A collection of Berlin street art, including pieces by Alias and El Bocho.

My last day in Berlin, I decided to see another side of the city with a tour from Alternative Berlin. I’d spent much of my trip visiting museums and all the major monuments, so I thought it would be interesting to see some “alternative” sites. It turned out to be fantastic and I recommend it for anyone coming to Berlin. The tour was lead by a woman from Berlin (whose name I forget) who had a comprehensive knowledge of the city’s street artists. The tour group was pretty international and I ended up meeting a very cool girl from Australia with whom I spent the rest of the day.

A graffiti artist spray paints at Mauerpark, where there is a legal graffiti wall.

After being introduced to the major Berlin street artists, including Alias and El Bocho, we went to Mauerpark where there is a wall on which anyone can spray paint. The city set it up as an attempt to reduce tagging, but of course it’s mainly used for practice before people spray paint illegally. There are a surprising number of parks, greenspaces, and trees in Berlin. Even in the more touristy areas there are full-size soccer fields or even lots that are still empty since the destruction of World War II and after. It’s hard to imagine a huge empty lot in the middle of Paris or Manhattan. There are parts of Berlin that have an ambiance similar to that of the East Village in New York, but the streets are twice as large and are lined by shady trees. I can see how people fall in love with Berlin.

Berlin street art.

One of the things I liked about the tour is we went places I would have been to scared to go myself, like graffiti covered empty warehouses complete with a squatter. I might be wrong, but I believe Berlin has a lower crime rate than Oklahoma City, so I guess I really shouldn’t have been scared in the first place. But exploring abandoned buildings is always more fun with a group, right? Actually, I should mention that I had a lot less trouble walking around Berlin as a woman by myself than I do in Valence. In Valence, if I sit alone and read outside for long enough, I’m usually approached at some point by a creepy guy. Or if I walk alone in the streets without my iPod, the Frenchmen often whisper some unsavory things in my ear. But this never happened in Berlin. Maybe it’s just a different mindset between the French and the German men. Or maybe, I suspect, I was just doing a better job of blending in Germany than I do in France. German last name aside, I think some of my clothes are a little too colorful for France and give me away as a foreigner, while the German fashion seemed a little closer to mine. Anyway, this is all purely speculation and idle speculation at that.

West Coast Customs Europe.

Another Alternative Berlin stop was the West Coast Customs Europe shop in East Berlin. Yes, this is a branch from the same West Coast Customs in California that was on Pimp My Ride. They have their own show on the Discovery Channel now and according to the guy from the show at the store in Berlin (I would get more specific if I could), it should be broadcasting soon. Their shop in Berlin was renovated out of an abandoned train depot and we were able to look inside and check out some of their completed cars.

West Coast Customs cars.

How often do you see a “pimped” Smart car? I bet they don’t use that phrase in their shop anymore and I’m probably not cool enough to use it. Oh well, I don’t know how else to describe making a car ridiculously awesome. There was also an old Chevrolet cop car that they’d worked on for a Berlin fashion show.

Cassiopeia Indoor Skatepark.

We had a delicious falafel lunch before visiting the Cassiopeia Indoor Skatepark, where boys under the age of 13 were doing skate tricks I will never learn in my lifetime. I have skateboarded before, but I’ve always been awful at it. Cassiopeia is a complex of awesome things in addition to the skatepark, including a music venue and biergarten. We only had time to see the skatepark. I have so many reasons to go back!

Inside Tacheles.

Our group visited an amazing thrift store and then a totally weird absinthe/camping/head shop that was run by a human incarnation of the Chesire Cat. The second place was the kind of store where I could see somehow loosing track of time and wandering out the following week. It was dimly lit and half of it was devoted to camping gear, the other half to legal drugs. I did indulge in a shot of absinthe, but skipped the hallucinogens. I’ve never in my life felt the need to alter my reality and wasn’t about to start in a city where I don’t speak the language and could barely navigate my way around on public transportation with a clear head and a map. But the absinthe was good.

The tour ended at the amazing Tacheles, a shopping center that was abandoned and later taken over by squatting artists. How many times have I used the word abandoned in this post? Ah, Berlin. Anyway, Tacheles has been around for about 20 years and is now an official arts collective where the artists who live and work in the building pay rent.

Tacheles courtyard.

The artists’ lease has recently ended, so no one is sure what’s going to happen to Tacheles. There’s a large mural on one of the building’s sides that asks: “How long is now?” I hope it stays around. I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered anything like it. There are bars, cafes, artist studios, shops, and galleries in Tacheles and it turns into a nightclub in the evening. I’ve also never seen a functioning building with so much graffiti on it. It was literally covered, from the stairs to the ceilings to the floors to the walls. Every inch had spray paint or stencils or stickers or posters. I really want to come back in the summer when the courtyard is full of people.

Tacheles robot holding a lighter. It looked like he was going to set that pile of trash on fire. He would then probably blame it on the Communists.

I bought a messenger bag from Dutch artist Tim Roelofs’ store, who recently got some notoriety when his art decorated skirts in a Versace collection. After the tour was officially over and people scattered throughout Tacheles, I had a beer with the cool Australian from the tour in a bar that had a flame shooting metal dragon.

Pontiki managed to get into an exclusive Berlinale film festival party. Mainly for the free wine and olives.

Later that night, we got green curry (finally!!) and went to a Berlinale film festival party. I’m not really sure how we got in, except that one of the Australian’s roommates had some sort of reason to be there. It was a little odd, as people asked me what film I was with. I’m an awful liar, but managed to ramble something off about deadCenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City without saying that I was representing it in anyway. There was free wine and olives and the people watching was awesome. After, we went to a really awful dance club, but the night ended well at a Budapest themed bar with cocktails and candles on the tables. I think I got back to my hostel at about 6 am and woke up at 8:30 am to get to the airport and fly back to Paris. The trip to Valence was fairly uneventful, just lots of standing in line and feeling tired. It was a bit of a downer to be back in slow Valence after a frenetic week in Berlin, although delicious pastries and seeing my friends has made me feel better about it. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to do more traveling.

East Side Gallery.

I started my day at the East Side Gallery, a section of the Berlin wall that is covered in about 106 paintings by international artists. As a memorial for freedom, it’s as much an art gallery as it is a historical monument. It’s .81 miles (1.3 kilometers) long and is preserved where the original East wall stood. Unfortunately, as you can see from these pictures, it suffers from a lot of tagging over the paintings. But I guess if it was a completely sterile art installation it wouldn’t have the same effect.

East Side Gallery.

I wish that the people who still want to build barriers would come to the East Side Gallery on a cold February day and think about the legacy of the Berlin Wall. Families were separated, people lost their jobs, many were killed trying to cross it. Yes, the East German economy was improved, but the overall impact was one of oppression. It shocks me that there is support for a wall between the United States and Mexico or in the West Bank. But I guess the story of humanity is one of repetition. I’m sure every mistake I’ve made in my life has already been made by hundreds of others. For some reason, we just can’t learn.

Oberbaumbrücke. (Another "Run Lola Run" site for those who are interested.)

While walking along the East Side Gallery I saw the Oberbaumbrücke, a bridge over the Spree River. It connects two parts of town that were separated with the Berlin Wall and it sustained damage in World War II. It’s now is crossed by cars, pedestrians, and the U-Bahn and is a symbol of unification.

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church).

One of the more tourist-heavy areas was surprisingly around the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church), a church that was heavily bombed during World War II. Although a new church was built around it, the original church was left standing in its post-war condition as a war memorial. As you can see, the top of the spire is missing, many of the windows were shattered, and parts of the stone are blackened from fire. It was very haunting and let me imagine how the whole city must have looked after the war.

The "Shalechet (Fall Leaves)" installation in the Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum).

I’d heard good things about the Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum) and it more that surpassed my expectations. It’s fairly new, opened in 2001, and covers the history of Jews in Germany. The museum is shaped like a zigzag and is supposed to resemble a distorted Star of David. Three tunnels are at the beginning of the museum, with one leading to the Holocaust Tower, an empty, silent, dark room with a slit of light coming from a sliver of a window in the ceiling. Another tunnel leads to the Garden of Exile, which has pillars reminiscent of those at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The third goes to an impressive exhibit area that was very engaging and interactive in its presentation of the experience of Jews in Germany. Another feature of the museum are “voids,” which cut through parts of the building. Some of them are empty rooms and you can see them from windows in the gallery space. One, pictured above, is full of 10,000 iron faces. You can walk out on the faces, and the sound from your feet moving the steel echoes through the silence. I said that the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was haunting, but that would be understatement for the voids. I guess I would equate them with Cy Twombly paintings, where the empty space says as much as the splash of paint or burst of text. There are voids all over Berlin, most invisible, where people and places used to stand and where war and tyranny erased them.

Berlinale posters at Potsdamer-Platz.

That night, I saw “Für Miriam” at the Berlinale film festival. It’s a German movie about a teacher who kills one of her students in a car crash. Although it wasn’t her fault, it destroys her existence. After the film, I had some delicious strawberry ice cream before seeing a group of short films. They were very diverse, coming from Mexico, England, France, and Germany. For all of these films the cast or director was there to take questions after the screening.

One more day of Berlin adventure left to blog.

Oranienburger Tor U-Bahn entrance. This is what most of the U-Bahns in Berlin look like.

On every one of my hostel nights in Berlin, I was the last person to go to sleep and the first to wake up. I think Valence makes me tired because I’m never that active here. Anyway, my third day in Berlin started out at the city’s most famous museum.

Pergamon Altar at the Pergamonmuseum.

The Pergamonmuseum (Pergamon Museum) is located on Museumsinsel, literally translated as Museum Island. Museum Island is located in the middle of the Spree River and contains several museums. The Germans like accurate names, apparently. Anyway, the Pergamonmuseum has several reconstructions, including the Pergamon Altar (above), the Market Gate of Miletus,  and Ishtar Gate. It also has a significant collection of classical antiquities and Islamic and Middle Eastern art. The Pergamon Altar is stunning. The original friezes are on the walls of the giant room where it is reconstructed, while copies of the originals are on the reconstruction. I took a lot of random class in college, Jazz Guitar and Bizarre Neuroscience among them, but one of the classes I find myself thinking about a lot is the Classical Archaeology course I took during my summer at Oxford. I can still remember some of the mythology and pick out the gods using their iconography. It was fun to guess who the frieze was of before checking the placard. The altar depicts the battle between the gods and the giants. The gods ended up winning and burying the giants in the earth, although their angry rumbling is what was said to cause earthquakes and volcanoes.

Berliner Dom on the Spree River.

After spending the morning in the Pergamonmuseum, I went to the Berliner Dom. It is also on Museum Island and was completed in 1905.

Insider the Berliner Dom.

The Berliner Dom is the most ornate Lutheran church I’ve ever seen. It was built to be a Protestant version of St. Peter’s Basilica and the opulence is definitely there. Unfortunately, due to ice and snow, the dome itself was not open. It was pretty cold and snowy for most of my Berlin trip. The Berliner Dom was bombed heavily in World War II, but has been restored. That’s the story of a lot of Berlin monuments. The Allies and the Soviets were perfect at destroying cultural, religious, civilian, and artistic centers and managed to miss targets like the giant Luftwaffe Headquarters. Some buildings that survived the war, like the Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace), were destroyed by the Soviets for being against the current ideology and symbols of the Prussian imperialists. It’s amazing that the Berliner Dom exists at all.

Crypt of the Berliner Dom.

My favorite part of the Berliner Dom was the crypt, where there are around 90 sarcophagi from the Prussian royal family. You can see from this photo that you got to keep your crown in death as part of your casket. Well, not your real crown, just a facsimile. I bet that the real crown was given to someone else. I know barely anything about Prussian history, so I couldn’t tell you who I saw in the crypt, but it was interesting to see so many sarcophagi built in gray and black colors. One was even covered in black velvet.

"The only people who know how cool I am are the secret police." Seen along the Spree River.

After the Berliner Dom I got a sandwich and walked along the river. I enjoyed the above graffiti.

Queen Nefertiti at the Altes Museum.

The next stop on Museum Island (I love that name so much, it sounds like my kind of theme park) was the Altes Museum, or the Old Museum. On the front of the Altes Museum is a red neon sign that states: “All art has been contemporary.” It has a classical antiquities collection and is currently exhibiting Egyptian art that will later be displayed at the Neues Museum (New Museum). The highlight was this famous stunning bust of Queen Nefertiti.

Lego Giraffe.

The next museum on my list was the Gemäldegalerie, but I first walked through Potsdamer-Platz where the Berlinale film festival was centered. I hadn’t seen the area in daylight and enjoyed this giant Lego giraffe. I’m not sure if he is wearing a helmet or a hat.

"Balloon Flower" by Jeff Koons.

I was surprised to find this blue “Balloon Flower” by Jeff Koons. I’d seen a yellow “Balloon Flower” at the Jeff Koons exhibit at Versailles and it was exciting to see another. According to my internet research, there are five balloon flowers, each in a different color. I still need to find magenta, red, and orange.

Gemäldegalerie.

I was interested in the Gemäldegalerie because I’d seen “Rothko/Giotti” advertised. This turned out to be one Mark Rothko abstract expressionist painting in a room with two by 13th century Italian painter Giotto di Bondone. I guess I was expecting more, but I am not an art historian and probably missed the great significance. I understand that Rothko was influenced by Giotti and was interested in religious art as I’ve been to the Rothko Chapel in Houston. The Gemäldegalerie is a beautiful museum and has a very scientific approach to the way they hang art, but I found the 13th-18th century European painting to be a little boring. After seeing quite a few Madonnas and gold haloed saints, I went to an even more tedious museum in the same complex. It had awful carpeting and contained way more gold cabinets and 70s home furnishings than I ever wanted to see.

Pontiki at the Brandenburg Gate.

I went back to the Brandenburg Gate so that Pontiki, my world traveling friend, could get his picture taken. He’s traveled extensively in France and England, but this was his first visit to Germany.

Reichstag at night.

It was very cold, so Pontiki did not want to stay out too long. Its free to go up in the dome on the Reichstag, so I figured it would be worth it to check it out. The security was a little insane, but I made it through.

Reichstag dome.

The dome was designed by Norman Foster and replaces the one destroyed in the 1933 fire and later war bombings and fighting. It is right above the parliament debate chamber and offers a beautiful view of Berlin. Unfortunately, it had ice on it during my visit so the view wasn’t very clear, but it was worth it to see the city lights at night.

Red carpet even for "Notorious" at the Berlinale film festival.

I decided to see what was happening at the Berlinale and discovered a large crowd outside one of the theaters when I got there. I wasn’t sure what was going on and people were screaming “ANGELA!!! ANGELA!!! ANGELA!!!” It turns out a movie has been made based on the life of the Notorious B.I.G. and the cast was there for its opening at the Berlinale. A lot of people had signs that said “We miss you Notorious!” and there were people with letters spelling out N-O-T-O-R-I-O-U-S-B-I-G. Angela Bassett was the only person in the cast that I recognized and seemed to be the crowd favorite.

Berlin adventures will continue with Day 4!

Neue Synagoge.

I didn’t feel like I had a good grasp of the layout of Berlin. It basically has two centers, due to the Wall, and is more like a collection of villages than one cohesive city. For this reason, I decided to take a walking tour. I chose Brewer’s Berlin Tours after researching online and was not disappointed. The tour was lead by a guy named Preston who is from Oregon, but has lived in Berlin for 10 years and studies modern German history. The tour went by all the major sites and had a lot of background information on the history of Berlin that made the rest of my trip more interesting. For example, he showed us how we could know we were in East Berlin as opposed to West Berlin, based on the traffic lights and the buildings. Unfortunately, a lot of the restoration in East Berlin consisted of scraping everything off a building to the brick, turning that rubble into cement, and putting it flatly back on. Most of these restorations are falling apart now, so East Berlin is littered with gray buildings missing chunks of their exteriors. Another sign of East Berlin is that buildings that were still standing weren’t restored, as there were so many other buildings that were destroyed. So a lot of buildings still have bullet holes or bomb damage that’s visible. And then there is the famous Ampelmännchen that is on the East Berlin traffic lights. He wears a hat and is much more animated than the West Berlin man. Most of the interesting sites are in East Berlin, so I spent the majority of my trip there. One of the first stops on the tour was the Neue Synagoge, or New Synagogue (picture above). You might be surprised that any old synagogues are standing in Berlin, but this one was single-handedly saved by a German police officer on Kristallnacht, basically because he refused to not do his job and let people on private property. Unfortunately, it was later almost completely destroyed by British air raids and now only the front remains.

The Reichstag.

We then went by the Brandenburg Gate and to the Reichstag, famous its fire that ended up giving Hitler so much power. By blaming it on the communists and encouraging fear, the Nazis were able to suspend constitutional rights. To this day, no one knows who set the fire.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is around the corner from the Reichstag and is, in my opinion, an example of how not to do a memorial. It consists of a grid of 2,711 concrete slabs on three small hills, that are like waves. Walking through the memorial is disorienting and kind of scary, you see people between the pillars like ghosts. It turns everyone into phantoms. However, nowhere on the memorial does it say that it is a memorial and the artist stated that there was no intended meaning with the structure of it. He was later made to create an information area underground that is good, but a lot of people come to the memorial thinking it is just installation art. Another problem is that many Jewish organizations thought that the memorial should be for all of the victims of the Holocaust, but this request was denied. Instead Berlin is trying to build separate memorials to each group, but due to Germany’s financial crisis only two others have  been built so far. The third problem is Berlin has a huge graffiti problem and building a memorial to the Jews using plain gray concrete is kind of asking for tags. So the memorial is protected with a special chemical that makes it easy to wipe off graffiti. The problem is that the company that sold this chemical and made money off it is the same that produced Zyklon B, which was used in the concentration camp gas chambers.

Largest section of the Berlin Wall still standing in its original location.

Not much of the Berlin Wall is still standing in its original location, although pieces of it are preserved around town and there is a trail of bricks in the ground that shows where one of the outer walls was. Above is the largest section still remaining in its original place. There were two Berlin Walls, one facing the West and one facing the East, with the deadly space in between called “No Man’s Land.” I believe this part of the Wall was facing the West, but I could be wrong. A lot of people try to chip away a souvenir and a car actually crashed into this section, knocking down a big part, so that’s why there is a fence.

Trabis, the most popular car of East Berlin.

Another East Berlin icon is the Trabi, which was the easiest car to get during the communist bloc. Although mainly made out of plastic and infamous for being shoddy, there are still a few driving the streets of Berlin. The cars above were restored by a guy who does “Trabi Safaris” in East Berlin where you can drive a Trabi in a caravan past the sites. I think they’re cute.

Checkpoint Charlie (a copy of the original).

Our tour included a stop for delicious falafel, one of many falafels I would eat while in Berlin. They were so cheap, 2,50 euros at the most, and always amazing. Anyway, another landmark on the tour was Checkpoint Charlie. The original is in a museum, but you can see a copy and in front of it is a giant portrait of an American guard with a Soviet guard on the back and a sign that says you are entering the American sector. The checkpoint was used by military personnel going back and forth between the East and West, but today it’s a historical symbol of the Cold War.

Gendarmenmarkt.

On the tour, there were a few locations from Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt), one of my favorite movies. This includes the Gendarmenmarkt above and also the bank where Lola’s dad worked.

Berliner Dom at night.

The tour ended in front of the Berliner Dom. It was nice to have a good history of Berlin to use in the rest of my stay and it was helpful to get good tips on places to go. I would recommend the tour to anyone coming to Berlin, even if you’ve been there before. Afterward, I got coffee with a French guy that was on the tour and then I went to the Berlinale film festival to see a movie.

Cast of "Strella" at the Berlinale.

I asked about what tickets were available and ending up seeing “Strella,” a Greek film about an ex-con who falls in love with a transsexual. The cool thing about the Berlinale is that for each film I saw, the cast and crew came on stage afterward to answer questions. I had a little trouble getting back to my hostel after since the U-Bahn closes at half-past midnight, but I eventually figured out the night buses and got some sleep.

Brandenburg Gate at night.

I got back from Berlin late Saturday and will now start to catch up on blogging. Berlin was amazing. Yes, it’s poor and not as pretty as Paris, but it has so much art and culture and incredible history. I didn’t have nearly enough time to see even a fraction of the city. That would require at least another year, maybe ten. In fact, it’s a city I would love to live in. But with its high unemployment rate, it’s hard for foreigners to work there right now. It’s definitely on my list for desirable future homes. I’d decided to go to Germany on a whim, not really knowing much about Berlin or what I would see there. I don’t speak German, although I think I mastered a few essential phrases and tried my best. This was my favorite: “Ich verstehe nicht. Sprechen sie Englisch?” Or: “I don’t understand. Do you speak English?” For the most part people were very helpful, although the public transportation and museum employees could be a little impatient.

My first day was consumed by travel. I caught the 6:00 am TGV train to Paris from Valence and then took the RER to Charles de Gaulle airport. I was impressed by Air France. Both flights I took were on time and the food was actually edible. Plus they had tons of free newspapers. My experience in the actual airport in Berlin was frustrating. There is no train to the airport so you have to get the bus. After being surrounded by French for five months, finding myself suddenly in front of a transportation map with long German names was disorienting. In Berlin, there is the U-Bahn (underground metro), S-Bahn (overground metro), buses, and trams. These are all mixed together on one transport map and you often need to take a combination to get where you are going. Luckily, someone at the airport helped me find the right bus and I was soon outside my hostel. The hostel was in a cool neighborhood called Kreuzberg, although it was one of the quietest hostels I’ve ever stayed in. I was always the last person to go to sleep.

The Handsome Furs playing at the Bang Bang Club.

I used the U-Bahn and tram to get to Hackescher Markt and went on a walk around town and randomly ended up in front of the Brandenburg Gate. I saw it at the end of a boulevard and thought that it looked familiar. I would be by there again a few times. For dinner, I ate a mozzarella and tomato sandwich because it was the only thing in the bakery that was obviously vegetarian, so I could point and say one of my few German phrases: “Dieses, bitte” (this please). I then went to the Bang Bang Club to see the Handsome Furs. I really liked their 2007 album, “Plague Park.” If you haven’t heard of them, the Handsome Furs is a Canadian group composed of guitarist and vocalist Dan Boeckner (also a member of Wolf Parade) and his wife Alexei Perry  (also a short story writer) on synths on drum machine. It turned out to be a really cool show. I hadn’t heard anything from their new album, “Face Control,” and I’m pretty sure almost all the songs were from it. Their last album was really mellow, but their new songs are more upbeat and danceable. The album will be out on March 10, so I’ll have to track down a copy. There’s a video of them playing one of their new songs, “I’m Confused,” at the Sundance Film Festival on youtube that shows what their show is like. Check it out.

I managed to make it back to the hostel after the concert and got some much needed sleep. I hadn’t seen Berlin in daylight yet and was looking forward to exploring the city.