Second and Third Days in Berlin

I set out on Monday (day 2) with not too much of a plan. Most of the museums close on Monday, so that option was out. I set off with a bike and a map. If you look closely in the background you can see the ping-pong tables. This is not an uncommon thing. I saw people playing ping pong in the park. It's interesting.
One of the things I did on Monday was go on a boat tour. There is a river that runs through the heart of Berlin and they drive you up and down and show you the sights. This is the Berlin Haubtbanhoff. It's the main train station. It's very big and has lots of glass.
This guy is wearing a grill and an umbrella selling Bratwursts. There's not much else to say.
Compared to Washington DC when I visited there wasn't that much security in Berlin. In DC it's really visible. In Berlin, not so much. This was the only place with roadblocks, and armed guards. It was......... The American Embasy
The Crazies had set up a tent in the middle of a square.
This is the Bundestag. The German equivalent of the Capitol.
This is the last picture I took on the second day. That night I went out to dinner to an Indian restraunt. It was pretty good.
My first stop on day 3 was Checkpoint Charlie. Especially as an American it was somewhere I wanted to go. There is a museum that is next to the actual checkpoint. It was really interesting. they had a lot of stuff that people actually used to escape. They had a car with fake compartments, a balloon the people had flown over the border. It was rather inspirational.
This is the token picture of the Checkpoint Charlie sign. It's a tourist trap, but it's also pretty amazing that 17 years ago there was a huge wall here. That the Cold War was still going strong. It feels so distant from the world we're in now.
This is your intrepid adventurer in the Jewish Museum. It's was opened within the last couple years and it's very nice. It does a good job of portraying Jewish culture in Germany and Europe and also dealing with the horrible episodes in this history.
This is a view down a huge flight of stairs in the Jewish museum. The architecture was very groovy. Lots of sharp angles and non-right angle corners. It wasn't too out there where it distracted from the exhibits, but it did give you a sense of things being a little different. It also worked very well to guide you through the exhibits, without you quite realizing that it was happening.
This was a poorly translated sign on the door of a buffet that I decided it would probably be better to skip. A lot of people speak English in Germany. But not everyone does it well.
My next stop was the Berlin Zoo. It has the highest number of different species in the world. It looked like a solid stop, and at this point I needed something a little bit lighter.
These monkeys were the first thing I saw when I went into the Zoo. I watched them chase each other around for about 15 minuites. It completely validated my choice to go in. They were just playing, and it made me happy.
More Monkeys

Very cool looking African porcupines.
How can you not include the picture of the baby elephant?
The Lions where the most impressive part of the entire zoo. The wall of the cage was only about 3 feet from where you could stand. When I got there it was right before they were going to be fed. This meant that the lions were pacing back and forth. They are really big. Like up to my chest and they are very powerfull as well. I was frightened.
I was attempting to take a picture of the tiger when he ran towards the wall of the cage and jumped pretty much straight at me

A Bear

Apparently The Hartford has an office somewhere in the Zoo.

From there I went to the Musiem of German History. The museim spans all of German history. From the barbaric times, through today. And entrance was free because I went on the "Tag der Deutscher Einheit. This is a really sweet ivory horn that was used as a signal horn during hunts. It's not perticularly German, but it looks cool.

This is a 14th century circumcision knife. It's another one of those things that's not extrodanary in itself, but to think that it was doing it's job 7oo years ago, and now it's just lying there, right next to where I am is pretty crazy.
This is the entrence to the Underground/Illegal techno party that I went to with the other 3 guys who were staying in the guest appartment with me the first night I got there. From the street, you can't tell anything's there. Below is a picture of it from the street.

Since the third movie, Shamu has really been branching out. He's the Jay-Z of Killer Whales.
This is the German equivalent of the Capitol. It is very pretty and everyone told me I had to wait in line and go up into the glass dome. I didn't. It was a really long line an there was too much to see. This is the last picture I took in Berlin. It was a great trip. A big thanks to Lucy for getting me in touch with Tomas and Wolfgang, who were wonderful hosts.

First Day In Berlin

This is the view from Tomas’ guest apartment. That needle looking thing is known as the TV tower. It’s a 2 bedroom apartment and is very nice. There’s also a deck in back with overlooks the Alte Judischer Freidhof which is the oldest Jewish Cemetary in Berlin. I was going to go in and visit, but it wasn’t open the two times I tried. In the part I could see from the apartment, it looked like the graves were completely overgrown with ivy. It just struck me as a little strange.

Sunday at 1 Tomas, myself and the 3 guys who were staying in the apartment with me went out to Breakfast. They don’t even go through the formality of calling it Brunch in Germany, or maybe the just don’t have that word. It wouldn’t really work, Lunch is Mittagsessen which is literally mid-day meal, and breakfast is Fruhstuck or early-piece. (You might be thinking, but breakfast is also compound word. Yeah, I don’t have answers for everything, I just like to pretend that I do). Anyway, we got these 2 huge platters with lots of fun stuff to eat. Everyone else got coffie or some sort of brownish cafenated drink, I don’t know nearly enough about what they ordered to have been able to decipher it if they were speaking English. We stayed there for 2 hours. Apparently that’s what they do.

This is just an example of the strange uses of English that I found. I find them funny, so I take pictures and here you are.

This is the inside of a casino that’s inside the base of the Fernseherzentrum (The TV tower). It wasn’t so much a casino as a bunch of slot machines. They didn’t have any table games and they had a 1E entrence fee. The entrence fee seems like not the best busness stragtegy, but they got me to pay it (even though that was mostly in deference to what Romulo would have wanted me to do).

This is “The Clock of the World” at Alexanderplatz. It’s nice, and I’d seen pictures of it. However, it’s considerably smaller than I thought it would be. I figured it was huge, but it’s just sort of normal size. The other interesting thing was all the German Emo kids hanging out underneath it. The main differences between them and the American Emo kids are that they seem angrier, and drink in public.

I found a Dunkin’ Donuts. I was excited, so I took a picture. However, all of the stuff is decently more expensive than it is in the US. (No word if the Griffeys own it)

This is a scale model of Berlin. You can see the Fernseherzentrum in the foreground. This model was in the Nikolausviertel Kriche. (look up name). It’s the oldest surviving church in Berlin. It was built in the 1200s. It’s been turned into a museum and it has a lot of pieces from other Churches that were destroyed in WWII.

This is a Taufstein (baptism thingy) from the 14^th century. What gets me about stuff like this is when I take a step back and realizes that not only is this really old, people used to use it. Some guy in 1429 got his kid baptized in this thing. Thinking about things like this that way just makes it so much more real and more interesting to me.

This is a Sacrament cabinet from the 15^th century.

This is a molding on one of the buildings in what was East Berlin. The text reads “ES LEBE DIE SOZALE REVOLUTION ES LEBE DER FRIEDEN DER VÖLKER” (It lives, the social revolution. It lives, The Freedom of the People)

This is the Berlin Döm. It was a protestant church built by Kaiser Wilhelm II.

This is the inside of the church, which was incredibly opulent, with gold everywhere.

This is a close-up of the pulpit. It’s like 15’ in the air. It’s just one part of this very over the top church.

This guy just had an over the top mullet. Mullets are surprisingly common here. They aren’t as crazy as this guy’s, usually they’re understated but they are common. Kids have them too. It’s just mean thing to do to your child.

October 3^rd is the day that the DDR and the BDR (East and West Germany) unified. So they were having the “Party for the day of German unity” in the center of the city.

This picture speaks for itself.

I was minding my own business, riding my bike along when all of a sudden, a sign pops up, saying I’m heading for “Wedding”. I only found this slightly disconcerting.

I was riding back home when I saw a group of people gathered outside a hotel. I heard whispers about it being a charity event and Kevin Costner being there. I think he was in Berlin, but when I left he had not shown up.

The Brandemburger Tur at night, with a ferris wheel in the background.

I have pictures from my other days in Berlin that I will get up when I get a chance. I just got back from visiting Eric Read (my dad's cousin) in Switzerland, and classes are finally starting this monday so I will most likely continue to be behind on posts, but they'll be up there eventually.

Eine Reise nach Berlin

This is the commentary that I kept on my trip to Berlin. Regular text is what I wrote at the time. Italics are added later.

7:05 Hit snooze button for the second time, got some breakfast

8:17 Left dorm. Walked to Banhoff (train station)

8:58 I’m on the correct train. It took about 35 minutes to walk there. It takes less than 10 minutes to Bike there. On the way there were signs advertising a “BoS” “Black on Sunday” party at the local disko

9:07 And we’re off. Göttingen is the first/last stop on this line so everyone got off the train. This included some football fans that started chanting as soon as they got off.

For whatever reason the train feels like a rainforest. I’m sweating bullets. I’m listening to a podcast of PTI. Technology is a little out of control.

(the view from my seat on the first train)

9:43 I successfully switched trains at Kreiensen. This one is much smaller, only 2 cars. I Saw more soccer fans. Werden Bremen must be playing somewhere today. Also it turns out what I thought was my receipt is actually my ticket. And what I thought was my ticket is just a plan for what trains I should take. I used my student ID for the first train (Goettingen Students can travel for free within the Lower Saxony) but now I know the drill

10:24 2^nd train switch. Apparently there is a game between Wolfsburg and Bayern München. The train is full of FC Bayern fans. I’m sitting with 3 old ladies who are very clearly not going to the game.

Everyone is drinking beer. (including this guy with the mini-keg)

I’m dubbing it train-gating. One of the 3 guys across the isle from me just pulled out a 2’ long pepperoni, cut a piece off and is eating it with bread. Another one of the guys is wearing a bottle opener as a necklace.

11:13 3^rd train switch

The 3 women I was sitting with apparently didn’t know each other. They brought me into the conversation by asking if I knew why young people dye their hair green and blue and put it up in spikes. I then had a relatively normal conversation with them. When I said that I was from Connecticut and they didn’t know where that was I said it was near New York. The woman who was from Brazil immediately asked me where I was on 9/11.

My last transfer was in Wolfsburg so this train is packed with Bayern fans going to see the game. The Braunschweig haubtbahoff had a lot of them in it. They were singing songs and drinking… a lot. (that's them)

11:35 A final note about the Brauschweig Hbf. They had pay toilets. It cost .50E to pee. And there was an attendant in there. It was unclear what he was doing, but he was standing in there.

11:59 Train switch #4

This train is supposed to have reservations, but I don’t have one. But I hope they’ll let me stay here. They not only let me stay there, I wasn’t asked for my ticket.

I managed to sit in a s

moking car. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, but it’s not great.

2:01 The rest of the train ride was uneventful. They never checked my ticket. They came by, but I guess it looked like I had been there for a while.

I got off the train at the Berlin Hbf. Which is huge. It’s like Grand Central except new.

I got on the correct S-Bahn and successfully got to Alexanderplatz.

This is the S-Bahn Platform

From there I was supposed to get on the U2 and go towards Pankow. But I went the other way. So now I’m waiting for the U-Bahn to come back and I will hopefully make it to my stop.

I did and here's a picture of me on the U-Bahn