Berlin by Day

Though we rarely made it out of the house at a decent hour, we saw an impressive amount of Berlin in the daylight. My first evening in Berlin we walked through Mitte, the central district marked by a mildly bourgy culture, for the city's standards, and an enormous radio tour à la Seattle, which is visible from almost anywhere in the city. Our tour around the neighborhood first introduced the art that came to define Berlin for me.

The Fernsehturm Tower, courtesy of Hannah and crazy natural lighting.

Imagine the little surprises that hide around Portland-the tiny horses tied to the sidewalks, the colors splashed in the street intersections, the artsy wooden benches-plus the diverse and beautiful street art of San Francisco, and multiply that times one thousand. Then you'll have a basic sketch of Berlin. I am comparing it to these things that I know, because it seems to be everything I love in a city put together. Behind the storefronts, even in Mitte, there are large courtyards and open spaces, including giant fields and abandoned buildings-turned-galleries.

This first evening we stumbled upon Tascheles, one of the biggest urban gallery spaces in the city, and center of the independent art scene in Berlin. It is housed in a huge building whose backside was bombed out in WWII. Instead of repairing the brick, the backside was walled with thick glass, reminding visitors of the city's history and it's truly artistic relationship with that history.

Tascheles: You can barely tell that the back wall is glass because of all the graffiti. I felt strange taking pictures within the work spaces. They were far more personalized than these staircase corridors.

 Squatting artists not only display their art in separate workshops but they also live there. So alongside a woman paper-machéing giant Day of the Dead puppets, you also see artists making dinner, sleeping, or drinking with friends. There is music and graffiti everywhere. There are dogs. Paint fumes are strong, and it is gritty, to say the least. Some rooms are darker than others. Here you can sense that some artists have hit the rough side of their lifestyles. These rooms have old shit stacked in front of their doorways. There were many no-photograph signs, and the artists didn't really interact with the guests. It was more like viewing an exhibition of life, and that is a little unsettling. While fascinating, the place reeks of the mal-effects tourism has had on the Berlin art world.

H + K, guilty as charged of street-art tourism.

Wandering around Berlin on foot, we saw history presented by the art as well as the many juxtapositions between old and new. We craved, however, a deeper knowledge of the many layers of difficult history behind the Berlin of today. We found these stories in a free walking tour that began on a frigid but sunny Saturday afternoon, stretching into the evening. I think that these tours can range from cheesy to boring, but our guide Tom was spectacular. One of our first stops was the Holocaust Memorial, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, an entire city block filled with concrete blocks of varied sizes. The ground beneath the monument ripples in depth, creating a cold, unsettling space as you walk further in. Tom discussed the openness of interpretation of the memorial, suggesting among many effects that of isolation, fear and loss of reference. For when you stand deep in the memorial you catch glimpses of people passing in the corridors around you, but they quickly disappear in the maze.

From the memorial Tom led us to a group of nondescript apartment buildings. Deep below the lot, he explained, lies the remains of Hitler's bunker, where he and Eva Braun committed suicide in 1945. It is points like these, unmarked by plaques and couched within the urban landscapes, which are meaningless without a guide but hold chilling stories and exemplify the way the city has chosen to deal with it's troubling past. Nothing is forgotten, nor memorialized in unnecessary ways.

Very different in tone from the Holocaust memorials are those that speak of the GDR, the socialist republic that ruled East Germany from 1949 to 1989. Berlin lay deep within East German territory but was divided between the Allies and the GDR. As the intense restrictions that came to define the GDR grew, the Berlin Wall was constructed around West Germany literally overnight in 1961, cutting the city in half and separating East German's from family, friends, and potential freedom. As life in West Berlin moved along with modernity, East Germany, including it's part of Berlin, stopped in time. Tom told us a joke that exemplified this, as well as the intensity of bureaucracy in the GDR: A man orders a new car and the salesperson tells him that it will arrive at his home on January 5th, seven years from then. The man responds by asking exactly what time the new car will arrive on the 5th. The salesperson is puzzled. Why would it matter what time, seven years from now?" "Because," the man responds, "My new telephone is supposed to arrive in the afternoon on that day." 

Our tour ended on the steps of a grand museum, where we sat and listened to Tom's fabulous retelling of the events of 1989 when the wall came down. After over 3 decades, the travel restrictions were lifted entirely in one press conference when the man in charge made a terrible mistake. Before he even knew what he had said, people were moving in masse to the checkpoints. It was a rather beautiful story, as was that of the peaceful revolution in Leipzig earlier that year. When the stories were finished, everyone was clapping. Thanks Tom!

Other notable Berlinerthings:

Mauerpark Flea Market: A giant flea market held every Sunday in the semi-posh but artsy Prenzlauer Berg, one of our favorite Berlin neighborhoods. Some of the booths border on stupid-expensive, especially when the goods are simple secondhand finds. The people-watching is superb, and the park's grassy amphitheater is also home to a stadium sized Karaoke fest every Sunday. The quirkiness of this city is pretty epic.

Morgenrot Vegan Collective: Also in Prenzlauer Berg, this café has a damn good all you can eat vegan breakfast buffet. Need I say more?

The first of many platefuls at Morgenrot my first Sunday morning.

A boat trip down the River Spree: My grandma's friend Heinz graciously met Hannah and I and took us on an hour-long boat trip along the Spree river, which runs through the heart of Berlin. It was peaceful and provided an intimate view of the city's impressive and varied architecture, as we floated past both the classic buildings of museum island and the slickly modern parliamentary ones that symbolically helped Berlin move forward after the reunification in 1990.

Thanks Heinz! What a great way to see Berlin.

The East Side Gallery: A huge strip of the Berlin Wall that has become the world's largest outdoor art gallery. The color's are phenomenal and the art is diverse, from professional artists all over the world. Much of it speaks to the freedoms, values and love that this world needs to avoid fascism and hatred. That's an overly simple summary--each mural is huge and powerful in it's own way, and you are free to walk down the wall at your own pace in the open air. Another example of why visiting Berlin didn't feel at all rushed or touristy. There is so much space and so many isolated smatterings of art and history that it felt like we were discovering it all on our own terms.

East/West

Some of the art was much better than others, and this one took the cake. If only I could understand what it says.