Berlin in Seven Parts (Day 2: Wheels, Checkpoints, and the Reichstag by night)

Berlin Day Two: Wheels, Checkpoints, and the Reichstag by night

We set the alarm early on this second day for a tour appointment near the Alexanderplatz. Alexanderplatz was the main square of East Berlin, and was definitively so for some time. It has an open, stark, utilitarian feel like an abandoned World's Fair site, complete with a huge, unnecessary tower built for the sake of extravagance.

The tower, built by the communist government after the erection of the Berlin wall. Funny anecdote: this tower was built to be a beacon for the symbolic power of the anti-religious communist government, but when the sun shines on the silver polyhedric ball near the top, a very distinct "cross" is formed that can be seen all across Berlin. Berliners quickly and laughingly dubbed this "The Pope's Revenge", to the immense fury of the communists.

It was near Easter, and every shop had their Easter swag out, including Dunkin Donuts. Pretty soon we found our tour people, hopped on our Segways (if you can get over the dorkiness and price it's the best way to go touring) and were off around the city.

Rows and columns of trees on Museum Island.

A church with a neat little domed annex near the center of the city. This was opposite a nearly-identical church, and next to a concert hall.

Cafe Aroma! This was a massive surprise, because this black, white, and red health-themed coffee shop is the Starbucks of Israel, and I didn't know it existed elsewhere. It's weird to see the sign in a Western alphabet. We stopped here for a sandwich and a Coke, and got the lowdown on Checkpoint Charlie, which was up next...

Checkpoint Charlie, as it stands today. There is a replica of the famous "Leaving the American Sector" sign, and a photo of the East Berlin officer you would encounter at the border. Along with Checkpoint Bravo on the south side of the city, this was the only point that both Germans and non-Germans could use to cross into West Berlin, and Charlie was the only one that connected to East Berlin where the Soviets controlled the city.

When East and West Berlin were separated in 1961, it was an overnight separation of two halves of the city. If you happened to be a non-Soviet who was visiting friends in East Berlin that evening, you were stuck. If you were living in East Berlin and had family in West Berlin, you would not be able to see them except under very stringent and weird travelling circumstances, and then they would only be able to visit you through Checkpoint Charlie. Rolls of concertina wire were set up and guards were posted to checkpoints at midnight on August 13th 1961, and the wall was gradually built during the next 14 years. Many of the wealthier and better-educated Germans defected, and East Berlin was left as an impoverished mirror of its Western Half.

I remember when the wall came down, but I never really knew what it meant until I visited the city. Above is a large photograph, posted near the checkpoint, of the scene on 9 November 1989, with East Berliners streaming across the border in a throng of unbelievable force.

And, here is the same street the day I visited, with a picture taken from the same corner. Note the same apothecary sign on the white building, and how the "guard" picture shows an American soldier, since this was taken from the East Berlin side.

Walking around during our Aroma cafe break, we came upon this awesome ball sculpture. Berlin shares the same kind of "enfant terrible" sense of art that Vienna has, and I love these unexpected urban marvels.

I try to roll the sculpture, to little avail.

This is a section of the wall that still stands in a skeletal form, near Checkpoint Charlie in the center of Berlin. West Berliners, hearing of the infrastructural problems communist East Berlin was having, sent over lengths of brand-new sewer pipe as a goodwill gift to beef up the waste-management system. The East Berlin government promptly modified the pipes and mounted them on the top of the wall, making it more difficult to climb over and escape to the West. Times were tough.

One of the few patrol towers still standing in no man's land, or the "death strip". I was surprised to learn that the Berlin Wall was actually two concentric walls, with a militarized gap in the middle for extra security. Eastern guards were assigned two at a time to each shift, so if one tried to defect while on patrol, the other could "stop" them. No two guards were ever on the same shift consecutively -- the idea being that no rapport could develop between them -- and consequently they couldn't make long-term plans to defect together. There are many stories of one guard suddenly running toward the border, and the other having to make a split-second decision to shoot, or to run over with him, as he certainly couldn't report back alone.

The famous Potsdamer Platz, formerly the most lavish and busy square in all of Europe. The Berlin Wall used to cut directly through the middle of this major intersection, and many of these buildings have been built in the last 10 years as reunification has mended the economy and social fabric of Berlin.

This is a weird picture, with a weirder story. The parking lot and apartment complex above is built directly above the remains of the gutted and cement-filled Furherbunker, where Adolf Hitler hid during the final months of WWII and eventually took his own life. It's eerie to realize how centrally in the city this is located -- a mere kilometer or less from the Reichstag. There is only a small makeshift bulletin board and some tacked-on papers to confirm its existence, on the right side of the photo. German law specifically forbids official monuments to Nazism, and it is not listed on any official map, and the site has been developed as though it were any other parcel of land.

Not far away is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was designed by architect Peter Eisenman and consists of thousands of cement blocks of various heights positioned in a grid. Like the sunken garden I mentioned at the Jewish Museum, this is meant to evoke a sense of unease when walking through, and symbolizes a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. It is a unique memorial in that it does not use any symbolism at all. It is much larger than could fit in the picture above.

We then rode by some wonderful modern architecture, which I was so intrigued by that we stopped by again at night, as you'll see shortly. I believe this building across the Spree river was the department of education, using large windows (more on that soon) and simple geometric shapes to create a unique, broad-lined structure. This buildings were only completed in the last few years.

We then rode back, across museum island, to Alexanderplatz, and went back to the hostel for a nap.

Curry 36! Along with Mustafa, this dining phenomenon was on the ground floor of our hostel building, a block south of the entrance. Currywurst is this huge trend in Berlin street food, and it's basically a wurst sausage chopped up and served with special ketchup and curry powder, as well as a side of frites heaped with massive amounts of mayo. This place had a line that was longer and more pervasive that at Mustafa. I waited for 30 minutes for my currywurst, which I enjoyed very much, but not enough for 30 minutes of line.

After napping, it was time for an evening on the town. I wanted to go back to the Spree riverbank with the awesome architecture at night, so we hit up a small museum gallery just up the street on Unter Den Linden. The presentation there was very contemporary, and I don't remember very much from it, but here's a little bit of Pangea to whet your appetite.

When's the second-best time to plant a tree?

Time for dinner. This was a memorable experience. On the way to the art gallery, we spied an opulent, yet casual restaurant called Holyfields. It looked intriguing enough from the street to try a meal there.

Holyfields feels like a high-end hotel, but it's a self-service restaurant. When you enter, you're greeted by a concierge, and you order food and drinks from a huge vertical plasma touchscreen that shows all the different menu options in mouth-watering high definition. Once you order, you're dispensed a futuristic pager (I know, I know) and when it lights up, your order is ready. We sit down and enjoy the ambiance.

The pager goes off, and we go through the cavernous restaurant to pick up our food, which, as I recall, were delicious deconstructed versions of chicken and a sandwich. The pickup windows are named Peter, Paul, and Mary. The traces of biblical symbolism in Holyfields were enough to be creepy and charming at the same time.

After dinner, it's nearly dark, and time to visit the Brandenburg Gate at the end of the boulevard of Unter Den Linden. This was the historic grand entrance to the city of Berlin, and it is grand indeed, as the approach to the city is flanked on either side by the Tiergarten, an enormous bifurcated park that used to be a private hunting preserve. The Brandenburg Gate was also previously part of East Berlin, but just barely, as the wall ran parallel to it directly on the west side. You may recall the famous speeches by Kennedy and Reagan, made from the West Berlin side, but with the gate as the backdrop, and that's how close the border was. At night, special lights go on to illuminate the gate and a few street performers come out. It's a beautiful sight.

Down the street, the wurst restaurant in Berlin ;-). What's most interesting about this photo is the line of cobblestones at the bottom of the frame: when the wall was finally torn down in 1989, a double line of cobblestones was inlaid anywhere the wall previously stood, as a historical marker. One can walk down the street and see this line in many places.

Our shadows on the wall of the Reichstag.

And, the Reichstag proper. Headquarters of the German parliament, it was originally opened in 1894, then disused during WWII (Hitler, being not a bit paranoid and superstitious, didn't like it for some reason) and then reconstructed by the architect Norman Foster following German reunification in the 1990s. The most notable aspect of the "new" Reichstag, at least from the outside, is the glass dome on top of the building with a spiral walkway running down. This was originally open to tourists and other spectators who wanted to look in on parliament sessions, but is not largely (and sadly) closed most of the time due to security risks. The rest of the exterior is very much the same as in 1894, but the inside has been gutted, redesigned, and opened up in super-modern fashion.

The new urban planning around the Reichstag is really fun to walk through. Here is a side street directly to the north with plenty of lights that gleam like dentists' mirrors.

More Bundestag, or modern parliament meeting buildings. Like many of the new government architecture, there are abundant windows that show all the rooms. This is a conscious decision in state architecture to give the parti pris, or unifying idea, of government transparency. After WWII, the new German government vowed to let the eyes of the public and the light of day vet governmental business, and this is found in the DNA of the new buildings. I loved walking by these beautiful and futuristic structures at night. Here is a brief sampling of the different buildings along the river; notice how much can be seen from the outside in each.

Dig that massive, two-tiered, Donkey Kong-style staircase on the right.

The previously-seen-in-daylight education headquarters.

Aw, yeah.

Walking back to the U-Bahn station, we walked by a restaurant where there was a big window into the prep kitchen. Na'ama peers in.

The front-of-house for the same establishment.

Waiting for the U-bahn to come...

Home! I try a new beverage I saw at the corner market because I loved the label. "Wostok" tastes like the forest -- pine tree woodsy with some sour berry flavor -- I kid you not.

A quick walk around the neighborhood before bed. This is another awesome doorway in the "SALVE." courtyard.

And, a wonderful neighborhood bar called the Galander, with a quirky, knowledgeable, and innovative bartender on staff. He invented a cocktail for us with a liquor we were wondering about (St. Germain) and when he wasn't completely satisfied with it, we got it for free and he made another that "worked better". I also tried some Japanese whiskey on the house because he wanted me to try it out. I wish we had gone back another night, but perhaps on another trip. End Day 2.

Berlin in Seven Parts (Day 1: Kreutzberg)

Greetings, everyone!

I'm glad to see you're still checking in here. There haven't been posts in many months, but I have many things to post about, some of which are backlogged, and I plan on updating several times in the coming weeks and months, so keep checking in!

This week's posts are about Berlin, Germany, where Na'ama and I went for a week's vacation this last Easter/Passover. It's a huge, beautiful, fascinating city with an equally fascinating (and chilling) history, often written directly through the buildings and the streets. As always, click to enlarge the photos and see some of the details. This is a long trip, so I will divide it into seven days, and post one at a time.

Berlin Day One: Kreutzberg and Environs

We booked a hostel in a younger and cheaper neighborhood in the southern part of the city center called Kreutzberg. This is a shot of our hostel building above, which used to be a medium-scale factory. The tall ceilings, long hallways, and block-like large rooms are now filled with IKEA furniture, and the price was right. Also, it is located mere steps (steps!) from a U-Bahn (underground railway) station, so it was very easy to get moving through the city in the mornings.

This is a shot directly outside the hostel on street level. The enormous line is for a street vendor called Mustafa who served famously delicious shawarma and other middle-eastern specialties. This line stretched down the block day and night, every day and every night. The wait, combined with an already too-intimate appreciation of middle-eastern food, prevented us from finding out just how delicious it was.

The wonderful first day is always for making some circles in the neighborhood and seeing what is where. Across the Mehringdamm boulevard from our hostel was this serene and beautiful graveyard, with many graves from the early part of the century. Berlin was full of little park oases like this (though usually without the accompanying gravestones.)

A little further north on Mehringdamm we came across this spectacular mural on the side of a rooming house, the first of many we found in the Kreutzberg area. Notice how it's on both sides of the building, and how the "sky" of the mural blends in with the surrounding skyline. It shows some prominent Berlin buildings being sucked into some kind of vortex, though I don't know any of the symbolism.

Directly east of the muraled building was this courtyard park. Kreutzberg had a slower, Brooklyn-like feel to it, with many small businesses, restaurants, and an unpolished, artsy aesthetic. In retrospect, much of Berlin felt like this by varying degrees.

The Jewish Museum, one of Berlin's new architectural achievements, was also in the Kreutzberg neighborhood. From above, it resembles a deconstructed Star of David, and has many "experiential" architectural components, one of which can be seen closer below:

This sunken garden is a series of columns on a tilted plane that's meant to give a sense of disorientation and uneasiness while walking through, and supposed to mirror the disorientation of Jewish emigrees during WWII. We went through later, and it certainly did the trick.

Meanwhile, up the street, sitting down outside at a Thai restaurant in the neighborhood. The weather in April was just starting to turn warm, and it was a fantastic time to be outside.

Na'ama has the Tom Kha, and I have the Tom Yum and a Berliner Pilsner while looking up how to say "the check, please" in German. My German sounds simultaneously French and Hebraic, and is rarely accurate, but I have fun. The food is spicy and wonderful on this brisk day.

Down the same street there were a few more examples of this awesome muraling. These are public apartments (I think).

This wise man endorses any billboard mounted near his face.

A broad shot of the street from a square. The apartment building on the left is ring-shaped and is elevated off the ground like many of the apartment blocks in Tel Aviv.

A large church. Every church I saw in Berlin was made out of red bricks. This was something that was new to me, and I wondered if they were rebuilt after the war, but apparently Protestant churches in this part of Germany were just mortared from red bricks as a general practice.

When we got inside we saw that the church was actually a performance space. It may have doubled as a church as well (still had the pipe organ) but it looked like it was mainly used for concerts and other secular gatherings, and it had catwalks for curtains and other modular stage appurtenances.

A rendering of the church hanging in the vestibule.

The actual church, outside, from a better angle.

I love this shot. The streets are almost disproportionately wide in many parts of Berlin, and the sunlight filters through the trees lining them. The main boulevard in town, we would later find out, is called "Unter den Linden" which literally means "under the linden trees".

This is a wonderful shot (taken by Na'ama) that has a flower shop's corner with bleeding hearts juxtaposed with the graffiti and brick exterior. Flower, or blumen shops were super-common in Berlin.

Bergmannstrasse. What a cool street. This ran East-to-West on the southern edge of Kreutzberg, and had a dazzling assortment of specialty shops, world restaurants, coffee places, and a generally young and relaxed atmosphere. The sun was shining, so the espresso lounge (and many other coffee shops) opened their accordion-style front windows and let the tables spill onto the street.

Up the hill a bit from Bergmannstrasse was Viktoriapark, an urban park from the early 1800s. No gravestones, but a monument to the Napoleonic wars at the top. Very peaceful near the end of the day.

Another specialty shop in the area, this time with books. Some intriguing silk-screened prints lure us to its windows.

For adventure, we ducked into a courtyard on the street and found a "secret garden" that the surrounding buildings faced. Kreutzberg could be rather bustling in the Bergmannstrasse area, but this was a very quiet retreat with some mighty old apartment buildings around. I loved the inlaid steps with "SALVE." written on the stoop. It might be a religious reference, and I'm not sure, but what a great way to be "hailed" every day.

That evening, we met up with some local friends: Mindi and her husband, originally from the states, both teach at JFK which is the local German international school. Mindi is a string teacher I had met at a few festivals, and it was too convenient not to visit, which they generously made time for. We went to a local German/Mexican(!) restaurant and each had a margarita, each a different color. End Day 1.

Getting around the city (wheels and feet)

Tel Aviv may be somewhat small, but it has some great and unique public transit. The most ubiquitous way to get around is by bus.

As in the States, the bus has a number and a corresponding route. You pay when you get on, and the bus is signaled to make its next scheduled stop by pressing a button onboard. Most people pay with a transit card; I pay with shekels. Busses do not operate on Saturdays.

However, there is a fantastic, quirkier, sometimes quicker way to traverse the city. This way is the Sheirut:

A Sheirut (Hebrew for "service") is a shared taxi that looks like a yellow minivan. There are as least as many of these in service as busses. They also have a number and run the same routes as the busses. They cost the same as the busses. However, they only have 10 seats, and they stop whenever you ask them to. Want to stop at a certain store? Bellow from the back: "Ta'atzor, b'vakasha!" and the driver will stop wherever possible.

The added element of weirdness on a sheirut is how you pay: upon entering, it's expected that the passengers will immediately find a seat so the van can continue moving and won't block traffic. Once seated, the passenger will give his money to the person sitting in front, who will in turn pass it up to the driver through a chain of passengers. The driver will count it with one hand while operating the vehicle (sometimes at the peril of everyone onboard), issue change from an automatic dispenser, and pass it back through the passengers again. There's a strange camaraderie in this expeditiousness that is utterly cool.

Also much more noticeable on a sheirut is the personality of the driver: one driver had an abacus built into his dashboard to keep track of the number of passengers, some are angry and constantly yelling into the CB radio, one was completely chill and was blasting a Vivaldi CD while whistling along, and some older passengers asked him to turn it up.

Coming soon to my neighborhood are bike rentals from an automatic rack. As far as I can tell, they can be rented by credit card from the kiosk above, which remotely unlocks a bike from a post. The bikes aren't here yet, but they should be ready later this month, and I can't wait to try it out.

Finally, feet. The Tel Aviv Marathon was this last Friday morning. This was the scene on the street at 6:30AM:

18,000 people showed up, according to the local paper. All cars parked on the boulevard were towed at night and there were many street closed in the city. Here's a view from the roof, with runners coming down the street in the 5th or so kilometer:

The guy in yellow below yelled to the marathon volunteers: "Why aren't you cheering??" They started cheering.

Coda: I broke at least 3 traffic laws finding a route to work that morning, but it was a fun day.

Tel Aviv and the Conspicuity of Celebrity

One Saturday morning about a week ago, Na'ama and I were taking a quick walk up the boulevard to the neighborhood grocery store. Once we turned the corner, she informed me that we had just passed Yitzhak Rabin's granddaughter sitting at one of the outdoor cafes.

Apparently, Yitzhak Rabin's granddaughter is in her early 30s and is married with kids, and nearly everyone knows what she looks like, ala Chelsea Clinton. That she would be out on Saturday for breakfast at a trendy street-side cafe isn't surprising. However, what is surprising is how often it's possible to run into nationally famous figures in Tel Aviv; this was the latest in a series of sightings. Some others:

(sitting at dinner at an inexpensive cafe): "Oh, my god. Don't look now, but my favorite op-ed columnist is having coffee at the table over your left shoulder."

I look over my shoulder. Gideon Levy, with his weathered face and Clint Eastwood-like squint is having a cigarette and talking with his dinner companion at a two-person table. I recognize him from his byline picture.

"Why don't you go say how you love his work?"

"I can't do that! He'll think I'm an idiot!"

(Walking down the street back from a late-night movie): "See that guy in the white shirt and flip-flops? He's the head judge on the Israeli version of American Idol." Isra-Simon is talking animatedly on a cell phone by himself, standing next to a park bench.

(Driving up a side street en route to the freeway on a Saturday morning, slowing for a crossing pedestrian): "By the way, the guy who's crossing the street in front of us was a really famous Israeli rock star in the '70s. Now he's really slowed down; that's his wife and kid."

Statistically, all of this is probable. Tel Aviv has only 393,000 people, and it's the cultural center of the Israeli world. Furthermore, these blocks lie in the heart of the city. What's most surprising is the casual nature of each of these celebrities; no entourage, no fancy car, no exclusive table, just flip-flops and an occasional companion. I guess if the world is small enough, the rush of celebrity status isn't as reality-bending.

The best one of all: last week, Na'ama walks down King George St. on the way home from work, and comes up from behind on a handful of guys, one of whom is small and elderly but walking at a fast clip, talking with the others. She instantly recognizes him as former prime minister and current president of Israel Shimon Peres.

"And I love Shimon Peres! And he's walking around so quickly for an elderly man! But the problem is that he's surrounded by his guards, so I couldn't approach him to say hello. Even worse, he's walking directly on my route home, so now it looks like I'm following them! And one of the guards looks over his shoulder at me, and keeps walking, and looks again, then talks to the others, and so I finally switch to the other side of the street, and when they finally pass my street I turn up the block, and one of the guards gives me a last look . . . and I mean, you can't really blame them, because it's Shimon Peres, but how cool to see the President...!"

Make City Tokyo

Or: how to spend a Shabbat morning with cutting tools and glue.

Below right: a picture of the final components of Make City Tokyo, once assembled.

The components of Tokyo Tower...

And, the completed tower, with included Godzilla. Next up: sushi, vending machines, main street, and temple.