Art: Part 2 (Day 23)

In addition to a bevy of formal art collections to view, Berlin is covered in what is, when it is at its best, typically referred to as street art. For the most part nameless and certainly uncompensated for their efforts, these artists have been an important part of Berlin culture since the days when most of the aerosol cans were pointed at the Berlin wall. I've included a few of my favorites below:

Art: Part 1 (Day 21)

Strangely some art historians would disagree

Sign from the Altes [Old] Museum

Lately I've been having some trouble when viewing art both in terms of how it ought to viewed and how it ought to be presented to the viewer.

But first, for the purpose of this entry, some background on the art scene in Berlin.

In a word it is fantastic. Berlin has the obvious two advantages of being the capital city of a European great power, namely 1) being able to draw artists to itself by serving as a cultural center (in Berlin's case this is true mainly for the period from 1871-1933 or between the creation of the Second German Empire (an event that at least one German has mentioned gleefully happened in Versailles) and the rise of the slightly more infamous third one) and 2) having been able to bring back large amounts of "booty" from the rest of the world, in the German case this was accomplished mainly through archeology rather than empire, both because they were archeology in the early 20th century and because they were a bit late to the whole empire thing.

Now on display in Berlin [Pergamon Museum]

Having accumulated so much art, they have set about with some vigor displaying it. The original plan was for a cultural strip to be formed in the middle of the city to allow for the display of the various works. This was canceled part way through due to various Kings named Frederich bankrupting the country with their wars. Still after some delay and a glacial period of construction, a central district of museums (currently called the Museum Insel [Island] a name that not surprisingly comes from the fact that the museums involved are in fact on an island) emerged. Unfortunately, as it inevitably does, the Second World War complicated everything. All of the museums were in the east, the west (in order to avoid a "museum gap") predictably build new ones in their territory, petty feuds occured between curators, few people cared, and now the city is awash with art galleries.

Interior of Hamburger Bahnhof
Museum for Contempory Art

The Museums tend to be organized chronologically, the Pergamon contains antiquites, the Hamburger Bahnhof (a former train station) contains contemporary art, and other museums fit in between them. But there are loads of it here especially when one includes titanic structures like the Ethnologisches Museum [anthropology] in the count. This partucular cultural edifice was made after five full sized anthropological museums decide to join into one. Interestingly however, there doesn't seem to be as much of an emphasis on maintaining a permanent exhibition (this is especially true of the more modern art gallaries and less so of the archaeological ones). Instead almost all of the museum space is taken up be a traveling exhibitions. I was of course bemused by this at first, after all, what about all of the great objets in the permanent collection? Can't we see them? Still I can understand it from the perspective curator, as the rotating exhibitions tend to draw many more people in from the city itself.

All told I am more than satisfied and more than stimulated by the art scene in Berlin, the only issues I'm left with are firstly, how to get enough time to visit it all, and secondly (and far more troublingly) how to best observe the art itself. But that topic I'm afraid will have to wait until the next entry.

Art?
Stop #$%@ing with me Duchamp

Found Object: Bicycle Wheel
Hamburger Bahnhof

A City Without Age (Day 17)

Things we don't have in Berlin: Old Buildings
Things we have a lot of in Berlin: History

General explanation: World War 2

My expectation in coming to Berlin, especially considering the position that the city has held in European politics for the post four or five hundred years, was that it would be a place where Central European history might literally come alive. Unfortunately we bombed history to death in the mid-fourties.

Not Good for Historical Preservation

This leaves yours truly both happy that we ended the Nazi dictatorship (go us!) but also disappointed at the lack of the sort of crumbling old edifices commemorating so and such long lost event that I've come to expect from European cities. As opposed to America where we built our own ruins along the Hudson (only we would do that, or for that matter the masterwork that is fridgehenge). I mean I'm studying history for pete's sake, at least give me some sort of cryptic statue to try and understand! Somewhat unfortunately at least one of those statues were melted done make munitions.

The Preservers at Work / Trümmerfrauen

This leaves yours truly both happy that we ended the Nazi dictatorship (go us!) but also disappointed at the lack of the sort of crumbling old edifices commemorating so and such long lost event that I've come to expect from European cities. As opposed to America where we built our own ruins along the Hudson (now thats a bit odd). I mean I'm studying history for pete's sake, at least give me some sort of cryptic statue to try and understand! Somewhat unfortunately at least one of those statues were melted done make munitions.

This has created a number of interesting effects for the city. First, unlike Paris it has nothing to preserve and as such tends to have a much more modern and dynamic feel (even though it does have some pretty extreme building requiremets). Secondly, which allied power was occupying your section of the city had a disproportionate effect its development. With the vast majority of the German housing stock destroyed by the war as well as a huge influx of Germans coming from formerly German administered areas like East Prussia and Silesia, the allies had to effectively rebuild the city to avoid (more) serious refugee problem. For the Russians this meant big mass produced housing areas whereas as the west it was left more to individuals to finance. In both areas however, creating housing was the most important political issue of the day so things got built fast.

East Germany/ Somewhere by Prenzlauerberg

West Germany / Somewhere by Tempelhof

Even more interestingly, even in West Germany, each administrative zone tended to have a different feel (some maintain it is still visible today). I haven't really gotten good enough at this to tell yet.

Third, there is a big emphasis on reconstruction. Two notable examples are the Reichstag and the Berliner Dom (The Berlin Cathedral). Both were famously destroyed (one more famously than the other) and are now rebuilt thanks to dedicated municipal efforts. The Reichstag got remade by Sir Norman Foster and is now adorned with a beautiful glass dome through which one can see most of the city as well as down through the floor at the Parliament in session.

A View into Germany's Parliament / Das Reichstagsgebäude

The Reichstag's exterior

The Berliner Dom was built before the first World War to be the Protestant counterweight to St. Peter's in Rome. Accordingly it was built in a gorgeous "Italian Renaissance Style"which basically entails frosting the building with decorations both inside and out. Moreover, as a imperial symbol it houses the bodies of the dead Hohenzollerns in its crypt. If one goes down there today they can see the bodies of such notables as Fredrick Wilhelm the Great Elector.

Sculpture on the side of the Berliner Dom / Museum Insel

More Berliner Dom

These two buildings at least give some hint of the old city.

A statue on the Berliner Dom watches over his city

The Berliner Dom

Getting Around (Day 15)

Berlin: Where all the trams went after they got kicked out of Los Angeles

Tram Lines/ Berlin Mitte

Having been here two weeks, I've learned at least enough about the city to act as though I know what I'm talking about, and armed with that sort of confidence I can say with some degree of (ersatz) authority that Berlin's Mass Transportation system is pretty darn impressive.

This doesn't even include the Trams.

Governed by the BVG, (three or four letter acronyms are after all a requirement for such municipal organizations) a centralized and vaguely state run monopoly, the transport network sprawls over the city through various trams, buses, a subway (U-bahn) system, and a variety of elevated train (S-bahn) lines. All of which look remarkably the same.

A Typical Banana Yellow U-bahn (They also come in Red)

Tempelhof Bahnhof (Tempelhof Trainstation)

More importantly, once armed with a monthly card (Monateskarte) I've been endowed with the power to go wherever I please whenever I please. So, me and the various forms of Berlin transportation have had plenty of time to become the best of friends.

The curious thing about Berlin is that you don't have to swipe or pay in any way to get access to the subway / surface lines. Rather there are ticket machines where one buys tickets (and at certain times of day station agents who also sell tickets) and separate stations at which one validates his ticket, but nowhere along this chain does anyone stop and check to see if you've actually paid. This appears to open itself up to abuse (a literal manifestation of the "free rider problem" in fact).

Two things run counter to this, first, this so-called "black riding" is an enormous social taboo in Germany. This is of course compounded in fact by the fact that (at least stereotypically) Germans don't really break laws in the same way that other people do.

Not Your Stereotypical Germans

Secondly there is the lingering danger of being "kontrolliert" or asked to show your pass to a plainclothes officer. These men show up randomly and conceivably could be anyone on the train. Getting caught by them entails a hefty 40 euro (yes that is both the singular and the plural of the word) fine and the shame of being made to feel like a criminal. Not good (especially because you get booted off the train). Considering the fact that my student monthly was all of 52 euro and I've been kontrolliert twice now, my decision to purchase the monthly has been more than vindicated.

I wouldn't mess with the German Police

Watchtower from the Berlin Wall / By Potsdamer Platz

Warning: the next section could be boring

The real question is whether this system makes more sense than the Metrocard in New York or my personal favorites, the Octopus/Oyster system used in Hong Kong and London. Remarkably, I think so (at least relative to the New York system). The monthly users will still find it rational to buy a pass, most Germans will anyway, tourists will be warned to, and the only individuals you lose are those few people willing to take the risk occasionally. This is more than compensated by both the income from those people caught in the act of "black-riding" and the lower administrative costs (less employees, less machines). As a whole I'm impressed.

End of the boring part

So that leaves your loyal blogger rather pleased with the city he's in (especially considering the alternative to mass transportation) and rather more disappointed with American cities.

The alternative

Trabant By Kochstrasse

In Search of East Berlin (Part One: Tracing the Wall)

I went out today and tried to find the Berlin wall.  Twenty years ago this would not have been a hard thing to do.  It would literally surrounded me in its graffitied grandeur.  Moreover, were I unable to find it, ever German in the city could have the way out to me, just as every semi-automatic toting soldier on the border could have pointed my way back away from it.  Today however, the wall exists only the minds of those old enough to remember it, and I am not one such a person. 

So today I took a tour to find the Berlin wall.

The Border

Checkpoint Charlie

This was part of an on-going quest to find remants of "Ost-Berlin."  Everyday I take the U-bahn from west to east (ironically by going North) and everyday I get back on the subway to go back to "West-Berlin."  Every journey is a minor political miracle because of it is so ordinary-ness.  No longer does the U-6 travel through East German stations at which it does not stop, no longer are the only occupants of those terminals men in uniform authorized to use deadly force should anyone emerge from the train, and no longer are the stations themselves left in post-war disrepair.   Ost-Berlin is gone, and the question then falls on us latercomers to find out what it was, if it was anything at all.

I decided to start finding answers at the wall itself.

To provide some background and to debunk some popular myths, the wall was more than the (relatively) simple concrete barrier that we see pictures of people taking sledge hammers to in the late eighties.  That was the part facing West Berlin.  Beyond that was an apply named "death zone" with guard towers, soldiers, search lights, trip wires, attack dogs, and ditches large enough to stop automobiles.  Somewhere on the other side of all of that was an enormous barbed wire fence.  Designed to keep the "Ossis" in, the wall was so effective that in the eighties no more than three to five people made it across per year.  This was not for a lack of trying or creativity.  

Potsdamer Platz in the '65: Before they put up the real defenses.

Although the submarine used to get across the German boarder on the Baltic was probably the most technically complex scheme used to get to West Germany, my personal favorite involves a member of the East German government setting up a zip-line between a particularly tall East German government building and a house in West Berlin in order to successfully get his whole family across the border.  Awesome.

So I started off in Potzdamer Platz.  The border crossing has gotten easier.

Potsdamer Platz in 2009: The traffic light doesn't seem to have the same effect.

The Square used to be the central hub of the city.  However, following the destruction and subsequent division of the city two seperate city centers emerged: one around Alexanderplatz in the East and another on the Western end of the Tiergarten.  Although not fully restored to its former glory, this former death zone has been replaced by a series of ultramodern buildings and the yearly Berlin Film Festival.  Twenty years on, the wall is not just gone but has been entirely replaced.

Those portions of the wall that do remain have been preserved by an astounding combination of tourism and monuments.  Tours (which beyond ordinary walks are offered both in that venerable 2-stroke symbol of Ost-Berlin, the Trabant, as well as in hot air ballons) abound around Check Point Charlie, the recreation of the former allied checkpoint that is now populated by entirely by foreigners and reanactors.

The Four Powers go out for Coffee

Check Point Charlie

Sometimes they have trouble paying for things.

So on my first attempt to find Ost-Berlin, I happily failed.  The bulk of the wall has been recycled to form the conrete and cobblestones needed to rebuild a divided city.  What remains is largely in the hands of tourists, each of whom has taken an overpriced fraction of it home with him like some sort of relic (The urge to take a piece of the wall is inexplicable but palpable, it just seems like the appropriate thing to do).  More importantly, the few sections that remain hardly symbolize the hopelessness of the former structure.  I found all of this summed up best by the wall itself:

Picture of the Berlin Wall

Somewhere close to Kochstrasse

German Food: Part One of Posibly More Than One (Day 10)

German Food:

More than this

Eine Lebenschmittelgeschäft (Grocery Store) in Alexanderplatz

To start this up, I just want to note that I've officially passed the equivalent of the McDonalds test of foreign language proficiency (McTFLP). In addition to no longer wondering whether I am capable of acquiring food for the next meal, I have had some modicum of confidence in my German abilities returned to me after successfully negotiating a cell-phone contract "auf Deutsch."

Given this new-found sense of self worth, and all of the culinary opportunities offered to me by having a reasonable expectation of being able acquire "vittles" on a regular basis, food has become something of a concern for me. This is especially true as I've found that each additional dollar (largely worthless and pronounced "euro" in Germany for some reason) I spend on food (the ephemeral "marginal euro") has a direct impact on my happiness unmatched by almost everything else in my life. I'm hungry, I buy a pretzel, bam, instant satisfaction. The extra euro I spend buying fresh vegetables instead of frozen has a similar effect. My advice is, and I'm willing to bet that the adult readers can corroborate this, if you are looking for a way to directly increase your happiness, spend a few extra dollars (or "euros") per day on food.

If all of this gives an impression that I'm living it large, let the discounted reality of the nearly broke city of Berlin disprove this illusion. As a college student I can tell you, the second part of to living the good life is knowing where to buy your extra food. Moreover, because Macalester's budgeting policy seems to factor in some additional spending on "beverages," the teetotallers among us (of which there is one) are free to splurge on a little extra fruit.

Current Standard for the good life: Being able to go into a grocery store and buy whatever I want without feeling guilty about it financially. A luxury that is never to be taken for granted.

Time: Its important here (Day 8)

So far clocks have been a bit more of an issue for me in Berlin than expected. There are a couple of reasons for this.

1) Jet-lag. The eternal problem; they tell you that it is noon, you know it feels like six a.m and then fall asleep somewhere in public. Luckily I've been able to avoid most of the scenarios we associate with jet-lag (waking up at 2 a.m. feeling fine! etc) thanks to having spent a week in Ireland before coming here. One hour time changes (like those between Ireland and Germany) are a bit like tides on a lake, which is to say they are a ruse.

2) Other people being on different time zones. This one is probably self explanatory, but surprisingly confusing. For one, the stakes are high enough that adding six hours instead of subtracting them can really blow someone's day.

One way of doing this.

For me the real problem was caused by traveling from the West Coast to Europe. Having grown up on the east coast of the United States I've always acted as though Greenwich Mean Time is really based in Greenwich Connecticut. As a result, Europe is reliably 5/6 hours ahead, California is 3 behind, and Nepal is some ten hours and 45 minutes (fourty five?!?) ahead of "real time." Flying over the "Prime Meridian" without more than a few hours in Newark Airport normalize myself has done terrible thing to my ability to conceptualize "time." Somehow I moved "nine" hours (minus 3 to plus six) but remain only six hours away from real time. Eh, good thing its all relative.



You can get a great view of New Jersey from the other side of the Prime Meridian

3) Military Time. Everything here runs on military time and, jokes about Prussian history aside, it is a bit bizarre. Currently it is 16:16 or 4:16 p.m. Not a difficult transition to manage (unless of course you are like me and always try and subtract ten to convert to p.m). Still, the real way to overcome this particular cultural institution is the same as the one for adapting to a new time-zone, one must abandon his previous senses of "p.m." and simply adopt a new set of bench marks to guide him through the day.  I've been trying in much the same way to adapt to the Celsius scale although that has been eased by the fact that it has been no more than zero degrees C (C in this instance can also be read as cold) since I've gotten here. Ultimately, there is no 4 p.m. much as there is no spoon.

4) Darkness: It starts at 4:15. The solstice was a month ago. Some time around 18:00 I want to go to sleep everyday. I pity the Norwegians.



Just remember to be punctual.

It begins (Day 5)

                     The Brandenburg Gate / Die Brandenburger Tor 

                     Well that gets the obligatory shot out of the way.

Unable to pack you into my two overly stuffed pieces of luggage, I figured the intertubes presented the best option with which to bring you along with me on my journeys to the Continent.  Moreover, lacking the artistic abilities of one super-smash playing friend I have, I've been forced into the aetherial realm of the prose blogosphere.  With its share of lions, tigers, and political diatribes the blogosphere is a savage realm indeed but I'll do my best to update thematically on a roughly Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday schedule (On whatever timezone I may be at the time).  I'm going to say right now, regardless of however entries I may or may not have "canned", I'm likely only to hit two of those dates per week.   

                       The blogosphere looks oddly like a jellyfish. 

That said, this particular American has made it through the  World University Debating Championships (WUDC) in Cork Ireland and off to Berlin.  Here I'm living attic of a sturdy old house nearby Templehof Airport the site of the Berlin airlift.  Fortunately for me (and not fans of Albert Speer's architecture) the airport has recently been shut down.  Which oddly enough involves shutting down what was formerly the largest building in the world.  

My journey thus far has been a slow transition into the culture of Germany.  Having arrived on a whopping two hours of sleep from my flight over I stumbled through the snow and the S-bahn to my house only to botch a McDonalds order and fall asleep for some fourteen hours.  Let me tell you nothing puts one back in their place more than leaving the premier venue for international collegiate eloquence and twelve hours later finding oneself being unable to correctly order at McDonalds.  

Still, following the next days laguage testing the I was placed into a class in the Goethe Institute a german language institution in the center of Berlin.  Its a pretty well done operation and I've been enjoying my classes (which run from 8:30 to 1 everyday) so far.  In the mean time I've attempted to explore a little, adapt to the rhythms of the city, and begin to pull my linguistic act together (which I can fortunately say is happening).  

                                Still, such assistance would be nice.

                                    A Statue on Unter den Linden