Germany: Berlin

East Side Gallery
Orna & I inside the Tacheles artists squat

Had an awful overnight bus trip from Amsterdam to Berlin thanks to the creepiest guy on the bus sitting next to me and annoying me. Finally arrived in Berlin around 7am and was completely overwhelmed by the s-bahn and u-bahn trains and couldn't even understand the ticket machine in English! Got someone to help me and then it was all uphill from there, found the hostel near Landsberger Allee station, dropped my pack there and snuck a sneaky free breakfast even though it wasn't included until tomorrow. But it's such a massive hostel, it's not like anyone would recognize me as not having checked in yet, very different to Noordwijk!

Decided to soldier on with the day despite having had no sleep so I joined the free walking tour. Saw Brandenburg Tor & the Hotel Adler where MJ dangled the baby, the Reichstag (govt) where Hitler took power (and now has a symbolic glass dome on top that people walk around in looking down at parliament so that govt is literally transparent & noone can take power like that again.)

Walked through the Holocaust memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe (the grey rectangle stones one) which was intense. Had learnt about it in 'Memory & Memoir of 20th century Europe' subject in uni last year but the experience was so different than expected- from the edge it looks simple to walk through but as you start, the ground dips down at the same time the blocks soar up above you so it feels really overwhelming. You lose sight of the people you're with, you're split up, you can't see the way out, the blocks are like tombs or trains, you make one small choice about direction and you end up somewhere different etc. I found it really effective. And the company who manufactored xyclone-b (gas chamber gas) now manufacture the anti-graffiti surface spray and maintain the memorial.

We stood on top of Hitler's bunker where he married Eva Braun then comitted suicide, above it is a gravel car park and is apparently the only spot in Berlin you can take your dog to relieve itself, and not pick it up.

Saw Babelplatz with the book burning memorial (a glass window in the ground looking underground to empty shelves) and the chilling quote on a plaque written a century before ww2 "they who start by burning books, end by burning people." The uni in that square where Einstein used to lecture has a book sale out the front every single day, manned by students, to apologise for letting the book burning occur.

I listened to the 3rd Reich history a lot better than the old Frederick and Wilhelm histories just because I struggle to get my head around all that time, but Berlin really has so many layers of history on top of each other.

I napped for about 3 hours in my empty dorm, had a shower and returned to Irish girls literally crawling all over the dorm! I counted 7 of them, and it was an 8 bed room! All their names seemed to end with an 'a' but they don't really, and I couldn't connect names to faces until the next day.

I went downstairs to check emails for the first time in a few days and got the terrible news that my Grandy had passed away completely unexpectedly (he was healthy) a few days earlier, and my family were trying to contact me because I'd taken the sim out of my phone. So that night turned into the lowest point of my whole trip, I felt so sad for my mum and aunts and nana who must have been in so much shock, and wanted to be at home with my family. The Irish girls were sweet though, then they went out clubbing and I spoke to family in the middle of my night.

The next night went out with the Irish girls on a really fun alternative 'anti pub' crawl which went to cool themed bars like a hippy flower power bar, a goth horror scary bar, an absinthe bar, an empty apartment called dr pong's where you play around the world table tennis, and finally a graffitied club in a bombed out railway depot called Cassiopeia. It was an awesome night out and my Irish accent got pretty good!

I also did a street art tour with 2 of the Irish and loved it, learnt all about the alternative lifestyle and artists squats and our guide was an amazing band member/ artist/ script-writer half French half Argentinian girl living in Berlin. She pointed out the different street artists whose work we kept recognizing around the city, described that you get in less trouble from police if you're glueing up a stencil rather than spray painting, and all the warring or supportive relationships between different artists! Ended up at Cassiopeia again, this time to find in the other bombed out buildings there is a skatepark, circus school, art studio, rockclimbing & bouldering gym, etc.

For the rest of my time in Berlin I saw the East Side Gallery of the wall (east side, so it wasn't allowed to be painted on until 1989. It was cleaned & restored in 2009 for its 20 yr anniversary so looks all shiny and new now.) Went to the Jewish museum, spoke to family on skype lots, hung out in the Tiergaten and saw one of those laughing for fitness groups... slapping their thighs and roaring with laughter in a circle. People are so weird!
And chilled out on the grass in front of Reichstag because the queue to go up was too long.
Bit sad I didn't meet those girls before I went to Ireland because they were a lot of fun.. Here goes: Rachel Roisin Helene Laura Lisa Orna and Amelia!

I would go back to Berlin, even though I was there for 5 nights I feel I've barely scraped the surface.