Berlin Day 2 - First Blood Part 3

So after the day yesterday, today just wasn't that exciting so this shouldn't be a thesis or anything.

We slept in, then decided to see if we could get into a cheaper hostel closer to the public transport required for the airport. Unfortunately after walking for 30 minutes to get to the other hostel we were informed they didn't have any space. So we went to the hostel we just came from and found that they were booked for the night too. After a quick internet search though, we found another hostel which was much cheaper and also was right next to the bus line that would get us to the airport meaning we got a little extra sleep as well! Hooray for everything!

A quick note on Berlin before I go any further though. I will admit that I'm unsure if I already covered this in yesterday's blog though, but I sure as hell ain't reading it so you may have to double up on this. A little like Paris, Berlin seems stuck in the past in some ways. Unlike Paris, this doesn't seem to be via choice. Instead, Berlin seems to be struck with a major sense of guilt. While you can see scars of racism and homophobia in the USA, that simply doesn't happen here. There's no qualms about either. As I've mentioned, I've seen more openly gay couples here than anywhere else in the world. But they'll still throw you in jail if you display or create a swastika (draw, wed, whatever). Even an anti-swastika (a swastika with the red ring and line through it like a no smoking sign) was illegal until just recently because it contained the swastika. This covering up of certain sections of the past seems to have deeply embedded itself into the culture. It's like a break-up that's just too painful and too soon for the country to talk about just yet. It really does feel guilt ridden. However, the parts of the city that aren't stuck like that are all incredibly new. Most of them look like new age art installations (including the tunnel walkways between train stations).

Also, three things I forgot to mention yesterday. Two we saw, the other we didn't. Just near the place where Hitler's body was burned and right next to the Brandenburg Gate, there is the American embassy. This is also right next to a massive memorial to the Jewish victims of the holocaust. When the embassy was built the Americans asked if they could be granted more space as they wanted to put a large fence around their embassy. The German government replied that it wasn't possible. Moving the embassy couldn't be done as it would either need to be built on top of the Jewish survivor's memorial or it would require them to literally move the entire Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Berlin and Germany as a whole. Luckily the American government quickly agreed that neither of these was a viable solution and so it was all left as is. Well, maybe that would be the case in Opposite Land. See, the US government did what it believed it was entitled to. They officially requested that the German government literally move the Brandenburg Gate a few meters in order to accommodate their fence. Seriously. They didn't see a problem with that.

Anyway, the other thing we saw was the monument itself. It's actually really unique. It's a mass of rectangular blocks. All different shapes and sizes, all aligned perfectly. It has no distinct meaning wither, you simply interpret it how you want. Do they represent gravestones? Do they represent the isolation of the victims? There is no real answer. It's meant as a discussion point so people actually think about the actions of the past. The best memorial I can think of, really. The stones are all also covered in a special kind of anti-graffiti paint. This paint means that it just takes a little elbow grease and any markings come right off straight away, so the entire place is very clean. Unfortunately, there's one small oversight. The company who makes the anti-graffiti paint has been around for quite a while. A long while. And they've made all sorts of other chemically engineered things. Like gas. As in, the company who's now making a profit by producing the anti-graffiti paint on the Jewish Holocaust victim's memorial also made a profit by producing the gas that killed said Jews many years ago.

The last thing we didn't see yesterday (which is a massive shame). Apparently there's a bridge (we only saw pictures of it) which has two big lights, one at either end. Avery few seconds it blinks twice, then shows a random picture of a hand in one of three poses. So that's right, you can actually play rock-paper-scissors with a bridge! I wanted to see it so badly, but never could.

But back to today's events.

We went and had a look at the Checkpoint Charlie museum. This was very interesting and showed some really ingenious escapes by people going from East to West Berlin. Again, nothing you can't see in a history book though, and so not really something I'll go into massive discussion about here.

Later I walked into a shoe store with Sarah. As I was walking behind her I noticed the clerk checking out her ass. Thinking I'd have a laugh (most people who see us assume we're a couple) I thought I'd catch his eye and mess with him a little. This proved a little harder than I thought though, because once he'd finished checking out her ass, he proceeded directly to checking out mine…

We then made our way to dinner (after checking out the oldest department store in Germany) and I got some traditional German food for dinner. A schnitzel and apple strudel for dessert. A nice way to finish the day. I've got the business card of the place we went to for dinner both nights and I'd highly recommend it to anyone going to Berlin for great, cheap food.

It was on the way to dinner that I saw something I really wasn't prepared for. A battle. We'd just come out of the train station when we were confronted by a large crowd cheering as an MC battle was going on. I may not understand the language, but these guys were pretty good. Even without knowing what they were saying you can still appreciate speed, rhymes and good DJ work. I was highly impressed and it's one of the highlights of Berlin.

That's it for today though, because after dinner it was straight home to bed due to the early flight tomorrow morning.

Catch you later all because tomorrow it's Amsterdam!

Fun Fact: The Germans may have 500 types of bins for recycling purposes everywhere, but it's still really weird seeing syringe bins as part of every one of those yellow bins that are attached to traffic lights in the city.