A won tickets to see Metallica's Death Magnetic release party in Berlin. So I decided to spend the whole weekend there. My friend Christophe had never been to a concert and was interested in checking out the show and doing some sightseeing. So we planned the trip and headed to Berlin.
We flew in Friday morning, and took a few buses and trains and such and finally made it to the hotel.
It was well before check in, so we just put our luggage in their back room and headed out. We didn't have much of a plan for Friday other than the concert, so I don't have a whole lot to say about the Friday pictures.
We headed down to the West Berlin Center, and just wondered around. We grabbed a sandwich at a small shop, and walked around. We found this old factory area that was on the map and seemed cool.
We passed what seemed to be a very large but closed-due-to-renovation church...
We then passed the coolest looking restaurant ever. We knew we had to eat here before we left. White Trash Fast Food was a restaurant that served mostly American food. It was not fast food at all - there were waiters and the like. As you can see, the outside is decorated like an Asian restaurant. The inside is half-and-half Asian decor and Gothic decor. It's the most eclectic and cool looking place. We noted the information got the hours, and went on our way.
No idea what this is, but looked cool...
Two more churches that may or may not be important - but they were marked on the map!
This fountain was really cool! I took a picture of the plaque on it for any of you who read German.
A cool tower, another interesting fountain, and Christophe in one of those cut-out-of-a-body-with-a-whole-for-your-face things...
Next up we passed a "Dome" - something bigger than a church, but including a church. The fee to go in was small and we had a bit of time left, so we headed in. It was absolutely amazing. It was an incredibly beautiful and powerful church.
Note in this final picture the statues on the roof. I had to zoom way in in order to show it was a statue and not a painting, so it's a bit fuzzy (the root was incredibly high).
From there we headed back to the hotel to actually check-in, change, get the tickets, etc.
You can see my full review of the concert at IPOM.com.
The next morning we got up around 10 and were off by 11. We headed down to the area near Charlie's Checkpoint and found a nice little cafe to have breakfast at. We got coffee and sandwiches from the very cute girl behind the desk and sat and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast/lunch. Then it was off.
We walked a block up and found a huge map showing nearby sites, and we were right next to Charlie's Checkpoint, so we headed 2 blocks down to it and the adjacent Museum of the Wall.
As you might have guessed a piece of the Berlin Wall was outside the Museum of the Wall as well as a star, which if I interpret the signs right, was a symbol of a non-violent protest in Prague.
On our way to another site, we accidentally stumbled into a World War II/Holocaust memorial underneath a larger section of the wall. It talked about the rise to power of Hitler, the much of the history of the millions of murdered victims. It was a touching memorial.
Hey that building looks important!
OK, so it wasn't important, but it had a cool looking room in it, a neat book store, and some cool columns.
We kept walking along and ran into a firemen's competition of some sort. In this case a fireman was dragging a very heavy dummy a long way in the hot sun and in full gear. We were hoping this would be more interesting to watch, but watching the guy drag him 5 feet, stop, and repeat wasn't thrilling.
Climbed up a small grass hill and took pictures of some cool looking buildings and courtyards around.
Next up was the Jewish Museum. This museum seems really small, because it seems like there's only two corridors, and each of these corridors has some stuff about the architecture and how it's supposed to convey something about the Holocaust, and it has some details about a given individual or family.
Then you go out in door and you're this square which has these very tall (2 stories or so) concrete square pillars in an exact grid. It should all be very consistent and concise, but the floor of this garden is at an very strange diagonal angle. The fact that it looks all even and consistent but isn't is the oddest feeling. On top of that, the narrow hallways are incredibly reminiscent of the kind of the place where an action scene takes place in futuristic action movies. So we did what any 2 geeks would. We took some time out from appropriate solemn respect, and ran around in this garden like kids playing hide-and-go-seek. There was no good way to take a picture from inside the garden, but I got one much later from elsewhere in the museum several stories up.
As it turns out, the museum is very large. In the other building, there's 5 floors of museum. We were in there for hours. Most of it wasn't picture-taking stuff - a lot of it was reading or listening. One thing that I had to take a picture of was this.
This is a roll of the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. Seeing it was very powerful, and very saddening.
We left the museum and tried to head out to find White Trash Fast Food for some good dinner. We passed a very cool fountain.
After a lot of walking around in circles, we finally found White Trash Fast Food. We went in and sat down, and ordered copious amounts of their specialty drinks. We both ordered burgers, and it was the first really good burger I'd had since I left the US in May. Big, juicy, and cooked to order. The place was fantastic! It had things like "Fuck You Fries," "Moses Hell-Fire BBQ Burger," and "The Marquee de Fuck Burger." They note that their organic food is "killed by hippies exclusively for us, then allowed to age in peace." Under their Chicken they note "Yes we're Happy to eat you, you chicken-ass bitch..." This place was fantastic. I made a note to tell the hostess how gorgeous she was on our way out. It's important people know these things.
We couldn't get a hold of Kat and Adrian so we found a bar to have a drink at. And as we got our drink, Kat and Adrian got a hold of us. Of course. We finished our drink and made it across town to meet up with them at the Hard Rock Cafe for drinks. We found them highly entertained by the cock ring you could buy from the dispenser in the bathroom. Now there's something you don't see in the US! A few drinks later, we all headed home for some sleep.
The next morning we got up and headed to another part of town. The food options were not as prevalent here, so we grabbed a bagel and coffee at Starbucks (the bagels here were fresh, not the pre-wrapped crap at the Starbucks in Switzerland). We walked out, turned the corner and found a big important-looking gate thing.
Our next destination was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This was actually quite similar to the garden of pillars at the museum from yesterday except that it was an entire city block big, and the edges had very short pillars and the center had extremely call pillars. This was definitely experience to walk around in.
Once again, our little kids came out, and we did some running and hiding in this amazing place. Underneath the memorial is a museum which was called something to the effect of The Museum for the Six Million Murdered Jews of the Holocaust. Something like that. Definitely a very long name. We went in and took the audio tour. The tour lasted a few hours and was by far, I think the best and most powerful holocaust memorial I've seen. It was a very good mix of things showing the sheer size and proportions of the holocaust as well as the individual lives that were affected. It had a constant mix of these elements as well as a consistent chance of pace, architecture and medium that kept your interest high, and your desire to go on despite the depressing subject matter. Pictures of a museum aren't terribly exciting, but I did take these two pictures of one of the rooms I thought was particularly neat. It was a fairly dark room with lit plastic panels on the floor. Each panel showed a letter, postcard, or similar item from someone in the holocaust as well as having a blurb about the history as well as a transcription in English and German (many of them were in German, but the handwriting was often bad and the ink faded). I thought it was a really cool and unique way to display this stuff.
You'll note the shape and placement of these. It's remarkably similar to the stone field above the museum. In fact, in the ceiling of the entire museum, are square cutouts raised everywhere there's a stone above it. Likewise many of the rooms echo the stone field about it in some way or another. It's unifying architectural theme throughout the entire building.
A few very depressing but very good hours later, we headed back out into the day. We passed a handful of interesting sites on our way to find dinner.
In that last picture there, note that exactly one small section of the fence had recently been repainted. Nothing else - just that one section. Odd, eh?
I have absolutely no recollection of dinner that night, but I do know we turned in early since we had to leave at 4am to catch our flight.
Monday we got up painfully early and took a bus to the airport (trains were not yet running and it turns out the bus was way more direct), flew back, went straight to the office, and I was oncall starting at 9am!