My choice was Prague, and Berlin was Holly's request. Both of us wanted practice with our French, and so France was a logical third destination.
As I explain our times in each country/city, I'm sure you'll discover why we chose each of the three specifically.
Since then, the two weeks have passed, and now we have both come home.
Wow.
Well, that was the best two weeks of my life.
Lets try to do this whole 'summary blog' thing in installments, shall we?
Lets start with Berlin. (Again, more pictures can be found here)
The Friedrichstat Palast
The first thing we did was make an impulse buy. Two cheap tickets to a show at a theater on the same street as our hostel.
We thought little of it, and wandered around and shared a pretzel and saw some museums until the showtime.
until...
We entered the massive theater and took our seats (right up front on the waaaaay side of the stage... argueably the worst seats in the house, but with a nod to each other- "Not bad seats at all!" (Bowfinger 1999)- we soon found ourselves in massive shock. As we discovered in one of the most surreal experiences of my life, the show, "Qi," was way beyond a tiny show. And how. Even walking in, the sheer size of the stage was downright nauseating.
I don't want to spend too much time explaining the show- mostly because I'm not sure thats even possible. But I'll attempt a straight up list:
About 30 men in leather tight shorts and black wings enter stage right for the initial dance number.
An entire ice rink was then wheeled out, and half an hour of ice dancing/flips to pop songs ensued.
Then they set the ice on fire.
The rink was pulled back, and a woman sitting on a giant glittery moon was lowered from the celing and began to sing as disco balls were lowered on chains.
An inset 20 foot-deep swimming pool was revealed under some paneling in the stage as a HUGE chandelier was lowered from the ceiling with a woman hanging in it.
Numerous dance numbers with insanely sexual costumes followed, with people occasionally jumping into the pool and never reemerging.
A cover was extended over the pool, and a rain machine began to make it rain onstage as a new dance number began.
Two men in heavy black and red cloaks started a homoerotic duet dance, then took off their cloaks to reveal they were dressed in leather speedoes and S&M straps. It was intense. And they kissed at the end!
Some comedians came out and did some acts while in the background, HUGE safety nets were erected....
And then the trapeze acrobats took the stage.
...I don't really know how to communicate how surreal this all was.
Lets just say we were taken by surprise by what was apparently Berlin's biggest show EVER with a cast of over 200 people.
Holly and I went home in a daze, and slept soundly.
The Squatters
The next day we ventured towards an old theater in our neighborhood that had been bombed to bits in the war. I guess no one took claim on it, because past the huge concrete facade of the building, covered in graffiti, there was an open-air courtyard, filled with metal statues. At night it had been an dark cavernous entrance that smelled strongly of drugs and alcohol. In the daylight though, it was downright inviting, once we got over our stand-offishness of the night before.
The above picture was taken just inside the huge stone entrance. A few statues from the theater's facade had fallen, and someone had taken the liberty of planting some well-placed flowers. Further in, there was an entire menagerie of metal statues pieced together from scrap metal and blowtorched together. It was a real treat to have seen.
Potsdam of Prussia
The next day we took a field trip! The home of the Prussian ruler, Frederick the Great! Probably one of the most awesome rulers of Prussia.
Man, he was cool.
A very very small slice of the gardens ^
His father had his childhood friend (suspected by some to be a gay lover) beheaded infront of him when he was 19. As he grew up, he was an amazing painter, spoke about 10 languages, and built some AMAZING palaces in Potsdam, and had some cool military actions too. Under questioning glances about his sexuality, Frederick maintained that he was asexual and had no interest in anyone sexually, and never consummated the marriage that had been forced by his father. He was close friends with Voltaire. In short, he sounds pretty neato, yeah? Theres a statue of him in Berlin.
ANYWAYS. He built these GIANT gardens and palaces in Potsdamn, about one metro-hour outside of Berlin, and that is what Holly and I went to see.
Our visit to Potsdam was right as spring was just beginning to win the battle with winter, so the MASSIVE gardens we strolled through were mostly brown and sticky trees and shrubs. Their potential grandeur still shone through, and I would love nothing more than to go back there when the acres and acres are in full bloom. Without a doubt, I'm positive that they will blow me away when they have grown back in.
Holly and I completely looked over Sanssouci, the actual mansion of Fredric the Great- we walked up to it, sure, but the way the gardens are oriented, you would think The Neues Palais, the guest palace, bigger and with a more grand approach through the gardens, was the main attraction. So we took a quick glance at Sanssouci, but spent an hour touring the guest palace, which was HUGE and very lushly decorated.
The next day was our last in Berlin, and we spent it getting the grand tour from a company that gives free tours of cities around Europe. WWII history filled our eager minds for the whole day. Here are some of the sights and facts we saw and learned, respectively:
Brandenburg Tor - lady of peace turned into Victoria for victory over the french - still stares down on the french embassy
A dramatic picture of the Tor by night:
And another angle of the dramatic BandenburgOH CUSS ITS MADE OUT OF CHOCOLATE.
This is the main Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Huge blocks of concrete start out low to the ground and then get taller and taller as the ground slopes steeper and descends further downward. The artist has only said that one of his inspirations is a Jewish cemetery in Prague where bodies were piled from 4 to 12 people deep(More on that in the post on Prague). The design also mimics the death statistics of Jews throughout the war- small at first, then suddenly skyrocketing to staggering heights.
There used to be a HUGE Nazi gov't building on top of the bunker where Hitler poisoned his dog and his girlfriend and shot himself. But it was destroyed at the end of the war.
A huge drill made enough holes into the concrete bunker to make it collapse, then built some condominiums and a parking lot on top of it. A modest sign is all that marks the spot, supposedly so that locals wouldn't be bothered by people asking "So THIS is the place Hitler shot himself?!" Now they can just point to the sign and move on with their lives.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall - An Amazing Accident
The wall wasn't meant to be impregnable. Its actually a series of rather thin sections of concrete that were meant to be mobile. It was meant to slow people down enough to give the snipers a chance. The most effective bit about the wall was the make-shift sewer pipe along the top of it. barbed wire would give grappling hooks something to catch onto, but everything just slid off of the smooth metal piping that crowned the wall. Snipers got a promotion if they got a kill shot on anyone running through the 'death strip' that surrounded the wall on the East side.
It is the fall of the Wall that is really the best story. I want to impress upon you that I am not quite the pro story teller that our tourguide was- Maria had us all on the edge of our seats as she regaled us with this tale. In short, the East German government had no intentions of taking the wall down, but a miscommunication at a press conference lead to a nervous and uninformed government spokesperson answering some pointed questions about 'when travel restrictions would be lifted from East Berlin' with 'As I understand it, immediately.' Of course this was NOT the case, but as people amassed by the heavily guarded checkpoints into West Berlin, demanding to know what was going on, no one dared give the order to open fire on the crowds, and no one could get in contact with any gov't official who *did* know what was going on. So they opened the gates. Saying "Oh, haha, this was all a huge misunderstanding, no, you really can't leave, guys!" was out of the question, and so the wall fell.
Ampelmann!
"Some say he might be ...A little too excited to cross the street,"
-Maria, Our tour guide
At first, East Berlin was the only ones to enjoy the guidance of Ampelmann, designed to make sure children especially understood when to cross and when to not. After the wall was torn down, Ampelmann almost got replaced with the more standard street-crossing man... but the citizens stood up, and Ampelmann lives, and is even spreading into what was once West Berlin.
(Holly picked up on the innuendo a whole 2 minutes before the tour guide even suggested it...)
And Finally, a Bit of Whimsy.
Not actually a modern art installation, as I certainly thought at first, but a good segway into how Berlin got its name.
Swamp! An old word for 'swamp,' 'berl,' most likely gave way to 'Berlin' because the old Prussian city was just that. Swampy swamp swamp land that got built upon.
i.e. Not exactly prime land for having 'temporary' underground pipe systems, so if a building project is going down, they pipe into it aboveground. And paint it subtle colors.
In total, we were in Berlin for a little over 3 days. The next order of business was getting to Prague, our next stop. We caught a train and disembarked at the first station in the heart of Prague... immediately after arriving on Czech soil and watching the train bound to Austria pull out of the station, I realized I had left my jacket and wallet (complete with PASSPORT) in the train compartment.
Oh panic, how quickly you do set in.
(To Be Continued)
3 comments:
you cliffhangar, you!!! How'd you get the jacket back?????
You're pictures are so pretty!!
Elise this blog is amazing!!!!!! Your descriptions are so wonderful.
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