Guten Tag! Yeah so that’s pretty much the only German phrase I can pronounce after a whole weekend in Berlin. Despite my lacking language skills, my weekend in Berlin (complete with birthday celebrations and great architecture) was one I’ll never forget.
After landing in a surprisingly sunny Berlin, Fien, Sarah and I bought transit passes and hopped on a bus to the city center. We stopped along the way to grab a kebab, so my introduction to the deliciousness of German food happened very early on in the trip. It was just a small stand outside the metro station run by two very nice German men, and it was the best thing I ate all weekend. We continued on to our hostel in the center of the city. We emerged from the metro, only to come face to face with Checkpoint Charlie and portions of the Berlin Wall. Also, let me go ahead say how great it was to be back on a grid. The medieval fabric of Rome is charming, but a grid is so crisp and clean and easy to navigate. We found our hostel where our roommates were Belgian, like Fien. This was my first experience in a hostel, and I was excited to experience the college dorm life that I never got my freshman year. Everyone seemed so friendly!
Our first stop: the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind, which wasn’t even a quarter mile from our hostel. I’ve wanted to see this for a while, so finally entering the massive metal zigzag structure was awesome. The exhibit starts underground and leads up to a huge exhibit above. There are artifacts from the Holocaust, but it also provides a view into German Jewish life before the genocide. The cool thing about Libeskind’s design is that he incorporated “voids” within the museum to symbolize the voids in German history that will never be filled after the loss of Jews. These rooms, especially, are very moving.
The sun sets very early in Northern Europe, but that didn’t stop us from continuing through the city. We stumbled upon the Topography of Terror, which was the headquarters of Hitler’s Secret State Police. None of us knew this museum existed, so it was a nice surprise. There is a portion of the Berlin Wall standing outside in its original condition (without graffiti art). The exhibit inside was very informative, but brutally honest and disturbing. We appreciated the history lesson, but scurried out as soon as we were done. Another thing about Berlin: bike lanes. They run along the sidewalk, but are paved slightly different. Being the ignorant tourists that we are, we constantly walked in the wrong spot, almost getting hit by bikes and constantly getting yelled at by Germans. Next we walked to Potsdamer Platz where we found some contemporary architecture… and more pieces of the Wall (its omnipresence was not only shocking but also a constant reminder of depressing thoughts). For dinner, we met up with Fien’s friend Nga, who lives in Berlin and knows all the best places to go. We ate delicious schnitzel at a cute restaurant in the city center, and continued our night with delicious cocktails to celebrate Fien turning 23 on Saturday. Food and drinks in Berlin were incredibly well priced. I don’t think I spent more than $40 on food the entire weekend.
Saturday morning was much colder than Friday… freezing would be an understatement. I think this may have been the first time in my life to say, “Wow I totally should have worn that third pair of pants.” We began the morning with breakfast pastries as we do on pretty much every travel weekend. There was a small bakery around the corner from our apartment, and everything was delicious. Our first monument of the day was the Berlin Cathedral, where 5 euro got us into the church, up to the top of the dome and down into the crypt (something like that in Rome would have cost around 20 euro). This was my first experience with German ecclesiastical architecture, which is the topic of my thesis, so I was super pumped. The German Protestants do things a little differently than the Roman Catholics, but the church was beautiful… as was the panoramic view from the dome!
Next, we crossed a bridge and found a small art market running alongside the river. We ended up meeting an artist from Wisconsin who had lived in Berlin for 11 years. People like that inspire me to move back to Europe after graduation. I romanticize about the idea all the time, but seeing people that have actually done it makes it seem so much more possible. Anyway, we continued on to the German History Museum, which was a large Renaissance building on the river’s edge with a new modern wing by I.M. Pei. The museum featured exhibits from as early as 500 CE, but the majority is dedicated to the twentieth century and specifically (you guessed it), the Holocaust. After emerging from yet another fairly depressing collection, we ventured into the I.M. Pei wing, where we found a collection of art made by Jews during the Holocaust. This exhibit, unlike the others, was emotional and inspiring. Some Jews were “commissioned” to draw ideal camp conditions to spread as propaganda, while others depicted the gruesome truth of their situation. While most of the art was sad in content, the collection as a whole was rather uplifting.
Before leaving we visited the gift shop, and for some reason napkins are a really big thing in Berlin. Every gift shop we went to sold various colored napkins with different sayings on them (inspirational quotes, funny puns, single words, etc). It was very strange… and I still don’t understand why they were so popular. After we left the museum, we wandered down one of the main streets in the center of Berlin, allowing us to completely soak up the city. Berlin was the least crowded of the cities I’ve been to so far. We got to walk down the street without running into people or stopping for people to take pictures.
Eventually we found ourselves at our next stop: the Brandenburger Tor. This structure is somewhat comparable to a triumphal arch in most other European cities, in that it’s a monumental entrance into the city. From across the plaza we noticed that most people there were holding red, heart-shaped balloons, which was perfect for Fien’s birthday! We got some balloons, as well as the accompanying free chocolate, from the Air Berlin staff that was handing them out, promoting some opportunity to win a free trip to Florence. Considering we are going to Florence with our class next weekend, we decided to release our balloons into the sky… after taking some adorable photos with them of course.
We walked through the gate and almost immediately found ourselves at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe designed by Peter Eisenman. This was it, people. This was the thing I was most excited for in all of Berlin. The memorial, which is essentially a series of concrete boxes atop a rolling hill terrain, provides an interesting, playful contrast to the otherwise strict, sterile nature of Berlin’s cityscape. Its like a maze, and there were plenty of people there to (physically) run into. Did I get in trouble for standing on the concrete? Yes. Did I regret it? No. The memorial was everything I had hoped it would be.
For lunch we had some authentic German sausage and beer at a small café near the memorial. Not long after, we headed to the Reichstag building, which began as a German empire administrative building and was later used by the Nazis as a propaganda headquarters during their rule. The building has recently been crowned with a glass Norman Foster dome, which is what most of architecture students go to see (after all, we had already seen enough Nazi history for one day). We went to get tickets for the dome, only to find out it was completely sold out for both Saturday and Sunday. I was super bummed, but there were plenty of other things to see instead.
Fien, Sarah and I hopped on an elevated train line towards East Berlin. Riding above ground made me feel like I was back in Chicago, and I loved getting to see the city from an elevated perspective. We reached the East Side Gallery, where a long stretch of the Berlin Wall is used as an art exhibit. In 1990 artists were invited to paint the wall, so there is a wide range of styles and imagery. The bright colors and fun imagery makes the symbolism of the wall a little easier to swallow.
The sun was setting, so we made our way back to the hostel to put on more clothes for the night. We met up with Nga again, and she took us to a great Vietnamese restaurant for Fien’s birthday dinner. Nga explained that Berlin is a very international city, so different types of food are very easy to come by (unlike Rome where literally all they serve is pizza and pasta), and it’s all delicious. She also said that Munich is a bit less worldly and a lot more German. I’ll be heading there in May, so I’m excited to compare the two. Nga is an excellent baker, and gave us mini cinnamon rolls after dinner. I wish I had another one right now! After dinner we headed out to the bars to celebrate. After a few cocktails, we found ourselves at an Indian bar/ restaurant drinking hot chocolate at 1:00 in the morning. Happy Birthday Fien! We huddled quickly back to our hotel as the night kept growing colder and colder (by this point I believe the word “miserable” is appropriate).
Sunday morning brought continued celebrations, but this time it was for Valentine’s Day. All three of us are single, so the extent of our Valentine’s Day was buying the pastries with pink hearts on them from the bakery. The weather on Sunday, unlike Friday and Saturday, was dark and foggy. Along with the cold temperatures, this strangely felt more like the Berlin I was expecting. We took a train out to far West Berlin to find the Unité d’Habitation by famous architect Le Corbusier. I will be the first to admit I wasn’t that excited, but I’m trying to expand my modernist horizons, so I gave it a shot. Because it’s an apartment building, we really only got to experience the exterior, as well as a small museum about LeCo on the first floor. My apologizes to Professor Rudzinski, but I left still not understanding the appeal (sorry sorry sorry).
Across the street, we found the Olympic Park from the 1936 Games. We thought it would be good to visit, considering our studio project also involves redesigning an Olympic Park. Unfortunately, the park was gated off, so we weren’t able to access it (which was okay because by this point I believe the word “frostbite” is appropriate). Because this placed a major void into our Sunday schedule, we had some time to kill before heading to the airport. Fien was on a mission to find Berliner Balls, which is another type of pastry, famous for its sugar coating and delicious fruity filling. We finally found some and they definitely lived up to all the hype. After some shopping and a quick lunch at a small and really cheap café (schnitzel was only 3 euro!), we boarded our bus back to the airport.
I rarely meet a city that I don’t like. In fact, I can only think of one or two examples. And while the attractions in Berlin are beautiful and the food delicious, I left feeling empty. I’m not sure if it was the constant reminders of the past, the awkward middle-ground density or the sterile atmosphere, but something about Berlin felt cold in more ways than just the temperature. I’m so glad that I had the chance to visit and experience the historical significance, and I am incredibly thankful for the new friendships that I made, but Berlin might just be one city that I don’t return to. I am, however, looking forward to my future German experiences in Munich and Cologne. Until then, Auf Wiedersehen (don’t ask me how to pronounce that)!
Number of Columns Hugged: 5
Days Since Mexican Food: 56
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Read more from Haley at https://haleywalton.wordpress.com/
To find out more about the U of A Rome Center semester program for Architecture, visit http://studyabroad.uark.edu/romecentersemester/
