Berlin

The bar/common area in Baxpax, our hostel in East Berlin. Both nights we stayed here the bar was packed with people watching EuroCup 2008.
Alex interviewing with a kid from Harvard working on a video for "Let's Go." The kid almost got tossed in the pool behind Alex by a English stag party when he, on purpose, made an incredibly embarrassing video of himself playing soccer.

Battle scars from the Second World War.


Pretty funky looking apartment building. A great deal of business offices, hotels and apartments reflect modern influences. This is, in large part, due to the fact that 90% of the city was leveled by the end of WWII.

Brandenburg Gate in Pariser Platz, built by Prussian King Frederick William II in the late 18th century.
Victory in a chariot atop the Brandenburg Gate. Before Napoleon took Berlin in 1806, she held a cluster of oak leaves. When the Prussians took the Quadriga back in 1814, they replaced her flora with that wicked-looking cross and eagle. They renamed the square Pariser Platz just to rub it in. German humor at its finest. I don't think it's intentional, but she also looks directly at the French Embassy in Pariser Platz.

Hotel Aldon. A very expensive hotel complete with bullet-proof windows and walls thick enough to handle rocket attacks. No kidding. More importantly, this is the hotel where Michael Jackson achieved another victory in convincing the world that he is, in fact, bat-shit crazy, by holding his infant son over the balcony.
This photo was taken across the street from Brandenburg Gate. The double-brick line in the street marks where the wall separated East Berlin from West Berlin. It's brave, really, how Berliners face their city's dark and destructive history every day.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There is nothing flashy or overtly eye-catching about this memorial. That is to say, you don't realize what your standing in until the tour guide tells you.
Architecturally, the memorial is very simple. Over four acres of concrete pillars with identical lengths and widths but varying heights. On the fringes the pillars are at ground level, one doesn't even notice what they're walking on.

Walking into the memorial the pillars steadily rise until they are far overhead. Inside, vision is very limited, sound is muffled and other visitors pop around corners only to disappear just as quickly. Peter Eisenman, the American architect who designed the memorial, has refused to answer any questions pertaining to the memorial's symbolism and meaning; personally, I think the memorials' simplicity and ambiguity are what make it so powerful.
This parking lot was once the site of Hitler's last hold-out. The German government destroyed it entirely to prevent Neo Nazis and other hate mongers from having an ignorance rallying point. All the grass is dead because the locals use the spot as a dog toilet. Sweet, sweet revenge.


This is a shot of the former Reich Air Ministry Building. When it was completed in 1936 it was the largest office building in Europe. It's a juggernaut of a structure at 112,000 sq. meters, with 2,800 offices. After Berlin was split, the building housed the Stazi (East German secret police) and was called the Council of Ministries. Now, it is the German tax office. Evil never fully washes clean, I suppose.

Very uniform architecture. All the doorknobs are at eye level. The building is anything but pretty, but it certainly transfers a message to anyone gazing at it.
The last standing section of the Berlin Wall. The wall was built in stages over many years, beginning with a simple line of barbed wire, sandbags and bricks built overnight by tens of thousands of Russian troops. At its zenith there were actually two walls, one separating East from West and one inside East Germany. In this photo, the interior wall would have stood to the right of the sidewalk on the right. Between the two, troops laid mines and patrolled with orders to kill anyone trying to escape.

The East German Government found, after a number of escapes, that barbed wire was easy to overcome when covered with a thick blanket and crawled over. So, they called up West Berlin and asked for piping for "much-needed" improvements. The West obliged, and the piping went directly on the wall because it was smooth and had no grip for pulling oneself up, over and into freedom.
Another example of modern, funky Berlin. This is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, chronicling the history of America's most famous entrance to East Germany.
The photo of the American officer on the billboard is one of two photos comprising a piece of art. The man featured was the last American officer stationed at Checkpoint Charlie, his gaze is fixed on the East. On the other side, a photo of the last East German officer sits looking over West Berlin. The cafe behind the billboard is where Ian Flemming is supposed to have gathered inspiration for his James Bond novels.
Bebel Platz. Framed in the center is Humboldt College, where Albert Einstein taught and the Brothers Grimm were educated. This square is known best as the site of a large Nazi book burning in both real life and in 'Indian Jones and The Last Crusade.'
Memorial for the book burnings in the center of Bebel Platz. Below the cobblestones are enough bookshelves to hold 20,000 books, all of which are empty.
Scary-looking dudes on the Prussian War Museum, formerly the Prussian armory.
Statue done by a woman who lost her husband in WWI and then her son in WWII. The statue is a woman cradling her dying child. Buried underneath are the bodies of an Allied soldier and a German soldier.

Early 20th century cathedral built by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The tour guide informed us it is a real mismash of architectural styles, and people who know about these things find it ugly. To my untrained eyes it doesn't look half bad.




Awesome lions.


This is one of the few communist-era staples that survived German reunification. The little man is known as the Ampelmann and he taught kids and adults the proper rules of traffic safety on an East German T.V. show. He is on every traffic sign in East Berlin.

Entranced by the story of Zeus and Telephos at the Pergamon Museum. In addition to this frieze there is the Pergamon Altar. The museum also houses the Ishtar Gates and the Miletus Market Gates, both of which were closed at the time of our visit.
One scene from the Pergamon Altar's frieze. This series of statues depicts a battle between giants, monsters and the gods. The guy on the left is a monster, half man with snake legs. The altar was built in the 2nd century BCE and painstakingly rebuilt in Germany during the early 20th century.

It's a shame that some gods are missing and most are only partly there, but the detail in what remains is astonishing. Just thinking about the precision required to turn a block of marble into a fanged and scaled snake with little more than hand tools makes my head spin.