Jumping Over The Wall

Modernism, diversity, and history converge in Berlin. It is New York City, Tijuana, and Rome in one. My kind of city.

I acquired an S-Bahn/U-Bahn (subway, underground, tube) map and it was my close companion for the weekend. As we navigated our way through the city, we managed to get lost only once. You can’t really get lost when you start the day off with no plans. That’s how we explored for three consecutive days.

We got on the S-Bahn in the morning, ate a chocolate croissant at the station, and exited the train where we pleased. Our first day, we landed at the Tiergarten, Berlin’s Central Park. We saw the glass dome of the parliament building and then proceeded to walk into the park.

We happened upon Bradenburg Tor (we had no idea what we were looking at at the time), where we not only saw bronze chariots atop a grand archway that used to stand as a city gate of Berlin, but also a Starbucks and a group of break dancers putting on a show in the center of the square.

Bratwurst stands were in abundance, and we enjoyed our first taste before continuing on around the park. The park was home to monument upon monument, our favorite of which depicted the visages of our good friends Beethoven, Hayden, and Mozart.

We emerged from the shade of the linden trees of the park and reached yards of concrete jutting up from the ground: a memorial to the Holocaust.

The concrete coffins extended as far as the eye could see. As we walked through them, they got higher and higher, until they were well over twice our height, surrounding us on all sides. Standing in the midst of them was sobering. I felt that the designer instilled in me a sense of awe and dread appropriate to an event whose horrors still scar the face of this city. Of this country.

We got a glimpse of the more modern side of Berlin the next day. We sat in Starbucks below the needle of Alexanderplatz and listened to the tones of an aspiring pop artist. Musicians like this are all over Berlin, hoping to be discovered. We had the pleasure of hearing a violinist, an accordionist, and a classical singer situated under a tree, belting out the entirety of Schumann’s Fraueliebe und –leben.

I suppose my companions and I can be counted amongst this group of aspiring musicians; our whole reason for ending up in Berlin this weekend was an audition. For Elisa and I, it was our first of the trip. 

The audition was for an agent, and besides ending up in the middle of a kindergarten when looking for the practice rooms, it was un-traumatic. The agent offered us immediate feedback, but was deterred in offering us anything further due to our age. Figures. Our mettle remains firm and we look forward to more auditions coming up in the near future.

Berlin is home to many more historical buildings and sites, including the Victory Column (commemorating military successes), the Berliner Dom (Berlin's main cathedral, comparative to St. Peter's Basilica), and the Gendarmenmarkt (a large square and the site of the Konzerthaus framed on either side by the mirror images of the French and German Cathedrals).

A picture's worth a thousand words, so rather than explain these sites to you, check out the photos on Photobucket. 

One of our last sites was the Berlin Wall East Side Gallery. Almost one mile long, the remains of this stretch of the Berlin Wall include painted art: over 100 pictures by artists from all over the world. It is the largest open air gallery in the world. The images on its surface are a memorial to freedom, and a reminder to continue working towards a more universal freedom.

"She who wants the world to remain as it is, doesn't want it to remain at all."