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Making moves, taking chances, and enjoying what life brings me along the way.

26.6.11

Eins, Zwei, Drei BERLIN!

Everything is passing by so quickly now that school is coming to a end (which I cannot grasp for the life of me considering this time last year I was counting down the days to get here).

Last week for my birthday, one of my classes sang to me in French, English, and Arabic. It was hilarious because they started off singing/screaming and then when their teacher told them to calm down a little, they whispered. Once word got around that it was my birthday everyone came up to me asking how old I was...by far the best response was made by one of my CM1 girls: "Mais elle est jeune quand même!" Yes!! I am still young! Thank you :)

After a full day of classes, my friends and I went out to l'Epicerie for dinner. Later in the night we ended up at the Ayers Rock Boat where for the first time all year I was not asked for ID. Maybe at 23 I really look older?? I'd like to hope so but I'm pretty sure it was simply because it was a Tuesday night. Either way, we definitely got our dance on :)

The rest of the week went by quite smoothly. It was essentially my last week of teaching; this week I've been playing review games and next week we will be playing American sports (more on this in the next post).

On Friday I jetted off to Berlin, Germany for a continuation of birthday celebrations. I arrived late in the afternoon and had an hour to spare before I met up with my Couchsurfing hosts, Timo and Rauno. I followed their directions to take the bus to Alexanderplatz and on my way through the city I saw some very interesting, thought-provoking things. First, there is graffiti everywhere in Berlin; absolutely incredible with the colors, shapes, creativity, just everything. At one stop light I read this, "Better to be a lion for one day, than a sheep your whole life." Very interesting considering all of the history there. Plus a nice jolt of inspiration for people that pass it everyday on their way to work. At another stop light I looked down into a car and saw that both the driver and the passenger had beers in their cup holders. I knew at that moment that Berlin was going to be insane.

Alexanderplatz is a huge square in the middle of shops, markets, and little fast food joints. Considering that I didn't want to get myself into too much trouble by going shopping, I decided to walk back towards the center of city to check out the magnificent buildings I had caught a glimpse of on the way into town. I ran into the Neptune Fountain (Neptunbrunnen), the Television Tower (Fernsehturm), the Berliner Dom (their famous cathedral), and the Neues Museum. After laying in the sun for a bit, taking pictures of life passing by around me, I found Timo and Rauno and we were off to their company owned apartment. We immediately started talking, joking about what Finland has to offer to the world, exchanging stories about our jobs, and having fun getting lost in Berlin (it was Rauno's second day). We went out to dinner in Kreuzberg, the hip, more international side of town. I had sushi for the first time all year in Europe and it was amazing (cucumbers and all!) After we went to get a beer at a cool little cafe. While Lyon starts to head home for bed at midnight, Berlin is just getting started. I felt like a grandma going home after just one beer.
Neptune Fountain

TV tower

The original green man (on all the pedestrian lights in East Berlin)

Life just passing by

The Old Art Museum

Berliner Dom from behind (along with other behinds).
The next morning we headed over to the train station to pick up Katelyn, Kristen, Jason, and Brandon. I had seen a part of the Berlin Wall on the way over so we stopped there before heading to Timo's apartment to drop off their huge backpacks (they're traveling across 7 countries in 3 weeks). We tried to make the free New Europe walking tour but it started to downpour, so we headed off to grab some traditional German food instead. Now normally I hate sauerkraut. My Dad always insists on having it when we cook German food and the smell makes me want to hurl. Maybe the recipe was tweaked over the years, or maybe America can never really recreate the originals, but either way, I ate all of my sauerkraut in Berlin (another first in Europe)! After a wonderful meal we wondered around for a bit, found Jason and Brandon a hostel, and then went back to get ready for our night out together. We ended up heading to Kreuzberg again with the rest of the world. We got off the tram and I felt like I was leaving a Phillies game with all of the thousands of people spilling out of the exits. As we walked up the steps and onto the street we heard music and cheering. Someone had decided to set up a party at the exit of the metro station, DJ and all. Absolutely amazing. We wandered around, trying to follow whoever looked like they knew where to go, and ended up at Watergate. A whopping 12 euros to enter, but well worth it. You could go back out to get cheaper drinks elsewhere and walk back in to dance whenever you wanted. Plus there were 2 dance floors, 5 techno DJs, and later in the night a live band, Marbert Rocel. I have never seen techno live, I've never really listened to it unless someone else had it playing in their car, and I certainly have never known how to dance to it, but we all went crazy. At one point I turned to Katelyn and asked, "Is it me or is the sun really coming up already?" Sure enough it was because thirty minutes later black out curtains automatically closed the view onto the Spree river. After a fun night of dancing, we zombie walked back to the apartment for a quick nap. We woke up 3 hours later to head back into town for the 11 am tour.
The ginormous Berlin train station

The Berlin Wall

The Death Strip (area between the two parts of the wall where over 100 people were shot while trying to escape from East Berlin)

Just riding a bike in the pouring rain drinking beer at 3 pm. NBD

My delicious beer (which measured to be bigger than my head).

Sausage and sauerkraut.

Inside the Berliner Dom

Fancier than I expected for the Germans

Our tour guide was absolutely amazing. Here's some of what I learned during our tour:

The top of the Brandenberg Gate

Adion Hotel
  • On top of the Brandenberg Gates is the famous chariot carrying the goddess of Peace, Eirene. Napoleon fell in love with her when he invaded in 1806, stole her, and put her in the Louvre. The Germans took her back after Napoleon's defeat in 1814, renamed her Victory (for the Roman goddess of Victory), and changed her position so that she now looks down in the direction of the French Embassy. Smiling. Take that France.
  • Michael Jackson dangled his baby from one of the balconies at the Adion Hotel (which sits on the Pariser Platz.)  It's also known to be the most expensive hotel, over 1,800 euros for the royal suite (which includes flowers, a limousine ride around Berlin, and champagne, but nooooo, not breakfast). 
  • The Reichstag (government building) has a dome which overlooks the meetings rooms so that when the politicians look up they see who they are working for, the people (and maybe a tourist or two).
  • The Memorial to the Murdered Jews was designed by Peter Eisenman. It cost around 25 million to build, which is very controversial in Berlin. Our tour guide informed us that the other option to choose from was to create a bus route to the concentration camp just north of Berlin. However, Berlin decided to create this memorial instead so that everyone is reminded every day of what happened as they walk towards the Pariser Platz. Plus, the bus routes would force you in a sense to confront the Holocaust, whereas this memorial is more of what you make of it. Consisting of 2,711 slabs of concrete, everyone experiences a different wave of emotions. Some see it as a bar graph of Nazism (and its popularity), others see prisoners lined up, and still others see the cold buildings of a concentration camp.
  • On the way to the site of Hitler's old bunker, we made our way through what used to be the most expensive apartments in East Berlin (inhabited by the top Communist officials).
  • It was creepy to stand in the same area where Hitler took his life. There's no evidence of the bunker, but just the thought that he bit down on cyanide and shot himself in the head right where I was standing, was mind blowing (pun intended). Furthermore, to learn that the German soldiers wrapped him up, tried to burn his body (as requested in his suicide letter), stopped halfway through afraid that the Soviets would come at any second, and then buried him to hide any evidence that he was indeed dead was so ironic. As the tour guide put it, we have a 25 million euro memorial to celebrate all of innocent lives taken, and then we have a parking lot, built on top of where Hitler died.
  • The Gendarmenmarkt houses three magnificent buildings: the music concert hall, Konzerhaus de Schinkel and two cathedrals, one French, one German (Deutscher und Französicher Dom). Another nice joke towards the French: the cathedrals are identical with the exception of three additional feet on the top of the German Cathedral.
  • Bebelplatz is another large square in Berlin and more famously known as the site of the Nazi book burning ceremony held in the evening of May 10, 1933 by members of the SA ("brownshirts"), SS, Nazi students and Hitler Youth groups. They burned around 20,000 books. Today, Berlin locals sell books around the square to promote education (and discourage the niave of the Nazis). 
  • On the book burning memorial, there is a quotation by Heinrich Heine. It states, "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" ("Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people"). Interestingly enough this was written 100 years prior to Hitler. The memorial holds several empty bookcases, which could fit the forever missing 20,000 books.


The French Cathedral (before the rain hit us)

The Holocaust Memorial

The site of Hitler's bunker

Now IRS building, then Nazi and later Soviet quarters. Very cold building with windows that grow smaller as they go up giving you a lovely sense of inferiority.

Checkpoint Charlie (where USSR and USA boundaries met). The US soldier looks out to the USSR territory of Berlin, and on the other side, the USSR soldier looks onto US territory. Oh the Cold War!
    I'll leave you all with that for now; there's just too many wonderful stories to recount. I will however suggest this brilliant movie if you want some more food for though: Goodbye Lenin!

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