Berlin
May 4, 2011

Big Bad Berlin!

Checkpoint Charlie is an amazingly potent monument to dramatic recent history.

Berlin sits on the Spree River, which winds through the city. At one point there’s a large island, and on this island is a collection of museums. Today I visited them.

The big ticket, for me anyway, is the Pergamon Museum. It contains two amazing items that are themselves worth a journey to Berlin to see.

The first is the Pergamon Altar. It was part of a huge Acropolis in Asia Minor from the Second Century BC. A crazy German archaeologist/engineer named Carl Humann began digging it up. He found enough fragments to reconstruct a portion of it. It’s so huge that the museum was built specifically to house it.

"Hi! I'm the handsome American soldier welcoming you to freedom!"

The other feature of the Pergamon Museum is the magnificent Ishtar Gate from Nebuchadnezzar II’s Babylon. It’s also monumental and simply unforgettable to see.

This fantastical architectural painting by the architect Schinkel just blew me away.

After the ancient stuff I went and looked at German art at the Alte Nationalgalerie. I discovered two painters that I really like. The first is Carl Spitzweg, who has a lovely little painting in there called Kite Flying. The second is a giant of German painting named Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The interesting thing about Schinkel is that he’s probably more famous as an architect and theatrical set designer than he is a painter. But he’s an amazing painter.

"And I'm the creepy, homely, jug-eared, skinny commie welcoming you back to the land where your neighbors are probably spying on you for the Stasi."

What I love about him is that he’s a bit of a fantasist. While many of his contemporaries were depicting famous cathedrals and other buildings, Schinkel liked to just make stuff up. His architectural and landscape paintings come from his knowledge of architecture and his imagination. It’s really dreamy stuff.

After I’d had all the beauty I could stand, I hopped on the train and headed back to Stargarder Strasse to theCafe Sol to have Mexican food. I had nachos, which were perfecty acceptable.

My plan tomorrow is to explore some of those fun neighborhoods Kevin referred me to.

I’m just so pleased that I’m finally having the opportunity to explore this city!

They've left a bit of the wall standing.

Cities I’m Most Eager to Visit For the First Time

This double cobblestone line winds through the city, marking the location of the former Wall.

Sidney
Stockholm
Oslo
Hong Kong
Cape Town
Buenos Aires
Melbourne
Toronto

This is one of the pictures that turned me into a Schinkel fan. — This is one of the pictures that turned me into a Schinkel fan on the spot.

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 171 user reviews.

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Berlin
May 3, 2011

Private Segway Tour of Berlin!

Yes. I am beautiful on a Segway. Particularly when I'm not falling over.

I began the day with a four hour private Segway tour of Berlin. I say private because I was the only one signed up for the tour. This was fantastic, as it meant I had the tourguide – an adorable gay ex-pat video artist named Kevin – to my self. He was a great tourguide and gave me a great introduction to Berlin.

For decades, the Brandenburg Gate was in the Dead Zone between layers of The Wall.

Berlin’s history, when you look back on the last 100 years, is simply insane. It’s mind-boggling how much has happened in this city. Two world wars, the poisonous paranoia of post-War East Germany, the fall of Communism, the Reunification, etc. It’s just a titanic amount of events in a relatively short period.

I learned from Kevin that Berlin has a very popular openly gay mayor.

You have to give the graffiti artist credit for effort on this one. It's in the middle of the river.

I also learned that Berlin is sinking into the swamp. There are blue pipes all over the city which are literally pumping water into the water table to keep the city afloat. The main cathedral of Berlin is sinking at an alarming rate.

We, of course, went to Checkpoint Charlie. It’s such a cliché, I didn’t expect it to be particularly interesting. But it was surprisingly moving to see the old sign – “You are entering the American sector” and its chilly reverse. The former location of the Wall is marked by a double line of cobblestones that winds its way through Berlin. Of course they left a little bit of it actually standing, just for history’s sake.

During the War, specially trained Nazi dachshunds were members of an elite squad known as the "judenschniffen."

In many places the Wall had a very wide “Dead Zone” between the two layers of wall, and so when it came down in 1989 the city suddenly had a huge amount of undeveloped real estate right in the middle of town. They’ve built many interesting new things on it, including the Jewish Holocaust Memorial.

Kevin also told me a fun story about the godawful ugly tower which juts up out of the Alexanderplatz (a huge transit hub). It’s a phallic concrete monstrosity built by the East Germans as a way to show the superiority of Communist know-how and engineering. The only trouble is, the brain drain from East Germany had been so severe that the building couldn’t actually be designed or built by East Germans. So they secretly snuck in an entire work force from Sweden to build the thing. Of course, the truth was found out eventually. It generally is.

Another amusing thing about the tower. East Germany was officially atheist, remember, while the rest of Berlin remained Lutheran and Catholic. When the tower was completed an interesting and unexpected natural phenomenon occurred when the sun was in the west: Its reflection on the bumpy globe at the top of the tower creates a perfect cross. Locally it’s known as “The Pope’s Revenge.”

Kevin also was a wealth of good advice on where to get a hair cut, and what neighborhoods would be fun to explore. This was good info to get because Berlin is one of those cities that doesn’t have a real center, which can make it intimidating for a tourist.

"I know! We'll name our convenience store after a failed artificial language! That'll really bring the customers in!!"

I am good on the Segway. This was my second time I’ve done a Segway tour. However, I did have one unfortunate moment when I was dismounting and the beast got itself into a slow but unstoppable spiral. It and me went down. I’m not hurt, but I my right side is pretty bruised and sore. What was worse was, I did it right in the middle of about a thousand people. I think that hurt more than the fall.

Reasons Tourguide Kevin Will Give Up His Life in Berlin to Move to Los Angeles To Be With Me

… okay, guys, a little help here? There’s got to be some reasons we can come up with . . .

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 202 user reviews.