Back from Berlin!

Berlin is a wonderful city. Massive, by European standards, in both size and inhabitants. The German capital is alive with vigor and culture and openly will warm itself to those who dare to dig into the many sides of the metropolis.

Despite being awake for roughly 24 hours before I touched down in the capital city I felt immediately upon my arrival, that Berlin was a place I was going to like and sleep (or lack there of) was not to be of concern. I can't do the city justice by simply summarizing it in a single blog entry, so I'll break it out into sections...pieces, that like the city itself, are all connected yet somehow not....I'll post them as I write them with pictures to boot....it won't be all in one entry, but keep checking in and you'll see more as it's added. After all, I'm stuck back in Sweden with no means of monetary exchange nor heat (at the moment)....so I guess the best I can do is write to keep hunger and pneumonia from setting in more so than it has.

Holocaust Memorial:
2,711 gray concrete blocks sit in silence forming a profile from afar that is wavy like a contorted topo map. As you walk into the middle of the assemblage you suddenly realize the stones are now taller than you are. They appear waist high from the perimeter, but from the interior they become giants much taller than a man. We found a rose on the street the morning we went to see the exhibit. There were some delays getting into the exhibition hall that resides below the monument, so we decided to play around a bit with our find. The humidity droplets from the morning mist were hanging on everything in sight. We used the stem of the flower we found to try our hand at some ultra temporary street art. The gray background, gray stones, and red rose somehow produced a reflection of the mood that was rather appropriate. When the exhibition finally opened we made our way down the stairs into the main hall. The exhibit itself winds through several rooms filled with photos. The introductory room had two pictures on its wall that I don't think I'll ever forget. It was a two part photo....the first photo was a group of women undressing in a ravine under soldier watch. Some of them were naked and some were in the process of becoming so. Their clothes lied in piles under their feet as they were being ushered up a small hill. The second photo was the same women's naked bodies piled on top of one another lying dead at the base of the small hill after having been executed from behind. They were mostly face down, but several were turned right side up as they must have rolled down the hill after being shot instead of just simply sliding face down. There was one lone woman who wasn't dead in the ravine. She had her arm reached out grasping in agony for help at some invisible hope that was in front of her. Her back was black with blood from the several holes that were now in her. To her rear was a German soldier raising his rifle at point blank range to finish the job by putting a lone round in the back of her head. The expression on the soldiers face was void and dutiful. I can't comprehend how someone could possibly commit such an act.

With accounts of nearly 6 million Jews being exterminated during the time period memorialized you lose focus that this was an incredibly personal experience for all of those victimized. That sounds stupid and trite to say such a thing, but when I would read or hear stories about 'victims of the holocaust' my mind immediately lumped those so called victims into a singular group that was homogenous. It somehow softened what that really meant....6 million piled up bodies....it's not something that is easily comprehended and therefore impossible to digest. The memorial brings a personal element to the tragedy and makes you realize that there are 6 million awful stories of perish like the one described in the two photos described above. I wonder if we'll ever stop hating each other enough to make 'this time' truly the last.

Berlin Wall (east side gallery):
I grew up in a household where my parents watched the nightly news. We didn't do the whole Leave It To Beaver, Pa in a sport coat at the dinner table talking about our day while Ma served up a 4 course affair in a nicely pressed cooking apron complete with lace trim....no, we were more a burrito in front of the television type of bunch....for that I thank them. I remember watching the day the wall came down. I had no idea what 'the wall' was at the time or why it was significant. I would have been about 8 years old so it may not have been that I even knew where Germany was, yet there was something significant about it. So much in fact, that I remember a video clip of that day. The video was a man (probably about my age now) standing with black boots on the top rung of the wall. Leather coat on his shoulders with a t-shirt underneath and tight fitting denim jeans that were stonewashed (the style at the time). He had a wooden handled pick ax in his hands and was swinging it wildly trying to crack pieces of the wall off for the on lookers on both sides. As someone who use to understand the business end of such a device I know you can't simply smash it into solid concrete for very long before your hands and body are in pain if not broken. Yet he kept going...swinging wildly. It was raw emotion in its purest form.

20 years later a 1.5km stretch of the wall is all that remains. It lies in the southeast corner of the city marking the eastern edge of the regentrified Kreuzberg neighborhood. As I walked along the wall I saw endless murals on its surface. Most proclaiming peace as the central message. Some murals condoned the actions of the eastern block leaders of the past, but most were hopeful. "Give me a wall so I can escape" an anonymous quote etched into the eastern side of the wall.

Fernsehturm (television tower):

This landmark dominates the skyline at the center of the city. It's visible from most places in the outlying city which makes it a handy landmark to navigate by. Below are some pics of it in its glory...the pics capture a few other of Berlin's famous landmarks....do you know which one Karl Marx is?

Murals (street art):

Street art is a constant theme in Berlin. I call it art as opposed to just tagging or rattle caning because it mostly had meaning and wasn't just someone throwing their initials on something. Most the time if you looked close enough there was a message. Below are some large scale murals. I think they're quite well done for being such a massive scale.