Though nothing, will keep us togetherWe could steal time,just for one dayWe can be Heroes, for ever and everWhat d'you say?--David Bowie, "Heroes"
We rolled up on Berlin after back-to-back night buses and I am not going to pretend like that was a good idea. That was not a good idea. It is not worth the money you save on sleeping accommodations or the time you save by "sleeping" while you travel. Because you are stuck in an escape-less disease incubator that will make you feel worse if you're already sick (me) or make you sick if you're not (Cait) and you will not feel rested when you arrive. So. Our bus pulled up at a bus station way out from the center of town and Cait and I began that exhilarating first hour of arriving in a new city: trying to find a map, and barring that, trying to find a cafe with wifi and maybe (just maybe) a bathroom. Then trying to find a map online. Thankfully some of our other Peace Corps friends were already set up in central Berlin so we went to crash at their Air Bnb while we waited for Christian to meet us (he missed his bus and flew to Berlin that afternoon). So we had a lazy afternoon replete with Indian food and catching up.
Soon enough it was time to clean up then start getting down to the business of celebrating the end of the raging trashcan fire that was 2016. We were still just lounging around the apartment, drinking and talking, when the fireworks started and honestly, the view was perfect from where we were.
The amount of fireworks I saw that night defies description. I cannot quantify it by number of actual explosions but by amount of time before they stopped- it was well after one AM before they stopped exploding every other second and when we left a bar where we'd been celebrating much, much later in the night (or earlier in the morning?) I could still hear the random explosion in the distance. Every sidewalk was covered with bottles, with noisemakers, with fireworks wrappings. It was truly insanity. It was pretty fun.
The next day was, unsurprisingly, sleepy. When we finally got ourselves together in the afternoon we all met up and went to see the East Side Gallery, the remains of the Berlin Wall turned canvas.
While we were taking in the gallery/wall we saw these Trabiants driving past and I later found their origin, a parking lot full of Trabi's providing tourists with tours wherein they follow a guide around the city in this East German auto. We ended the day with schnitzel and beers and then said our goodbyes to Hannah and Michael.
The next day was cold and not particularly pretty but I was at least not suffering in the fashion I had on New Year's Day and I had an ambitious list of things I wanted to see that was awaiting my attention. The three of us headed off to the city center fairly early then split ways. I headed towards museum island with one particular museum in mind.
Not whatever sad, beautiful ruin of a church this is.
Not even this nifty medieval looking guy.
Nor this whimsical bridge decor.
No, I was ready to tackle the DDR Museum, an interactive and VERY hands-on museum that recreates life in East Germany from just about every conceivable angle. There's economic and political materials, there's a prison cell you can walk into and whose bed you can sit on, there's an entire replica of an East German apartment with more information, there's info on school, on vacations, on dancing and rationing and coffee, on cars and clothing and military service, on literally any aspect of life I could think about. This is probably one of my new all-time favorite interactive museums, up there with the Terror Haza, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, the Village Museum of Romania, and the Ben Franklin Institute.
Trabi, what?
Recreation of a DDR pre-school room.
Prison cell.
Kitchen cabinet full of the kind of supplies you'd find in a typical household.
Living room. Surprisingly cozy?
I SEE A DRINKING HORN.
Medals upon medals.
State-sponsored vacations were basically used as incentives and rewards, even if it was just to other USSR countries/satellite states.
Domestic spying in the DDR.
THE CRUELEST LIE OF ALL.... Fake coffee. Truly beyond the pale.
Next up: big famous monuments of Berlin!
The Brandenburg Gate.
The Holocaust memorial. Perfect weather for this sobering place.
Some little pieces of the wall and in the background, the parking lot of the Trabi Tour place. There is a wall museum that is supposed to be very good but by this point I was a little museum-ed out so I just continued on to...
Checkpoint Charlie. And apparently, KFC directly to its left. Good grief.
Profit off that history, baby.
A wire outline of the cathedral seen while walking.
The only acknowledgement of Hitler's bunker where he committed suicide. It's a parking lot now.
Bebelplatz, the infamous site of the Nazi's book burning.
The memorial by Micha Ullman is a window in the ground that looks down at enough bookshelves to hold all of the books burned on May 10, 1933 (around 20,000).
The AquaDom in the lobby of the Berlin Radisson is the largest free-standing aquarium in the world. From Atlas Obscura, "It contains over one million liters of water, a coral reef, and is home to nearly 2,600 fish from 56 different species." Neither Cait and I were up for taking the paid elevator through it and sadly the other elevators don't take you up higher than the ground floor without a room key. Still impressive though.
Plaque seen near our Air Bnb.
Final note on Berlin: CURRYWURST. It is what is up. It stole my heart. That is all.
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