Which means they make a mean döner kebap.
The difference between Berlin and the last few places I've been was almost shocking to me - it seems so... developed? Is that the right word? It's modern, but not in a shiny, new way. In a dirty, grungy, industrial, young way.
Let me start by saying that I absolutely loved the city of Berlin. I was there for 4 days, and I left this afternoon for Dresden (should I be walking around feeling guilty about the firebombing?).
There are several sides to the city that I noticed and experienced. Let's start with the more mainstream touristy stuff:
MUSEUMS
I am a museum person. I have been to so many on this trip so far, and keep thinking I'm going to get tired of them. And I do. But not for long. So, when I say that Berlin had some of the best museums I've seen, I am really saying something. And there are SO MANY of them! There is an entire island with nothing BUT museums on it! Well, there's a cathedral. And a fountain. But that's it.
Let me tell you about the single best deal I have encountered on this trip (an this is including the €40 music festival ticket that should have been almost €100). The Berlin Museum Pass. With a student ID it costs €9.50, and gets you into over 50 museums for 3 days. And not just the crappy museums that nobody has heard of or wants to go to. We're talking top-notch stuff.
Let's work backwards. Today I went to the Jewish museum. Someone opined that it is the best of its kind in all of Europe. I have no objection to this conclusion. This place was awesome - from the architecture of the building to the permanent exhibits to the gardens, it was fantastic. I am comparing it to the House of Terror in Budapest, only because they were so different. House of Terror was essentially just reading a textbook while surrounded with wall-sized images, some video clips, very few physical things. It was certainly am experience, and the atmosphere and music made the information much more poignant, but it really was just a lot of reading and not much else. The Jewish museum, on the other hand, would appeal to anyone who likes museums. It was fantastic. There were many media used, interactive displays and sound bits, artifacts, stories told, photographs displayed, short but interesting plaques (or pull-out drawers or lift-up flaps) about religion, secular Jewish life, how Jewish culture influenced German culture. When you first walk in to the permanent exhibit you can write a wish on a paper pomegranate and hang it from a life-sized tree. There is a vending machine halfway through with kosher Haribo gummy bears. This is a really, truly well-done museum.
I also went to the modern art museum this morning. This is more of a matter of personal taste, but as I often appreciate modern art it was fun for me. There was an interesting exhibit tracing the evolution of art (painting, sculpture and architecture) in Berlin from 1880-1980. Prominently featured was a Chilean artist, Alfredo Jaar, who did some really interesting pieces using light.
Yesterday I poked my head into the Pergamon museum - with my pass I got to skip the outrageously long line, which was an amazing perk, and get straight to the massive stuff inside. This museum was built to house huge altar-pieces and gates and friezes that were dug up in Turkey. We're talking full-sized buildings inside of a building. It was quite strange to see, and while it was all quite beautiful, I couldn't help thinking that even though a German found it, shouldn't they have left it in Turkey?
The Bode museum was my favorite on museum island - it's not one of the big tourist destinations, falling decidedly in the shadows of the Pergamon and the Neues, but I really enjoyed it. Mainly because of one statue (see the photo at the end again) of a dancer. I couldn't actually believe that this girl had been carved. She looks like she grew, already dancing, right out of the marble. I wasn't the only one stopped in my tracks by this dancer. I sat, gazing at her, next to a man doing the same, for a long time.
On my first day I stumbled on this tiny but fascinating exhibit based on found objects in certain sites. The picture doesn't do it any kind of justice, but it was really cool.
Some other classically tourist things I did include climbing 300+ stairs to the top of the cathedral on museum island, which resulted in the best views around, a (very short) visit to the famous (and overly crowded and not at all worth it) Checkpoint Charlie, and a stroll along the longest surviving section of the wall, the East Side Gallery.
The other side of Berlin, which I was incredibly eager to experience, has been labelled "alternative". I can't say I really like that word, but I'll go with it until I think of something better (don't hold your breath). This is the world of the young, lively, vibrant, street-art viewing, squat-house dwelling, pierced and tattooed Berliner, possibly from somewhere else entirely, probably upset about gentrification, and definitely making their presence felt in the city.
"ALTERNATIVE" BERLIN
These aren't the kind of things that are outlined in my guidebook, so I took a walking tour. Yes, this stuff is so important that it has its own walking tour. I would highly recommend it, alternativeberlin.com.
We started (and continued) with a lot of street art. I am really into street art. I believe I've mentioned this before. And probably also told you to watch the movie "Exit Through the Gift Shop" if you have any interest in it whatsoever, because it's really good. Good enough for me to repeatedly tell you about it. Anyways, this is important because Berlin is one of the best cities around for street art. There are whole books full of it. There is an entire memory card in my backpack full of it. Because the city is full of it.
Let me be clear about the difference between street art and graffiti. What one normally thinks of as graffiti, the ugly scrawls, the big letters that are impossible to read, the gang signs etc... that is, in fact, graffiti. Street art is something a little different. It's art that just happens to be in a public place. It also happens to be illegal. But you can find it anywhere - on a wall, the pavement, the back of a road sign. It turns entire cities into public art galleries. And it's always changing.
We went by some former squat houses (I will explain, shortly, the need for the "former"qualifier), a community of people living in caravans and running an urban farm, complete with ponies and goats, and the tree house of an adorable old Turkish man. His story was lovely, so I'm going to share it. When they were building the wall, at some point there was meant to be a corner, but someone decided to save money by building it curved, which left this bit of land that belonged to one side but was actually walled off to the other side. So this patch, which no one could officially use or even set foot on, became a trash heap. Until this guy showed up, and started clearing it out. He planted a garden, and built a little house from found scraps, right around a tree. When the wall came down, a church across the street laid claim to the land so that no one could remove him. And there he stays, to this day, tending his garden and sitting in a lawn chair in the back (sleeping soundly, when we saw him).
I liked the walking tour so much that I decided to do the "anti-pub crawl" hosted by the same group. It was a lot of fun, 6 places, all quite different, none at all like your standard bar/club, not a one playing house music. The first was a 60s bar called yesterday, which just made me think of the Beatles all night. There were stuffed flowers and mushrooms on the ceiling with lady-bug foil-wrapped chocolates attached to them, and multi-colored lights all around. The next bar was a goth/punk place, with skulls for beer taps, red lighting, and cobwebs in the corners. This sounds way cheesier than it was - it was actually pretty cool. But my favorite place we went was a ping pong bar. What the heck is that? one may ask. Well, it's basically just a room with a ping pong table in it. You rent a paddle, and participate in a sort of musical-chairs-esque elimination round where players just circle the table, trying to hit the ball until they miss and are out. This whittles the participants down to 2 very good players who are great fun to watch, until someone wins and the whole thing starts all over again.
Now we get to the sad part. The part where I tell you that if you want to see this awesome, "alternative" Berlin, you better hurry up and do it. Because it probably won't exist for too much longer.
The problem is gentrification. An area becomes popular with young, poor, super cool (in my opinion) people. People with more money see it as a good investment. They buy real estate. Prices go up. More affluent people start to move into the area. They start complaining about noisy clubs, spray-painted walls, people squatting illegally in abandoned buildings. So, gradually, all those things disappear. The funky bars and restaurants become homogenized, the artists camping out in that condemned building get forcibly evicted, more people leave because they can't afford to live there any more. And then it becomes kind of the same as everywhere else.
At first this made me really mad. But then I realized, change just happens. You can't stop it, and you shouldn't really want to - you should just enjoy what's there while it lasts. Make some memories, so when all that's left of those times are photographs and stories we can tell our grandchildren about the good ol' days. And keep an open mind, so you can enjoy the next cool thing, which won't last forever either.
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