Berlin, why are you so cool?! Definitely one of my favorite cities now, even though I didn't appreciate it when I was younger. So much history, culture, and STREET ART. I think I'm just drawn to poorer cities that have a lot of edge to them. In fact, the mayor of Berlin once said that the city was "poor, but sexy" which I think is an appropriate description. It also blows my mind that the tiny refuge of West Berlin was allowed to exist while completely surrounded by East Germany. All that post-WWII drama man...
I also must give a shoutout to my favorite band, New Politics, and their song "
Berlin" which starts of with, "
I miss you, Berlin." During one of the hundreds of times that I listened to the song prior to reaching Berlin, I actually wondered if I would feel that way upon leaving.
I definitely do. (Of course the song is actually about a girl and not the city, but whatever...)
And now, on with the pictures. You'll notice that this collection is very heavy on the street art. I went on this "Alternative Berlin" walking tour, which went around parts of East Berlin and focused on the history of street art, the lifestyle of the artists, as well as stories behind some of the more recognizable pieces. It was a highlight of my stay here.
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| Little Lucy was originally a sweet little comic book character who had a cat. The street artist El Bocho decided that that was too boring, so he made a bunch of pictures with Little Lucy killing her cat. |
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| I think the picture on the left is supposed to a woman who is sad because her lover has changed ("he's gone and I'm still here"), and is a metaphor for the city of Berlin. A lot of street artists don't like how Berlin is becoming more capitalistic and wealthy because in that process, a lot of the old culture is being lost. On the right is Little Lucy beheading her cat. |
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| Very cool wall murals. Left: at night, the street lights shine the shadow of a flag into the hands of the astronaut. Right: that wall is flat, not 3D! Definitely tricked everyone on the tour. Later we also saw a wall that was covered with this huge Nike advertisement that was put in for the World Cup, but was painted over an original wall mural. Ouch, I can't imagine how angry people were over the destruction of art. |
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| Irony is leaving the poor and beaten down area of East Berlin and Kreuzberg and going to the extremely modernized and wealthy Potsdamer Platz and Sony Center. |
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| Left: Checkpoint Charlie. Right: beautifully tiered mocha espresso. |
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| People hoppin' the border. |
Berlin also has two of my favorite museums. One is the Neues Museum (I have a few pictures here) that has a ton of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, including the bust of Nefertiti. These sorts of museums always appeal to my childhood dream of becoming an archaeologist, specifically an Egyptologist. The other is the Technology Museum (no pictures here), which is where I spent 5 hours learning about textile machinery, computers, photography/film tech, ships, engines, planes, nautical navigation tools, and much more, until I finally had to leave because it was closing time. This one appealed to me for obvious reasons. Total cost for both museums: €10.
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| Rafiki? |
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| Curiosity. |
I must now spend some time talking about the amazingness that is known as Mustafas. Now, Mustafas is a famous (maybe the most famous) kebab place in Berlin and is known for having 30 min+ long lines. I wasn't planning on going because I didn't think a kebab could be
that good. But at the Tech Museum, I ran into one of the Scottish guys I met in Ljubljana and his girlfriend so we all decided to go give it a try. The line was intimidating for sure, but it moved at a decent pace. Except 20 minutes into our wait, the meat ran out so a new kebab had to be put in and cooked, which took forever. At this point, I was getting kind of fed up, telling myself this was totally not worth it. I did manage to get some delicious currywurst at Curry 36 while I was waiting (I like fries with mayo now! Does this make me European?). Anyway, after two hours, we finally got our food.
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| Doner style. |
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| Durum style (I got this). |
How was it? Was it worth the two hour wait? Did I kill my friend for suggesting such a preposterous idea?
Let's just say... I probably can't eat another kebab anymore for the rest of my life. It was THAT good. First of all, the full name of the stand is called Mustafas Gemüsekebap, which means vegetable kebab. Normally you get things like tomatoes and cucumbers, but they also added deep fried carrots, zucchini, and POTATOES, as well as fresh mint leaves. And the garlic sauce that they had? Sigh, game over. I'm in love.
Finally, on my last day in Berlin, I visited Spreepark, which is an abandoned amusement park. Ooooh, spooky. Before I continue, I also want to mention that it was located in this area called Planterwäld, which is an area full of greenery and trees. When I got off the S-bahn and saw houses in the distance hidden among trees, it was like I had entered a completely different world.
Anyway, back to Spreepark. You can imagine that, as an abandoned amusement park, there are plenty of cool photo opportunities. Unfortunately the land that the park is on was recently bought by someone, thus making it private property. I read online that a lot of people just hop the fence and, if you're careful and keep an eye out for the police, you can leave relatively unscathed. Well all of that sounded really, really,
really fun to me, so I decided that I would go check it out and see if I wanted to be reckless and break the law. I even wore a belt and double knotted my shoes in case I had to run away from the police :P
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| Here's a shot of a giant ferris wheel in Spreepark. |
Unfortunately, I don't have any dashing stories of me narrowing escaping from danger. I walked around the entire perimeter of the park and noticed a lot of easy access points from previous trespassers. But every time I considered it, I realized that there were some joggers nearby who could've reported me. Alright, the real reason why I didn't do anything was because I was just too scared. In theory, it sounds awesome to have "got in trouble with Berlin police force for breaking into an abandoned amusement park" on my permanent record. In practice? Not so much...
This picture of a dog on the metro reminds me of a particular night I was coming home from Alexanderplatz around midnight and a huge pub crawl group came onto my cabin. They were just doing their normal loud drunken thing before they all started jumping up and down singing/chanting some German song, shaking the entire train all the way until I got off at my stop. Very amusing. There was some beer spilled, but I only caught a few drops.
And now I'm craving currywurst...
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