Charlie and I stayed up late Saturday night, so Charlie’s 7am wake-up call was a bit painful. Charlie succeeded in making his goal of being out of the hotel by 8am and I promptly went back to sleep for another two hours. I’m sorry to see Charlie leave, but after two weeks together I was ready to do a bit of solo exploration. Then again, solo exploration was on hold (at least for today). My dear friend Lilan (who moved from San Francisco to New York several years ago) is spending two months in Berlin and we are scheduled to spend the day together, which should be a treat on several fronts.
I called Lilan and we talked about where we could meet. But as I remembered she was having some trouble getting her computer to connect to the internet from her sublet apartment, I suggested that I just come by and see if I could sort it out.
Lilan is currently staying in a very functional, somewhat oddly decorated sublet about 5 subway stops from my hotel. I looked over her computer situation and managed to figure things out in a couple of iterations (even with a DSL modem that only spoke “German”). Before long, I had her laptop connecting to the wireless network. My technological prowess will likely be reported (and perhaps exalted) in her very entertaining blog (she’s a writer & it can be found at http://grovergirl.typepad.com/berlinorbust/ ).
Having done my tech support duty, we set off to tour a few colorful neighborhoods of Berlin.
We started with the area around Frankfurter Alley (that springs from Karl-Marx Alley). This is an area where the DDR (East Germany) leveled rows of existing buildings to be able to create grand, wide boulevards. We walked to the Fredrichshain area and visited the Volkspark. Berlin apparently is the “Greenest City”, with the largest amount of area devoted to parks. From there we wandered over to the very popular Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood. This area sustained little damage in the World War II, but crumbled under the watch of the Communists. It has always been very artsy and now seems a bit like a laid-back, artsier version of the Rockridge area of Oakland. They create very interesting play structures in their corner parks; much less pre-fabricated than what we have in the US. All in all, we walked in these areas for about 3 hours. We decided to get a late lunch in the Mitte area (not too far from my hotel). It took a subway train plus a fair amount of walking, but we arrived at a very stylish Vietnamese Café. They had very few choices, but my dish (a chicken dish with coconut milk and spices over rice) was really good. I don’t remember previously eating Vietnamese at an outdoor restaurant; this café had outdoor tables.
After we ate lunch, we set off towards the Reichstag building. The German Parliament was located in Bonn before the wall came down, so when they moved it back to Berlin, they had to have a very special building. We took a series of subways to get to the Haupt Bahnhof (an impressive building in its own ight) and walked over to the Reichstag. While the building is free to enter, there’s a pretty long line (we only had to wait 30-40 minutes total) and very heavy-duty security (along the lines of the security I see at the Frankfurt Airport). The building was originally built in the 1890s, but heavily renovated since the wall fell. Now, the old exterior is an interesting counterpoint to the futuristic glass dome inside. We rode the elevator and walked up many ramps to get the most stellar views. We caught only the end of the process of the sun setting, but stayed up long enough to get some really great and colorful sunset photos.
Lilan accused me of “lucking out” with the weather. Yes and no. While I got to enjoy a beautiful day on Sunday (where I was wearing only a t-shirt all day…okay, so I was wearing pants too), I feel like I earned some good weather from all the days in Hungary and Austria with inclement weather. So there!
Now, I once again bid adieu to my friend. Lilan was off to a literary event and I went off to see more of Berlin at night. I took many, many photographs from the top of the Reichstag, then of the Reichstag from ground level. I walked to the Brandenburg Gate and took several more photos. Then I decided I would do some serious “Berlin at Night”, starting with Potzdamer Platz. It’s not the most authentic place, but I did get a good number of nice photos. From here, I took the subway back to the Zoological Garden and did another iteration of the previous day’s bus tour, hopping off the bus for 10 minutes to view the “Victory Column”. I ended getting off the bus and walking thoroughly around some of “Unter Den Linten” sights I saw on Saturday, getting more beautiful night photos. I ended up in a restaurant area not too far from my hotel for a late dinner. There were lots of restaurants, but they were essentially empty at this late hour. I had a lovely dinner, with the relative calm broken by a completely insane woman who brought her dog inside the restaurant. The staff was telling her to leave, she was screaming, and the dog was barking continuously and loudly. Other than that, Berlin seemed to be a very safe and pleasant city (at least the parts I visited).
When I returned home (after 14 hours away from the hotel), I realized that Berlin was the sort of place I really liked. I will likely come back here, long before I’ve seen all the other places “on my list”. Perhaps I’ll opt to rent an apartment here for a month-long vacation (peppered with side trips)? Too soon to tell when I’ll be back, but it will be a welcome return.
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