ich ein berliner.

oh where to begin? whatta crazy city berlin is. to begin with, the whole thing is under construction. i really don't feel that saying that is an exaggeration. anyway, i got there sunday night, we went out for some drinks and chilled for a bit, hitting the hay early so we could get up for our nine hour walking tour through the city. that's right--me, walking for nine hours, willingly. i figured since i only had two days there i should make the most of them by seriously seeing as much as possible. meanwhile, my legs were already tired as hell because we walked all around copenhagen, only taking public transportation to and from the airport. but, rach's brother strongly reccomended the tour so i hoped it'd be good. terri brewer, the originator of the brewer tour (british, about 70, held a lot of very official positions in england and germany) was our guide, and he took a fondness to me from the beginning, i guess when i was the only one who said i was jewish and translated some hebrew, but also because i knew the answer to most of his questions. he was funny and sometimes harsh, making us walk fast and yelling at the group (comprised of mostly australians and the eight of us americans) when we were slow, but it was good times.

we started at the old synagogue that was once the largest in europe before the dohani in budapest was built, and went all around what was east berlin. the way you know you're in east berlin is the tramlines, which never existed in west berlin, and the stoplights, which have funny looking red and green men meant to encourage little kids to stop and go (see pictures above). apparently when berlin was reunified they tried getting rid of these lights, but people protested so they were brought back and have become sort of a symbol of berlin. ah the irony of this communist symbol becoming an icon of current berlin. but i guess germany/berlin has a history of irony and strangeness, to say the very least.

when i talked to dad later that evening and he asked me if it was strange to be there, i said, "well, i was in poland before..." and he said, "oh no, it's very different". and i began to think about it the rest of the time i was there, because it's very strange to think that only 60 years before the city was filled with nazis killing jews and breaking their windows and taking their shit away, and there were many civilians on the street seeing the whole thing go down, some helping, many turning away.

we continued on to some more holocaust-related sites, which was very uplifting, let me tell you. we saw a lot of things that day--the berlin wall, checkpoint charlie (now reconstructed and not the original), the reichstag, this holocaust monument recently built with just a ton of slabs of concrete, walked on museum mile, where hitler's bunkers had once been and where he killed himself (the memory of which has now attempted to be erased, as a non-descript apartment building now sits on top of it), the hotel adlon (ie the infamous place where mr. michael jackson dangled his baby blanket, and i don't mean his blanket from when he was a child, out the window), the frank gehry-designed deutsche bank, and probably more i can't remember since it's been a week now. walking around the city, with noise everywhere due to the construction, i could really see the effects communism had on the city, and was rather amazed how divisive things had been only 15 years ago.

i left the tour early to go to the jewish musuem, a new museum designed by daneil libeskind. the architecture of the very geometric and sharp building was interesting, as were the "axis" that made up the beginning of the museum, which included the holocaust tower, a dark and cold room where you can see nothing and is meant to evoke the helplesness of the jews during the holocasut, and in which i could never imagine being alone. i stayed in there as long as i could, but even then i had to shuffle around and move my feet for some sort of reassurance. the museum itself wasn't very good--it didn't have any interesting artifacts or anything, but as a history of german jews for 2000 years, it did a pretty nice job explaining customs and such. the history of the jews is really fascinating and sad, i must say.

the next day i got up early to go to the pergoman museum, which has among its treasures the pergoman altar and other interesting roman and greek ruins and an extensive roman collection, and the gates of ishtar from turkey, a beautiful blue and tiled structure attached to the museum. it was rather amazing and some people were restoring a bit of it when i went so that was cool.

then i went to the checkpoint charlie museum which i found the most interesting thing ever. it was this pretty small space started basically when the wall went up, and it was filled with different artifacts and stories about how people escaped from east berlin. some of the most interesting included a family who built the biggest hot air balloon ever to be made in europe at the time at home, and hot air ballooned their asses to west berlin. another group of students spent months digging a tunnel and successfully got a whole buncha people out of east berlin. i don't think i realized what a struggle the whole situation was, with families being torn apart etc. i enjoyed the museum a lot, after which i went back to the hostel and headed back to paris.

i have to say, i got to spend more time in copenhagen, got to know the city better, and spent more time out at night there. everyone raves about berlin and i'm kind of bummed i didn't get to see the nightlife/culture that's supposedly amazing. i guess this means i'll have to go back. but i swear, if i go back there in, say, ten years, it'll be a whole new city.