Berlin 3

On my final full day in Berlin I went to Schloss Charlottenburg (upcoming post) and then met Hannah and members of her program at the national television and radio station in Berlin. One of the students' host dads works at the station and he got the group in. The tour was in German so you will have to ask Hannah what was said.

The main takeaway point for me was that the station building was filled with transparent elements. The hallways were made of glass, the stairs were clear, the bridges between one side of the building to the other were glass or something very strong and also clear. Hannah and I had a running joke going about all the "transparency" in German architecture. It is quite the symbol. The government buildings are all filled with giant windows and clear walls, as is the Reichstag with its glass dome from which you can look down on the politicians as they legislate. As you might guess, the transparency is a physical symbol of the "transparency" that the Germans want to emphasize in all their public entities--particularly the TV and radio stations and the government. After what has happened in ther country, they are understandably skittish about secrecy and opaque walls. Although, if I remember correctly, Hitler was fairly open about what he was doing...so I am not sure how appropriate this emphasis on transparency is. Regardless, every time that the guide mentioned "transparency" or "openness" or commented on the symbolism of the open architecture, Hannah and I grinned.

I liked the bright colors in this television studio. It sure photographs well (wonder why?).

After the tour, Hannah and a few friends and I headed to the Reichstag, or the German Senate buildings. We were hoping to take a tour and walk around the transparent dome (grin) but the line was very long. So instead we just posed for pictures and headed for dinner.

Hannah and Cameron:

We chose sushi for dinner and were excited to see a two-for one deal at a restaurant. We all ordered two different rolls...and then the food arrived. Instead of getting two rolls, with one roll free, they had outsmarted us and given us two of each...so we got twice as much food and paid twice as much as we wanted. But it was still yummy and a fun dinner.

Then we headed to Checkpoint Charlie, sort of by accident. We meant to go in the other direction, but it was nice to see it at night without all the people.

Next it was off to the Sony Center in the middle of Berlin. It is a huge entertainment complex with restaurants, a semi-outdoor area with a fountain, a movie theater, shops, etc. The roof is really cool and partially open (grin.)

Here is the courtyard.
So much of Berlin is modern and still being built. I guess that is what happens when 90% of the city is smashed by bombs and then half of it is Communist. That tends to retard growth.

We were there for an international party recommended to the group by one of their professors. We met some interesting people--some Germans, a British woman working in Berlin, (whom I later saw in London getting off the Heathrow Express!) and various other people that we met very briefly. I applaud Hannah and her friends for jumping into Berlin and speaking German and being willing to meet and talk with all these different people, instead of staying in an American bubble.

After we had reached our threshold of awkward small talk (both in English and German) we headed to a jazz club. That jazz club was so packed and smoky that, after watching the chef make crepes for a little while, a group of us left to find a quieter, less crowded place. A small, partially underground bar served our purpose very well.

We sat around a tiny table with our exotic beer and talked. It was wonderful to speak English, especially to Americans! I didn't have to confine my words to basic ones, my sentence structures to simple ones, my speech speed to turtle, or my enunciation to non-regional crisp. It is interesting how living with people who are either learning English (the boys) or who speak fairly well but miss the more complex words/sentences has affected my speech. I am really careful, especially with the boys, to use words and phrases they know while mixing in new ones slowly and hopefully painlessly. So it is a pleasure to speak to native English speakers every once in a while!

In the morning I partook of my last included breakfast and headed to the train station. I was three hours early, due to worries about the journey to the station taking a long time plus a basic fear of missing my train. Fortunately, the Hauptbahnhof is new, shiny, and clean. It is essentially a train station inside an upscale mall. There are three floors of shops with the tracks in the middle, where the food court or carousel and Santa's Workshop usually are. So I wandered in and out of the shops to pass the time, pulling my little rolling bag behind me.

My extreme earliness gave me time to comparison shop for a Berlin shot glass. I began collecting shot glasses at an early age, about seven or eight. At that point I thought they were just small cups, and as I was obsessed with anything miniature, (maybe because I was so small) they were the perfect collectible. Tiny tea sets, mini jam jars, small bottles of ketchup...I loved it all, but especially shot glasses. Now, I wonder what the people at the cash register thought of the small eight-year-old girl purchasing shot glasses. Probably, "Her parents should be ashamed."

But I was innocent and just liked the pretty, city-specific little glasses. I have about twenty-five of them now. They are an excellent souvenir since I have never been to a place that didn't have shot glasses for sale. Last week, my mom told me that she was horrified by the number of shot glasses and the dust collecting in them as they sat on my shelves at home, so she boxed them up and put them away. Not cool, Mom.

The train: Train travel is not as romantic as it once was. (But is any travel as romantic as it once was?) I was rather hoping for roomy seats, a jolly witch pushing a food cart loaded with chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, a sparkling interior, clean windows, and a cheerful Club Car. Instead I got stained, small seats, no food cart, (magical or otherwise), and a general dinginess with gross bathrooms and a cheerless Club Car with surly attendants. Where is the charming Club Car from White Christmas, with the white tablecloths and sparkling wooden bar and malts and club sandwiches? (I like to say "club car" really fast and precisely, emphasizing the hard C, as the train ticket man with the peculiar voice says to Wallace and Davis in White Christmas after learning they don't have tickets for a sleeper compartment: "You can sit up all night in the ClubCar.")

So the train wasn't lovely. But it got me back to Prague by way of Dresden and Decin. The train actually curved its way along the same riverbank where I had taken pictures of locomotives in September when I was in Decin with the family. And now I was a passenger on those very tracks...

Auf wiedersehen, Berlin!