When we got on our first bus into Berlin, and then especially on the U-Bahm, all I could think was, "My God, we are surrounded by Germans!" Everyone just looked German. This is in contrast to Turkey, where only a few people 'look' Turkish and people came in all sorts of skin shades, dress codes, and levels of hairiness (moderate to excessive).
Germany is, in a word, better. It is almost alarming. Everything is so damn efficient, intelligently laid out, and correctly priced. Our train from Berlin to Dresden was five minutes late, and such is my faith in the Germans that I can only assume it was our fault. It is a refreshing contrast from Turkey, which is frankly still a developing country.
I had a sharp discussion with Anna (and Sam) about what I had learned from my time spent abroad. My thesis was that while America has much to learn from Europe on specific issues (like transportation and urban planning), America remains both inherently and actually superior*, albeit if only because American culture meshes well with my (American) values. Well, Anna and friends, Germany may challenge this thesis. It will require more research, probably a return trip and perhaps a stint working here or nearby.
*American Exceptionalism I believe is the technical name. The other potential challenger is good ole Canada, a country which, like all good Americans, I have never bothered to visit. I also have high hopes for Singapore once it matures out of a single party system, but since no one other than Cherrica and perhaps Julie or a really bored Jordan is actually still reading this paragraph...
Ahem. So, what did Gina an I do in Berlin? We took the bus into the city (pleasantly easy despite a dearth of signage) left our luggage at our hostel as it was too early to check in (but they took a full load of laundry from us for only €5. Glorious. Also a 2€ discount for having an ISIC card, bringing total european ISIC savings to... two euros. I have yet to be asked to verify that I am a student)and walked to Hackescher Mkt. as recommended by the front desk. There we dropped thirty euros on a nice meal in what will hopefully be our most expensive meal of the trip. We tried the house beer, which I thought was solid but Gina was more meh. I had a large and Gina small, but the waiter tried to serve them the other way around, which disturbed me. More worrisome was that your boy halfpint here was definitely feeling it after 2/3 of a liter.
We then walked to the Brandenburg Gate n(and walked off some alcohol) to rigorously confirm that I was right and the fron desk girl was wrong an the tour started at 4 not 3. To kill time we prayed in the meditation room of the Brandenburg Gate and popped over to the rail station to book our tickets to Dresden, but due to the conflux of some clarification needed from Gina's friend, Gina's use of FB as her primary form of communication, and FB and my Kindle generally not getting along, we did not buy a ticket at that point.
The tour was one of the Sandeman free walking tours, which several of my readers are likely familiar with. The gig is you get an excellent tour of a big city, given by a native speaker and with lots of historical context explained, and then there is an expectation of tips to pay for the guide at the end. The tour was excellent, and spent a lot of time explaining how Berlin's rebuilt and modern landmarks are a product of Germany grappling with the legacy of two wars and Nazism. The war memorial at Neue Wache was beautiful and simple, and the memorial to Nazi book burning at Bebelplatz was brilliant- a plaque with a description and the quote from 1800s along the lines of, where books are burned, soon after humans will be burned, and a window in the floor to an underground library with empty shelves for 20,000 books, the number burned that fateful night. The memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe was frustratingly both over-thought and underwhelming. Most interesting was the location of Hitler's bunker and therefore the site of his death, very deliberately an unmarked parking lot in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable apartment complex. Our guide correctly pointed out the parallels to USA's attempt to give Osama's grave no physical location, and the expected conspiracy theories that emerge as a result. Checkpoint Charlie is now a vigorous tourist trap, but it was cool to see and had a bundle of informational signs that Gina returned to the next day to see. I learned that Checkpoint Alpha was leaving West Germany, Checkpoint Bravo entering West Berlin, and C was exiting West Berlin, so famous as the final piece of Western occupied land.
The tour guide was a British grade student studying at Humbolt, which allowed me to indulge in a brief discussion on the current economic state of tertiary education in the West, a discussion The Doheny and I have had at length.
The following morning I got up and went for a run from Alexanderplatz where our hostel was down Unter de Linden, under Brandenberg gate, and then looped around the Tiergarten. I ran because I wanted to check out the Tiergrten, a large wooded park in the middle of the city, and I wanted to shake up the traveling rhythm. Run was great, but my calves are still tight two days later.
After the run we attacked the museums of the aptly named Museuminsel, or Museum island. Think the smithsonian on the Mall in DC. Gina and I had agreed to simply meet back at the hostel at seven, so she headed over before I did. When I headed over I went first to te Pergamonmuseum (no space in German) a discovered a lengthy line (Gina said it took her onl thry minutes), so I went to the info desk and asked which musuem had the smallest line. Directed to the Bode-museum, I walked straight in a bought my all inclusive day pass. The audio guides in all these museums were free, which was wonderful because it saves you from the normal audio guide purchase agony, "Oh it's only a few dollars...but I just finished paying a high admission fee... the guide probably just repeats what the signs say... but what if there are no English signs and you walk around staring at audio guide marker kicking yourself." Fellow museum afficianados will understand the wonderfulness of complementary audio guides. So I wandered about a learned a lot about paintings artists I had never heard of. It had a number of sculpture that I thought were quite excellent.
After the Bode I went outside and walked past lots of expensive cafes until I found a convienience store and bought a brat (read, giant cheap hot dog with generous dolop of quality brown mustard) for a euro fifty. I hen walked back to the island and into the Pergamonmuseum, reveling in my superior travel skills as I skipped the line and walked straight in with my pass.
To my non-surprise, I promptly ran into Gina, who was still in her first museum. Admittedly, the Pergamon was excellent, and the (complementary!) audio guide, at least for the Pergamon Temple itself, was perhaps the best I have listened to, going into details on every single scene on the huge facade but moving briskly from one image to the next. As Gina had predicted, it was interesting to see the ruins, esp the mock up, after walking around the original landscape.
Pity the Germans took it, because with the temple returned to Pergamon it coud rival Ephesus or Pompeii, for the temple certainly rivals the Library of Celsus, and I would love to see the temple perched on the moutain top with all the grandeur the Romans intended. (Dear Turkey's, Ministry of Tourism, you should build a replica).
Post unfinshed. Also saw the Ishtar gate from Babylon buit by Nebecanezzer (badly misspelled) and other ridiculously famous old stuff. Squeezed in one more museum and then left Berlin for Dresden
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