Guarding or about to decapitate a lone sunflower.
I thought guarding- I'm a "glass half-full" type of girl.

At any rate it was a sight to be seen and I am glad to have seen the sight. I was even more glad to escape to a warm cafe with Kelly and Giovanni afterward to decompress with an adult hot chocolate. Quick tip for the next celebration, Berlin: if you want us to watch people dressed as fish flopping around on volleyball courts, a little Gluehwein wouldn't hurt.

Nikolaiviertel: U/S Alexanderplatz or S/Hackescher Markt (across from the Rotes Rathaus/Red Townhall)

Thai & Tempelhof

I'm pretty "with it" when it comes to Berlin tourist and hot spots. Not that I could ever know all of Berlin's secret, underground happenings, but the big sites I've most certainly got down. I could give a comprehensive tour of this city in my sleep. So even though I have long been aware of Tempelhof, I'm surprised that until this past weekend I had been pretty immune to its charms.

Sundays for me are generally reserved for one park and one park only: the Thai Park. Have I written about the Thai Park yet? If not, please excuse this egregious oversight on my part. The Thai Park is a wonderful, wonderful place where Thai women set up umbrellas and sell fresh, delicious goodies like papaya salad, pad thai, and mango with sticky rice that you eat while sprawled out on a blanket in a park that happens to be right outside of my apartment building. It's heaven wrapped in a spring roll! A spring roll stuffed with heaven! It's my happy place.

And just like that, she's off track because of food! Back to Tempelhof, which does not have Thai food. But in Tempelhof's defense, the place has pretty much everything else. It's a former airport turned massive park where you can find everything from carnivals to kite flying to soccer games to music festivals. After lounging about and indulging at the Thai Park last Sunday, I agreed to join a couple friends there for a long overdue visit.

 

The first thing that strikes you is just how massive the spot is. From one end it's tough to make out the other. There's just so much open space without trees or lakes or anything else that the other Berlin parks are full of. And being able to jog, rollerblade, or picnic on a former runway is pretty cool.

 

The history of the place is pretty interesting, too. Tempelhof has played a really signficant role in some of Berlin's darkest and most complicated eras- built in the 20s, it was re-constructed by the Nazis in the 30s and used to assemble Stuka dive bombers and Focke Wulf FW 190 fighter planes during World War II. Later it was the site of the famous Berlin airlift in 1948-1949. Its main building also used to be one of the 20 biggest buildings on EARTH (thanks, Wikipedia).

Tempelhof Airport was closed in 2008 and has since evolved into one of Berlin's most beloved parks. It's a nice alternative to the more stately Tiergarten and has a somewhat edgier feel (though let's not forget Tiergarten has its fair share of nude sunbathers). Coming up this week in Tempelhof is some kind of freestyle frisbee tournament where people "jam" together on frisbees to music. Or maybe they have to make music with frisbees. Either way, I am happy to have another Berlin staple in my repertoire.

Thai Park: U7 Fehrbelliner Platz/Preussen Park
Tempelhof Park: S41/42 Tempelhof or U6 Tempelhof

The Big B

Entrance to Katharinenhof

Berlin is, of course, my main B. And it's certainly big, population wise. But geographically, for a state, it's pretty small (did you know Berlin is one of the three cities in Germany that is a city and a state?). The other big B that I am referring to is Brandenburg, a former East German state that surrounds Berlin on all sides. See?

Brandenburg is perhaps most famous for the town of Potsdam, where tourists go to see Friedrich the Great's castles and Schloss Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference was held after World War II. But B-burg has many more "corners" as the Germans say, and many of those corners are pretty rural. On Saturday evening, my friend Keighley and I took the train out to Brandenburg to attend a Hoffest, or farmyard party. Keighley's boss and a few other families co-own the farmhouse and throw this summer shindig every year, and I happily accompanied Keighley as her "plus one." 

Party invitation

The Hoffest took place out in Gransee, a town about an hour train ride from Berlin. Already 15 minutes outside of the city we saw livestock, pastures, and just lots of things you don't see in Berlin. Keighley and I were both starving and started to munch on some chocolate she had brought along and enjoyed the view. Once we got to Gransee her boss picked us up in a really old Jeep-like contraption, drove us a bit through town to show us the requisite main drag and super old church (didn't take long) and then we hobbled up the stone path to the farmhouse. The farmhouse is called Katharinenhof to which I immediately felt an affinity- but only because my middle name is Katharina, not because I am used to farms.

Grazers

I'm really bad at estimating numbers, but there must have been a good 150+ people at the party. And an extremely mixed crowd age-wise. I couldn't remember the last time I saw so many little kids, especially ones free-ranging and shrieking with cake smeared all over their faces. After making three efficient trips to the buffet for goodies like potato and cucumber salad, pasta, bread, cheese, and lots of red wine, we befriended a few other 20-somethings who were kind enough to share their blanket with us. A bunch of people had also set up tents because they planned to stay the night, but (not so) unfortunately, we weren't able to find ourselves one in time. (Shhh, I'm not much of a camper.)

Party Campers

Dance room

In the backyard they had a huge screen set up that played Jungle Book for the little ones (dubbed in German which was interesting), and then a movie they had created about the Hof which is about to celebrate its 100 year anniversary. The Hof was originally owned by two Jewish sisters in 1912 who grew fruit that was shipped and sold in Berlin. The sisters were later deported to a concentration camp, and in one part of the video, their now elderly niece talked a bit about her memories of her aunts and summers on the Hof. The rest of the video showed the young kids who now spend their summers there (probably the same ones who drew the invitation), jumping across bales of hay, exploring dark corners of the house with flashlights, and screaming in delight at bugs and strange noises. Made me think of my summers in the mountains in France with my sister and cousins: exploring the forest, picking blueberries, and splashing about in our nearby "Dream Stream."  

Keighley and I

Once it got dark, we were able to look up and see the enormous sky speckled with stars, and man, that stirs something inside of you if you don't see it often. At one point we may have even seen a shooting star. That, or a realllly small airplane. Not that this city girl would know the difference. 

Scenes from a Stroll

Sunday afternoon, I decided to turn off the trashy German TV, peel myself off the couch, and take a walk. I bundled up, practically flew down the 4 flights of stairs through the door in my building, and upon reaching the outdoors, froze in my tracks. It was raining. To go back inside, flop back on the couch, and forget the whole thing? No, this was going to happen regardless of the weather. Emphatically, I marched onward.

Right after racing back upstairs to grab an umbrella.

Instead of doing a loop, I decided to take the subway over to the center of the city (Mitte) and walk back home from there. I head to the Brandenburger Tor, where two major Berlin avenues meet. Unter den Linden, that heads east, and Strasse des 17. Juni, on the west. I've been on the first multiple times but had never walked along the second, which translates to "Street of the 17th of June." I'm currently reading a book on the history of the Berlin Wall (appropriately titled "The Berlin Wall") which makes mention of this street that commemorates a famous uprising by East German workers all across the GDR in 1953 (pre-Wall era).

This street also runs through the Tiergarten, Berlin's biggest and most famous city park. From there I took a couple smaller streets to connect back to the touristy Ku'damm that looks like Christmas exploded all over it. I'm not complaining, it's quite lovely. The whole thing took just about 2 hours with a necessary and well-deserved stop for a Heisse Schokolade mit Sahne (hot chocolate with whipped cream).

This last shot is of a memorial for the 80,000 or so Soviet soldiers that died during the Battle of Berlin at the end of the war. Priscilla, Micha, and I visited a similar memorial in Treptower Park a few weeks ago and there are a couple pictures of it at the end of that post. This Tiergarten memorial happens to be on the same street that less than ten years later was the site of a major uprising by East Germans against the Soviet regime which it is now named after. Just another example of Berlin's complicated and fascinating history!

The Soviet memorial: