Halloween in Berlin

Man.  Josh and I were invited to Berlin for the weekend by our friend (and one of my roommates last year) Josh, who is studying there for a year.  We figured Berlin would be more interesting than Edinburgh for Halloween (which would just end by going to a crappy club and having to listen to drunk people singing in the streets all night), so we hopped on a plane that left at 6:40 AM Friday (we had to get up at 4 to get there) and arrived at the Schoenfeld Airport at 10 in the morning.

 Schoenfeld is the lesser-used, lower quality airport of Berlin, which we had flown into because we had used RyanAir, a notoriously cheap European airline.  Its on the Eastern outskirts of town; Berlin is divided into 3 concentric circles: A is the center of the city, B is the surrounding suburbs, and C is the neighboring state (yes state.  Berlin is a city-state.  It is its own city, in its own state. All of the other states are similar to ours). The airport was right outside the limits in C, so it was a ways from the city.
  The transportation in Berlin is incredible. S-bahns connect the outskirts and suburbs to the inner city.  The Ringbahn is a giant circle surrounding the A section of the city, connecting all of the S-bahns together.  In the middle are more S-bahns (they crisscross the city from end to end) and U-bahns, the subway. One day ticket will get you on any train, so we hopped all around the city. Germans, as Josh Miller (the friend) explained to us, are very efficient and timely, and all of these trains were perfectly on time. The drivers supposedly have to explain themselves if they are more than ten seconds late.  There is some drama going on right now because the S-bahn was cut to 20% running (instead of every 3 minutes, its every 10-20), and the Germans were up in arms about it.  From the airport, we took the S-bahn into the city, passing through a big chunk of East Berlin.

    There are still so much evidence of socialist power in East Berlin. Its a decrepit state, looking much like the poorest and shabbiest parts of LA.  Except that many of the buildings are abandoned and are now home to squatters.  There is a huge squatting population in Berlin (and there is a lot of space for it), and there are even things such as the Squatting Club, which is a secret underground club that travels from abandoned building to abandoned building, setting up a regular weekend dance club in each.  The buildings are tall and square without any architectural beauty. Very utilitarian. But much of the blank wall space is covered in graffiti, and adds color to the otherwise barren landscape.

    Street art is very popular in Berlin, and has been an integral part of the city for decades (the Wall is the biggest example).  Josh M took us to the Eastside Gallery, which is a section of the Berlin Wall that has been covered with many famous murals.   

These murals have been around since the fall of the wall, so it takes some work to keep them from being defaced. If they are, they are restored, or repainted.  At least two sections were being painted while we were there.

We walked around the the eastern side of the city.  Much in the city center has been redeveloped in the last 20 years, and it shows.  Alexanderplatz was the center of East Berlin, and was developed much in that style, as seen in these lovely office buildings. There is a club in that middle building that occupies an entire floor.

Marking Alexanderplatz for the rest of the world to see is the TV tower.  It was erected in the 60's when East Berlin started to rebuild the city after the war. It was a completely secular structure, used to broadcast television, but in a twist of fate called "The pope's revenge", when sunlight hits the tower, it forms the shape of a cross.  The atheist government was very much peeved by this phenomenon, and tried to cover it, paint it, get rid of it in any way, but the sun persisted.  The tower is one of the tallest in Europe, and can be seen all around the city.

Surrounding the area are museums and parks and statues and other things of cultural interest. Good friends Marx and Engels, seen on the left.

The Berliner Dom, with the two Joshes in the foreground.

This is a square close to Humboldt University (an East Berlin Uni that is supposed to be pretty good, but is discounted in West Berlin's eyes because of the supposed brain drain from East Berlin).  Josh M has seen an outdoor opera here.  It started to rain in the middle of the opera, but the show went on. That picture isn't that interesting besides the fact that it is a false front. They are doing construction on the building behind it, and instead of plastic, they put up a trompe-l'oeil.

Walking around, we came across Checkpoint Charlie, a former West/East checkpoint in the city. It was the border between the Allied west and the soviet east.  Near Checkpoint Charlie a kid was killed trying to cross the wall. He was shot as he was climbing over the wall, and lay bleeding to death for an hour while many people watched. He fell just beyond the wall, and neither side was willing to go and save him.

One of my favorite parts of Berlin was in Merringdamm, a neighborhood in the city.  Straight from the train from the airport, Josh M took us for an early lunch at a street food vendor. We grabbed a cold Berlin beer from the katranka (spelling? German liquor stores)--it was 10 AM after all, and in germany, beer is cheaper than bottled water, and popped up from the U-bahn (subway) to eat a döner kebab.  This has got to be some of the best street food around--a döner kebab is a Turkish kebab sandwich of sorts. The meat is cooked vertically on a spit, sliced off, and mixed with lots of spices and cooked vegetables.  The döner kebab is assembled like so: a slightly toasted soft bun is split in two, slathered with a combo of white, garlic, and hot sauces, the meat is stuffed in; cabbage, lettuce and onions are added, as well as a tomato and cucumber salad. Crumbly white Turkish cheese is sprinkled on top, and a squeeze of lemon caps everything.  A picture: Warm and spicy, flavorful with contrasting textures, filling but not greasy;  I could eat this every day.  We also tried another Berlin staple, Currywurst. Currywurst is a bratwurst sliced up and topped with a ketchupy-curry sauce doused over. Eaten with a little fork, its a decent snack, but was way too saucy (Germans like their sauce), and would get really old if you had to eat it a lot.

Speaking of food though, I must tell of the grocery store.  Josh M lived in the suburbs, a 30 minute train ride from the city. He actually lived in a really nice area, full of rich, settled families. So the grocery store was a reflection of the area.  But it had the most FANTASTIC bakery.  The best looking and tasting German pastries; fresh, warm, sweet. I don't have a picture of it, but it was impressive. The whole display looked like a treasure chest of shining gold.  They also made fresh bread, and we had a great loaf of brown crusty onion bread.  I don't know the name of it, but it seemed very German.  The store also had a huge deli.  One whole side of the store was devoted to fresh meat--so many sausages and pork products.  It looked good though.  They are also big fans of paprika chips.  Just potato chips flavored with paprika.  Mild, but pretty good.

On Halloween night, we went to two house (apartment really) parties.  We had plans to go to the supposedly fantastic night clubs of Berlin (huge night life there), but the time passed too quickly, and never made it.  We had to stay up all night because of flight was leaving at 10 AM, which meant that we had to be at the airport at 8:30.  Josh's apartment was about 1.5 hours away by train to the airport, and it made more sense to stay in the city.  We watched the sun rise in Berlin, along with a good portion of the population (there were a lot of people out all hours of the night).

*Note on Germans--they are very literal, and when someone says to dress up for Halloween, they dress in blood and gore and black.  Vampires, dead things, all dark and serious.  If you dressed like a glass of milk and cookies, they wouldn't understand it at all.*

Train station

Sunrise