skew_whiff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skew_whiff) wrote2012-04-16 07:32 pm
skew_whiff) wrote2012-04-16 07:32 pm
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The Not-So-Incredible Journey, Part II
So, I'm back. Been back since Friday, and returning to work has made me really appreciate how much I needed the break - I won't call it a rest, since most days I walked so far that my feet felt like numb hooves by about five in the afternoon, but a change of scene and pace was fantastic, and I really enjoyed myself.
Berlin is a beautiful city, for the record. It's cleaner and calmer than London and Paris, and the city centre is dotted with breathtaking architecture from a variety of time periods. It's the perfect place for a fan of 20th-century history, because there's so much of significance, and the city's tourism trades pretty heavily on the legacy of the Cold War and the Wall. Beer is cheap, the urban rail system is speedy and convenient, there are countless excellent museums on all sorts of subjects, and you are never more than about 100m from a branch of Dunkin' Donuts. Which I found mildly confusing until I remembered, of course, Germans love coffee and baked goods. (And who can blame 'em?)
So, yeah, I loved it, and I'd recommend it to anyone.
That's the short version. I pondered various ways to write it up in more detail, and in the end, I think the simplest way is to write up the sort-of diary of notes I kept while I was there, written down pretty much as they came to mind - with links, photographs, and more extensive explanations, because otherwise it wouldn't make much sense.
Day 1
flight - surprisingly smooth, v. few people at airport - security incredibly easy.
I should note here I read a lot of American blogs and media, and I was honestly half-afraid I'd have to go through one of those full-body-imaging scanners or else submit to a vigorous rubdown. Neither of these happened, either at the UK end or in Germany, where they're still making do with the old metal detector system.
got lost as soon as I emerged from Schonefeld due to mixing up train stations - mixing up S-Bahn with different rail service. Luckily I was adopted by a friendly Music professor who helped me find my way. Also I got to ride in a BIG RED DOUBLE-DECKER TRAIN.
I must've given off an aura of 'confused British tourist', because I'd been poking fruitlessly at the ticket machine at the rail station for about five minutes, when suddenly someone asks me - in an English accent - if I need help. The guy turned out to be an academic who came from the UK but went to Germany some time in the 90s because of limited job opportunities, and had liked it so much he stayed. Nice bloke. I'd have probably been stuck there for ages if he hadn't explained the rail system to me; it's all pretty logical once you get used to it, but at that point I hadn't worked out that there were separate stations for S-Bahn, U-Bahn and regional rail services.
All turned out for the best, though, since the aforementioned big red double-decker trains got me into the city centre faster than the S-Bahn would have. Also, the little musical jingle they played whenever they reached a station was hilarious. (Someone's actually put it on Youtube! I love the internet.)
Just from sightseeing, Berlin is perfectly relevant to my interests - gloriously retro train stations + shop fronts, amazing architecture, pretty men, lots of awesome graffiti.
Hotel literally opposite station, handily. Also next to table-dancing club + down road from gun shop (replicas?), but actually v. nice inside. Receptionist immediately switches to English on hearing my awful attempt at German, but never mind. (I think people are right about most Europeans speaking English. A lot of the signs are bilingual, and I swear even the tramp outside the station asked for spare change in English.)
I stayed at the Hotel Al Konigshof, which is, as I noted, pretty much directly opposite the S-bahn station in Charlottenburg. Stuttgartplatz is a rather shabby-looking street, but it was cheap and well-located, and I didn't have any trouble while I was staying there.
Every twenty minutes or so I keep going HOLY FUCK I'M IN BERLIN. This may well last all week. We'll see.
It didn't, but it did last for the first couple of days.
First thing I saw on TV - Transformers dubbed into German. And Titanic possibly? And One Piece, which is even more trippy when dubbed.
Pretty much as soon as I got into my hotel room, I kicked off my shoes and checked out the local TV, with results as above. One thing I didn't mention was stumbling across what I'm half-convinced was a political chat show from the old GDR - I was so taken by the horrible brown suits I actually took pictures.
Had a wander around Charlottenburg. Beautiful part of the city, lots of wide streets of 18th/19th? c. buildings + mid-20th-century signage. Also a fuckload of kebab shops. Bit reminiscent of where I stayed in Edinburgh.
Found Charlottenschloss pretty much by accident - again, v. pretty. Quite pleased at internal map, in that I circled round and mostly did not get lost. It helps that the skyline in this distract is low but has a few big landmarks. Also memorable street names - Bismarck Strass, Richard-Wagner-Platz etc.
Had slightly bland but nourishing meal of noodle soup, w/ pint of Javer. (Pleasant, fruity, but gassy.) I've decided that even if I go multinational with food, trying out a different pilsner each night counts as experiencing German dining.
In the end I didn't end up trying a different beer every night due to finding out that walking around all day is pretty thirsty work. It's a shame, too, because damn, that stuff was cheap. We're talking less than a Euro for a large bottle of lager at one of the supermarkets. If it wasn't for the added weight in my suitcase and the tax duty I'd have probably had to pay, I'd have brought home a truckload.
OH MY GOD TOP GEAR BADLY DUBBED INTO GERMAN. Their Vietnam challenge, I think. They only do half of what they say,and don't mute the soundtrack, so I keep getting snippets like 'some kind of mutant' and 'hot glue on my suit!'. Plus the immortal phrase 'Hammond flipped aus'.
The slightly trippy experience of watching your own country's TV dubbed poorly into another language never gets old.
Day 2
Notes on Brandenburg Gate -
the info point is in four languages: German, English, French and Russian. Significant?
Also, I didn't know that it was inaccessible while the wall was up. Such an odd city. Oddly calm, full of massive epic buildings and trees.
I should note that my impression of Berlin as 'oddly calm' was corrected later on my trip when I started venturing down the big shopping streets like Under Dem Linden and Kurfurstendamm, but certainly in the mornings, and off the main streets and plazas, it really was surprisingly quiet in places.
In particular, the Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate weren't all that busy at about ten in the morning, which made it the perfect time to wander around and snap the usual cliched pictures.
I'm oddly charmed by the fact that the Kennedy Museum is right by a Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. Ah, globalisation.
Immediate thought on entering Sony Centre: 'sweet zombie Jesus'. It's quite impressive.
The Sony Centre is a large built-up area around Potsdamer Platz. All the area that was empty space twenty years ago is now glass skyscrapers and shopping centres. And Legoland, which I was half-tempted to go into, but a long queue had already started to form.
Film museum alright - best bit all the Marlene Dietrich stuff, esp. the uniform she sometimes wore on USO tours - inc. jump wings and an 82nd Airborne patch! (Given to her by fans, of course. I somehow doubt she made four combat jumps.)
I'm slightly downplaying here how much I squee'd like the big old gay I am over the collection of Marlene Dietrich memorabilia they had at the Museum of Film and TV - it was pretty comprehensive, and the outfits were glorious. Particularly the uniform, which is much like the one she's got on in this picture, although the display had it with trousers rather than a skirt. Same jacket, though, resplendent with jump wings (with four jump stars) and medal patches.
There's also some excellent material on German silent cinema there, including some of the props from Metropolis, and a presentation/art installation about German television that was entertaining even with the language barrier. (Laughing at bad 70s haircuts transcends nationality.)
Found Technikmuseum but unfortunately couldn't find food, so ended up getting U-bahn to Nollendorfplatz to get hot dog. Tasted like exactly every other hot dog I've ever had.
Confusingly, U-bahn sometimes goes overground - lovely line over bridges on U2 - and S-bahn often goes underground.
Other new fact - fizzy pop bottles here are made out of stiffer plastic than at home.
I can only apologise here for the fact that I am actually, in private, an incredibly boring pedant. It's probably for the best I like to travel alone, as with someone else I'd probably make the same observations out loud and eventually my travelling companion would want to strangle me.
Technikmuseum okay, mainly just because of the planes. New ambition - fly in Ju-52 one day.
I am completely understating how excited I got over the planes. The rest of the museum is reasonably interesting - I was strangely entranced by a display about the history of the pharmaceuticals industry in Germany, particularly a photograph of some unfortunate women chopping up pig ovaries that were used as a source of hormones in early versions of the Pill - but it's the aviation display that I came for, and it didn't disappoint on that level.
Going from left to right and then left to right again, that's a very dinged-up Stuka, the aforementioned beautiful Ju-52, a variety of stuff including a prototype flying bomb and an early German jet fighter (should've jotted down the names there, really, German planes aren't my speciality; that rusty framework you can see in the corner is part of the battered remains of a Lancaster bomber), and a C-47, in the livery of one of the 'Raisin Bombers' that dropped food parcels during the Berlin Blockade.
Feet sore but I think I can fit in one more museum before teatime - never underestimate restorative powers of a chunky Kitkat.
New favourite German phrase: 'krankengymnastik', which I imagine is probably physiotherapy.
Checkpoint Charlie was kind of weird. It was the first place I visited that felt 'touristy' - choked with cars and people, and surrounded by food stalls. Including, brilliantly, a stand selling 'Allied Hot Dogs' - I never enquired as to the difference between the 'English', 'American' + 'French' ones on offer. (What, no Russian one?)
There was a stand selling Red Army knickknacks, a mock beach with deck chairs by a place selling drinks - the billboards about the history were welcome, the photo op by the hut with a man dressed as an MP forgivable - but the rest? Just weird. What was deadly serious a generation ago reduced to mere entertainment.
Though, really, I don't know what I was expecting if not this. (Possibly the same, but quieter.)
Oh, and of course, the checkpoint itself is opposite a bloody McDonald's. I did, however, appreciate the nearby sausage stall called Checkpoint Curry.
As you can see, I was a bit taken aback by Checkpoint Charlie - mainly because, after a quiet day, it was the first place I came to which was crowded with tourists. It is a bit jarring to see what was once an iconic crossing point between East and West turned into something for the tourists plonked in amidst a busy road crowded with shops.
Oh, and in case you're wondering why Checkpoint Curry sells sausages and not curries, it's because there's a popular sausage-based fast food dish in Germany (and particularly Berlin) called Currywurst. More on that subject later.
Weirdest souvenir I've seen so far - a rabbi rubber duck at the Jewish Museum.
Yes, that was all I had to write on the subject of the Jewish Museum as I emerged from it. (To be fair, it was a pretty funny rubber duck.) Amazing museum, though, both architecturally and content-wise.
So far not given into the temptations of franchises. That said, have been jonesing for KFC since I got here. Yet none are to be found. Maybe the Germans don't like delicious Southern-fried chicken? (Their loss.)
Dinner - nice meal of egg-fried noodles at Friedrichstrasse. Today's beer: Berliner Pilsner (the local). Refreshing, but entirely tasteless - so much so that I wondered if I'd ordered an alcohol-free version by mistake. Also, it gave me the shits. Not recommended.
Day 3
Sights on morning train to Alexanderplatz: gaggle of schoolkids in hi-vis jackets - on trip to the zoo, I think - and a man playing the flute.
Immediately got lost looking for Karl-Marx-Allee, but got a general feel of East Berlin - lot of tower blocks, basically.
When I finally found Karl-Marx-Allee, though - which is very much not an 'alley' in the way English-speakers use the word, which is probably what threw me off - there were some rather good examples of Soviet-bloc architecture still remaining. (It's hard to see in the picture, but in the second photo beneath, there's a Cyrillic-script logo on top of that building.)
This definitely appears to be the tourist district, from Alexanderplatz into Mitte - vastly less calm than Kreuzberg yesterday.
DDR Museum fascinating but small and v. crowded - still, nice intro to the subject, and I'd definitely like to read more.
General impression given of East German life was that it wasn't so bad - guaranteed work + food - but dull, conformist, and you'd have to queue for everything. All things considered, it's almost a shame that the UK never went communist - we'd have been amazing at it.
Fact of the day so far: at East German nurseries they all put the kids on the potty at the same time. In totalitarian states even your bodily functions must conform. Would genuinely not surprise me if they still did that in North Korea.
At the Lustgarten now - much smaller than I thought it'd be, unless there's another, bigger Lustgarten somewhere. Lunch and then another museum, I think.
One thing I didn't note down was a memorial at the edge of the Lustgarten that fascinated me - there's the stone, and then there's boards that were fixed to it later.
The original transcription translates as something along the lines of 'Never forget the bravery and steadfastness of the young communist Herbert Baum, leader of the anti-fascist resistance group'. The additional panel on one side explains, in several languages, that Herbert Baum was one of a group of anti-fascists who, in 1942, attempted to burn down a Nazi propaganda exhibition in the Lustgarten. They were rounded up and killed by the Gestapo; the panel on the other side of the memorial records their names.
The panel also notes that the original version of the memorial didn't provide any information on what actually happened - it's the first monument I've ever seen with revisions and annotations.
Other notes while I remember - seen a couple of hooded crows here, which is mildly exciting. Also for some reason I keep seeing loads of people on crutches about the place. Do people keep tripping down the stairs to railway stations?
You don't get many hooded crows in the UK, at least not anywhere I've been, but they seem to be the dominant variety of crow in eastern Germany. Again, this is me being a bit weird over funny little details, but I've always had a soft spot for corvids.
The crutches thing, I guess, was a coincidence, and one of those things that you notice more once you've decided it's a thing, but there really did seem to be an awful lot of people who were either using them as canes or hopping around with feet in casts. Recent spate of icy weather, maybe?
People at museums keep thinking I'm a student. Flattering though it is that I look younger than my almost-23 years, it's also frustrating not actually being entitled to the discount.
Neues Museum interesting though I'd have probably liked it better if a) it was my period of history and b) I wasn't so bloody tired. Maybe worth easing off the museums a bit. (At least until I've had some coffee and cake.)
Fascinating from a public history perspective, though - it tells the story not only of the artefacts and their era, but of the museum and its restoration, and how the artefacts came to get there. Feeling slightly guilty about how comprehensively we bombed this place now.
The Neues Museum is definitely worth checking out if you're into ancient history, particularly the Egyptians. I really did like the approach they took to the display, and some of the stories surrounding the exhibits - particularly the story about the Trojan jewellery that was sent to Russia for safe-keeping after the war, and then afterwards the Russians refused to give all of it back.
Have reached other end of Unter Den Linden - have still not had coffee, cake or a wee. It seems as soon as I want anything in this place I suddenly run out of options. Surfeit of tourists doesn't help, but this is Berlin's most iconic street.
The toilet-roll dispenser in the men's toilets at Potsdamer Platz Arkade is branded 'Air-Wolf'. This is so badass I felt the need to write it down while still in the toilets.
And again with the ridiculous attention to detail. I hadn't even done my trousers back up while I was writing that. (Yeah, I'm sure you really needed to know that. At least I was in the stalls and not standing at a urinal while I was writing.)
Finally found coffee and cake (or a doughnut, as it was) in Potsdamer Arkade. Like manna from heaven.
Had tea at a pizza place off Kurfurstendamm - nowt special, although the jalapenos were delicious.
It turns out in Germany, when you order 'pepperoni' pizza, you get green peppers. They were really tasty, though, so I wasn't complaining.
Other notes - Friedrichstrasse U-bahn has this weird decor - white wood panelling, with projector screens showing ads. U-bahn is cramped and slower than S-bahn, but stations so much prettier on the Underground. Mostly.
Still haven't seen any branches of KFC.
At this point the KFC thing was starting to become a bit of an obsession. You know how it is that when you can't have something, it makes you want it more.
While I remember - must take photo of this ad for Max Raabe I keep seeing, because he really does look unsettlingly like lovechild of Mark Gatiss and Matthew Newton.
I never did get round to taking a picture, but via Google Images I found a cropped version of the picture of Max Raabe used on the ads (he's a singer, it turns out, so I think they must've been advertising a new album or something). Pictures of Mark Gatiss and Matthew Newton provided for comparison. It's not just me who's seeing the resemblance, right?
Feeling mild sense of birthday gloom re: lack of milestones reached. Probably means it's time for bed.
Day 4
Started my 23rd birthday by watching a cartoon about an elephant tourist/wildlife documentary-maker visiting and talking to Australian animals. Still not convinced it's not all a giant wind-up on the part of the Aussies.
This turned out to be a German dub of British kids' show Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies. My comments on the 'not convinced it's not all a giant wind-up' relate mainly to the stuff about monotremes. I mean, really, Australians? Duck/beaver mash-ups and weird little porcupine things that lay eggs? You are definitely having us on. I'm not believing it until I actually see a duck-billed platypus lay an egg right in front of me. And even then I'll be checking to see if it's a puppet.
Anyway, seeing as I went to Berlin Zoo that day, it seemed thematically appropriate.
Zoo lovely and quiet in the morning - good timing.
Flamingos - their legs barely look real. Keep imagining them bitching at one another in ludicrous John Inman voices whenever they squabble.
Always thought elephants kept their genitals retracted - disabused of this notion by sight of giant dangly elephant cock. - oh, he's put it away now. Thank god, I was feeling a bit inadequate.
So yeah, turns out that like horses, elephant's penises extend when they wee, and take a while to go back. And like horses, the sight is somewhat startling.
Watching small children being pursued by goats in petting zoos never gets old.
One thing I did not mention: THE TINIEST LITTLE GOAT.
WHO IS A TINY LITTLE GOAT? YOU ARE A TINY LITTLE GOAT! (I pretty much did think exactly that when I saw it. But I didn't say it out loud, because some guy on his own getting all excited over a baby goat in a petting zoo is slightly weird. SERIOUSLY THOUGH, LOOK AT THE TINY GOAT.)
Aw, they have a wave machine for the shoreline birds!
Ostriches have visible ear-holes - correction, not ostriches, but rheas.
Though later when I found the actual ostriches, it turns out they have visible ear-holes too. It's a slightly unsettling sight.
I didn't realise white wolves were an actual species before now. This lot seemed pretty tame, given the way they were chasing the keeper around.
Felt a bit sorry for the polar bears - one clearly displaying repetitive behaviour. Only other animal I've seen that in also a bear, also at a German zoo. I love bears, but I'm not sure it's right keeping them in captivity.
I love that the German word for coati is 'Nasenbar'.
We have sealions and elephant seals - the Germans also call harbour seals 'seahunde' and fur seals 'seabaren'.
Unfortunately decided to go for a wee at the same time as approx. 5000 small boys. Felt like Gulliver in Lilliput. Adults still trying and failing to herd them all in one direction as I write this.
Finally had some Currywurst - tasty, but overpriced at the zoo. Also definitely not curry. More like frankfurter in barbecue sauce.
That's the famous Currywurst there. It's actually quite tasty - the sauce is slightly spicy and a bit sweet, made from some kind of combo of tomatoes, Worcester sauce and curry powder, which is the justification for the name. Not much of a justification, if you ask me, but it's good (guilty) eating, whatever you call it.
Nocturnal animal section v. good, particularly the bats. Rather charmed by the aardvarks, and I had no idea bush babies could jump like that.
That's the last note I took from Berlin Zoo, but there was a lot more to the zoo than that - rhinos, hippos, various penguins, some rather bored-looking kangaroos, all manner of apes and monkeys, various vultures, a bunch of adorable arctic foxes who spent the best part of half an hour fighting over a dead rat, and an aquarium that inexplicably has a statue of a dinosaur outside.
It's not cheap, compared to some of Berlin's attractions, but I spent a good four or five hours there without getting tired or bored, and there's a truly astonishing range of animals kept there. Some of the enclosures are a bit small and I felt some of the carnivores showed signs of being somewhat stir-crazy, but that's pretty common with older zoos located in cities.
Old bit of Kaiser Wilhelm Church turned out to be surrounded by scaffolding + boards for restoration - whole area turned out to be surrounded by stores and tourists. Bugger.
Weird moment in Story of Berlin exhibition - one girl photographing another, posing at the Kristallnacht section pretending she's punching in the smashed shop window. I mean, really, though?
In general - Story of Berlin expensive and slightly disjointed but killed an hour or so - further judgment to be passed when I've gone round the bunker. I did, at least, learn that the Stasi used to store people's smells so sniffer dogs could find them.
Okay, bunker tour justified admission price - that was astonishing (and fucking creepy). I somehow doubt many of the 3k+ people it was meant to hold would have survived the two weeks - not because of radiation but simply beause you'd lose all reason cooped up down thre. Not that you'd really have much to survive for anyway, mind you.
The Story of Berlin museum is located inside a shopping centre off Kurfurstendamm. As per my notes, the museum section gives you a quick run-through several hundred years of Berlin's history - it's not bad, but the layout means the chronology sometimes gets a bit out of order, and it doesn't go into much depth.
Included in the ticket price, however, is a tour around a civilian fallout shelter that lies beneath the shopping centre, and that's truly astonishing. It was originally an underground car park, but during the Cold War, the builder was paid to convert it into a shelter. It was intended to hold 3600 people for 14 days, but as I said, I can't imagine many of them would make it - it'd be incredibly cramped, claustrophobic and uncomfortable, diseases would spread fast, fights would probably break out, and you'd have bugger-all to go back to at the end. One aside that stuck with me was that the 'medical room' only had three things in it: bandages, penicillin, and Valium.
Bit of a grim way to end one's birthday, but all was not lost...
Finally found a KFC! Bought box of mini fillets. It was like licking the face of God.
And on that happy ending, the notebook finishes. There's not much to be said after that; my return home was pretty uneventful, and I had a peaceful weekend mostly spent napping, and not doing any of that bloody writing I said I was going to do. Still haven't written a goddamn word of fic. It's just not my year for that, by the looks of things.
That said, I did get some reading done; I received the first three books of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, and read the first one on the journey to and from Berlin. I wasn't immediately sold but within the first three chapters or so I was hooked.
The premise is, in a nutshell, 'dragon-riding aviators during the Napoleonic Wars', and centres in particular on one guy, Will Laurence, who has a perfectly good career in the Navy until one day his crew capture a dragon egg from a French ship, which rather inconveniently hatches, and even more inconveniently, the hatchling immediately imprints on him. And once a dragon's taken a shine to you, that's it, you're responsible for the bugger, so Laurence and his scaly pal get sent off to join the Royal Aerial Corps. The rest of the book covers Laurence and Temeraire's (Temeraire being the dragon) training and their first real battle.
It's pure fluff, but of a very charming variety - Laurence and Temeraire are both wonderful characters and their friendship is completely adorable, and while I would've appreciated a little more depth of characterisation for some of the support cast (because the book is quite short and mainly plot-driven, Novik generally tells you stuff and moves along where other authors would linger; it's a matter of taste and I did appreciate the fact that she doesn't waffle on and on like some fantasy authors, but my weakness for banter is well-known and there were some wasted opportunities), the main players are well-drawn and I really, really love the main concept. I've only finished book one but I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the rest, which promise to be just as good fun.
On a small side note, I also quite liked that Will Laurence is, like myself, a Nottinghamshire lad, and his well-to-do family live at Wollaton Hall. Which is a real place that I visited several times as a kid, because it's now a small natural history museum, set in a rather pleasant park. That little detail just really tickled me.
Inevitably, of course, I think this is fertile territory for AUs, though I haven't yet decided what I want more: the Temeraire cast in WWII (though that could possibly venture into grim/inappropriate territory, seeing as Temeraire is, in canon, more of a 'heavy bomber' class of dragon than a nippy little fighter), or BoB/The Pacific characters as pilots and dragons. It's a little worrying how easily I can visualise Harry Welsh as an excitable little talking dragon.
Berlin is a beautiful city, for the record. It's cleaner and calmer than London and Paris, and the city centre is dotted with breathtaking architecture from a variety of time periods. It's the perfect place for a fan of 20th-century history, because there's so much of significance, and the city's tourism trades pretty heavily on the legacy of the Cold War and the Wall. Beer is cheap, the urban rail system is speedy and convenient, there are countless excellent museums on all sorts of subjects, and you are never more than about 100m from a branch of Dunkin' Donuts. Which I found mildly confusing until I remembered, of course, Germans love coffee and baked goods. (And who can blame 'em?)
So, yeah, I loved it, and I'd recommend it to anyone.
That's the short version. I pondered various ways to write it up in more detail, and in the end, I think the simplest way is to write up the sort-of diary of notes I kept while I was there, written down pretty much as they came to mind - with links, photographs, and more extensive explanations, because otherwise it wouldn't make much sense.
Day 1
flight - surprisingly smooth, v. few people at airport - security incredibly easy.
I should note here I read a lot of American blogs and media, and I was honestly half-afraid I'd have to go through one of those full-body-imaging scanners or else submit to a vigorous rubdown. Neither of these happened, either at the UK end or in Germany, where they're still making do with the old metal detector system.
got lost as soon as I emerged from Schonefeld due to mixing up train stations - mixing up S-Bahn with different rail service. Luckily I was adopted by a friendly Music professor who helped me find my way. Also I got to ride in a BIG RED DOUBLE-DECKER TRAIN.
I must've given off an aura of 'confused British tourist', because I'd been poking fruitlessly at the ticket machine at the rail station for about five minutes, when suddenly someone asks me - in an English accent - if I need help. The guy turned out to be an academic who came from the UK but went to Germany some time in the 90s because of limited job opportunities, and had liked it so much he stayed. Nice bloke. I'd have probably been stuck there for ages if he hadn't explained the rail system to me; it's all pretty logical once you get used to it, but at that point I hadn't worked out that there were separate stations for S-Bahn, U-Bahn and regional rail services.
All turned out for the best, though, since the aforementioned big red double-decker trains got me into the city centre faster than the S-Bahn would have. Also, the little musical jingle they played whenever they reached a station was hilarious. (Someone's actually put it on Youtube! I love the internet.)
Just from sightseeing, Berlin is perfectly relevant to my interests - gloriously retro train stations + shop fronts, amazing architecture, pretty men, lots of awesome graffiti.
Hotel literally opposite station, handily. Also next to table-dancing club + down road from gun shop (replicas?), but actually v. nice inside. Receptionist immediately switches to English on hearing my awful attempt at German, but never mind. (I think people are right about most Europeans speaking English. A lot of the signs are bilingual, and I swear even the tramp outside the station asked for spare change in English.)
I stayed at the Hotel Al Konigshof, which is, as I noted, pretty much directly opposite the S-bahn station in Charlottenburg. Stuttgartplatz is a rather shabby-looking street, but it was cheap and well-located, and I didn't have any trouble while I was staying there.
Every twenty minutes or so I keep going HOLY FUCK I'M IN BERLIN. This may well last all week. We'll see.
It didn't, but it did last for the first couple of days.
First thing I saw on TV - Transformers dubbed into German. And Titanic possibly? And One Piece, which is even more trippy when dubbed.
Pretty much as soon as I got into my hotel room, I kicked off my shoes and checked out the local TV, with results as above. One thing I didn't mention was stumbling across what I'm half-convinced was a political chat show from the old GDR - I was so taken by the horrible brown suits I actually took pictures.
Had a wander around Charlottenburg. Beautiful part of the city, lots of wide streets of 18th/19th? c. buildings + mid-20th-century signage. Also a fuckload of kebab shops. Bit reminiscent of where I stayed in Edinburgh.
Found Charlottenschloss pretty much by accident - again, v. pretty. Quite pleased at internal map, in that I circled round and mostly did not get lost. It helps that the skyline in this distract is low but has a few big landmarks. Also memorable street names - Bismarck Strass, Richard-Wagner-Platz etc.
Had slightly bland but nourishing meal of noodle soup, w/ pint of Javer. (Pleasant, fruity, but gassy.) I've decided that even if I go multinational with food, trying out a different pilsner each night counts as experiencing German dining.
In the end I didn't end up trying a different beer every night due to finding out that walking around all day is pretty thirsty work. It's a shame, too, because damn, that stuff was cheap. We're talking less than a Euro for a large bottle of lager at one of the supermarkets. If it wasn't for the added weight in my suitcase and the tax duty I'd have probably had to pay, I'd have brought home a truckload.
OH MY GOD TOP GEAR BADLY DUBBED INTO GERMAN. Their Vietnam challenge, I think. They only do half of what they say,and don't mute the soundtrack, so I keep getting snippets like 'some kind of mutant' and 'hot glue on my suit!'. Plus the immortal phrase 'Hammond flipped aus'.
The slightly trippy experience of watching your own country's TV dubbed poorly into another language never gets old.
Day 2
Notes on Brandenburg Gate -
the info point is in four languages: German, English, French and Russian. Significant?
Also, I didn't know that it was inaccessible while the wall was up. Such an odd city. Oddly calm, full of massive epic buildings and trees.
I should note that my impression of Berlin as 'oddly calm' was corrected later on my trip when I started venturing down the big shopping streets like Under Dem Linden and Kurfurstendamm, but certainly in the mornings, and off the main streets and plazas, it really was surprisingly quiet in places.
In particular, the Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate weren't all that busy at about ten in the morning, which made it the perfect time to wander around and snap the usual cliched pictures.
I'm oddly charmed by the fact that the Kennedy Museum is right by a Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. Ah, globalisation.
Immediate thought on entering Sony Centre: 'sweet zombie Jesus'. It's quite impressive.
The Sony Centre is a large built-up area around Potsdamer Platz. All the area that was empty space twenty years ago is now glass skyscrapers and shopping centres. And Legoland, which I was half-tempted to go into, but a long queue had already started to form.
Film museum alright - best bit all the Marlene Dietrich stuff, esp. the uniform she sometimes wore on USO tours - inc. jump wings and an 82nd Airborne patch! (Given to her by fans, of course. I somehow doubt she made four combat jumps.)
I'm slightly downplaying here how much I squee'd like the big old gay I am over the collection of Marlene Dietrich memorabilia they had at the Museum of Film and TV - it was pretty comprehensive, and the outfits were glorious. Particularly the uniform, which is much like the one she's got on in this picture, although the display had it with trousers rather than a skirt. Same jacket, though, resplendent with jump wings (with four jump stars) and medal patches.
There's also some excellent material on German silent cinema there, including some of the props from Metropolis, and a presentation/art installation about German television that was entertaining even with the language barrier. (Laughing at bad 70s haircuts transcends nationality.)
Found Technikmuseum but unfortunately couldn't find food, so ended up getting U-bahn to Nollendorfplatz to get hot dog. Tasted like exactly every other hot dog I've ever had.
Confusingly, U-bahn sometimes goes overground - lovely line over bridges on U2 - and S-bahn often goes underground.
Other new fact - fizzy pop bottles here are made out of stiffer plastic than at home.
I can only apologise here for the fact that I am actually, in private, an incredibly boring pedant. It's probably for the best I like to travel alone, as with someone else I'd probably make the same observations out loud and eventually my travelling companion would want to strangle me.
Technikmuseum okay, mainly just because of the planes. New ambition - fly in Ju-52 one day.
I am completely understating how excited I got over the planes. The rest of the museum is reasonably interesting - I was strangely entranced by a display about the history of the pharmaceuticals industry in Germany, particularly a photograph of some unfortunate women chopping up pig ovaries that were used as a source of hormones in early versions of the Pill - but it's the aviation display that I came for, and it didn't disappoint on that level.
Going from left to right and then left to right again, that's a very dinged-up Stuka, the aforementioned beautiful Ju-52, a variety of stuff including a prototype flying bomb and an early German jet fighter (should've jotted down the names there, really, German planes aren't my speciality; that rusty framework you can see in the corner is part of the battered remains of a Lancaster bomber), and a C-47, in the livery of one of the 'Raisin Bombers' that dropped food parcels during the Berlin Blockade.
Feet sore but I think I can fit in one more museum before teatime - never underestimate restorative powers of a chunky Kitkat.
New favourite German phrase: 'krankengymnastik', which I imagine is probably physiotherapy.
Checkpoint Charlie was kind of weird. It was the first place I visited that felt 'touristy' - choked with cars and people, and surrounded by food stalls. Including, brilliantly, a stand selling 'Allied Hot Dogs' - I never enquired as to the difference between the 'English', 'American' + 'French' ones on offer. (What, no Russian one?)
There was a stand selling Red Army knickknacks, a mock beach with deck chairs by a place selling drinks - the billboards about the history were welcome, the photo op by the hut with a man dressed as an MP forgivable - but the rest? Just weird. What was deadly serious a generation ago reduced to mere entertainment.
Though, really, I don't know what I was expecting if not this. (Possibly the same, but quieter.)
Oh, and of course, the checkpoint itself is opposite a bloody McDonald's. I did, however, appreciate the nearby sausage stall called Checkpoint Curry.
As you can see, I was a bit taken aback by Checkpoint Charlie - mainly because, after a quiet day, it was the first place I came to which was crowded with tourists. It is a bit jarring to see what was once an iconic crossing point between East and West turned into something for the tourists plonked in amidst a busy road crowded with shops.
Oh, and in case you're wondering why Checkpoint Curry sells sausages and not curries, it's because there's a popular sausage-based fast food dish in Germany (and particularly Berlin) called Currywurst. More on that subject later.
Weirdest souvenir I've seen so far - a rabbi rubber duck at the Jewish Museum.
Yes, that was all I had to write on the subject of the Jewish Museum as I emerged from it. (To be fair, it was a pretty funny rubber duck.) Amazing museum, though, both architecturally and content-wise.
So far not given into the temptations of franchises. That said, have been jonesing for KFC since I got here. Yet none are to be found. Maybe the Germans don't like delicious Southern-fried chicken? (Their loss.)
Dinner - nice meal of egg-fried noodles at Friedrichstrasse. Today's beer: Berliner Pilsner (the local). Refreshing, but entirely tasteless - so much so that I wondered if I'd ordered an alcohol-free version by mistake. Also, it gave me the shits. Not recommended.
Day 3
Sights on morning train to Alexanderplatz: gaggle of schoolkids in hi-vis jackets - on trip to the zoo, I think - and a man playing the flute.
Immediately got lost looking for Karl-Marx-Allee, but got a general feel of East Berlin - lot of tower blocks, basically.
When I finally found Karl-Marx-Allee, though - which is very much not an 'alley' in the way English-speakers use the word, which is probably what threw me off - there were some rather good examples of Soviet-bloc architecture still remaining. (It's hard to see in the picture, but in the second photo beneath, there's a Cyrillic-script logo on top of that building.)
This definitely appears to be the tourist district, from Alexanderplatz into Mitte - vastly less calm than Kreuzberg yesterday.
DDR Museum fascinating but small and v. crowded - still, nice intro to the subject, and I'd definitely like to read more.
General impression given of East German life was that it wasn't so bad - guaranteed work + food - but dull, conformist, and you'd have to queue for everything. All things considered, it's almost a shame that the UK never went communist - we'd have been amazing at it.
Fact of the day so far: at East German nurseries they all put the kids on the potty at the same time. In totalitarian states even your bodily functions must conform. Would genuinely not surprise me if they still did that in North Korea.
At the Lustgarten now - much smaller than I thought it'd be, unless there's another, bigger Lustgarten somewhere. Lunch and then another museum, I think.
One thing I didn't note down was a memorial at the edge of the Lustgarten that fascinated me - there's the stone, and then there's boards that were fixed to it later.
The original transcription translates as something along the lines of 'Never forget the bravery and steadfastness of the young communist Herbert Baum, leader of the anti-fascist resistance group'. The additional panel on one side explains, in several languages, that Herbert Baum was one of a group of anti-fascists who, in 1942, attempted to burn down a Nazi propaganda exhibition in the Lustgarten. They were rounded up and killed by the Gestapo; the panel on the other side of the memorial records their names.
The panel also notes that the original version of the memorial didn't provide any information on what actually happened - it's the first monument I've ever seen with revisions and annotations.
Other notes while I remember - seen a couple of hooded crows here, which is mildly exciting. Also for some reason I keep seeing loads of people on crutches about the place. Do people keep tripping down the stairs to railway stations?
You don't get many hooded crows in the UK, at least not anywhere I've been, but they seem to be the dominant variety of crow in eastern Germany. Again, this is me being a bit weird over funny little details, but I've always had a soft spot for corvids.
The crutches thing, I guess, was a coincidence, and one of those things that you notice more once you've decided it's a thing, but there really did seem to be an awful lot of people who were either using them as canes or hopping around with feet in casts. Recent spate of icy weather, maybe?
People at museums keep thinking I'm a student. Flattering though it is that I look younger than my almost-23 years, it's also frustrating not actually being entitled to the discount.
Neues Museum interesting though I'd have probably liked it better if a) it was my period of history and b) I wasn't so bloody tired. Maybe worth easing off the museums a bit. (At least until I've had some coffee and cake.)
Fascinating from a public history perspective, though - it tells the story not only of the artefacts and their era, but of the museum and its restoration, and how the artefacts came to get there. Feeling slightly guilty about how comprehensively we bombed this place now.
The Neues Museum is definitely worth checking out if you're into ancient history, particularly the Egyptians. I really did like the approach they took to the display, and some of the stories surrounding the exhibits - particularly the story about the Trojan jewellery that was sent to Russia for safe-keeping after the war, and then afterwards the Russians refused to give all of it back.
Have reached other end of Unter Den Linden - have still not had coffee, cake or a wee. It seems as soon as I want anything in this place I suddenly run out of options. Surfeit of tourists doesn't help, but this is Berlin's most iconic street.
The toilet-roll dispenser in the men's toilets at Potsdamer Platz Arkade is branded 'Air-Wolf'. This is so badass I felt the need to write it down while still in the toilets.
And again with the ridiculous attention to detail. I hadn't even done my trousers back up while I was writing that. (Yeah, I'm sure you really needed to know that. At least I was in the stalls and not standing at a urinal while I was writing.)
Finally found coffee and cake (or a doughnut, as it was) in Potsdamer Arkade. Like manna from heaven.
Had tea at a pizza place off Kurfurstendamm - nowt special, although the jalapenos were delicious.
It turns out in Germany, when you order 'pepperoni' pizza, you get green peppers. They were really tasty, though, so I wasn't complaining.
Other notes - Friedrichstrasse U-bahn has this weird decor - white wood panelling, with projector screens showing ads. U-bahn is cramped and slower than S-bahn, but stations so much prettier on the Underground. Mostly.
Still haven't seen any branches of KFC.
At this point the KFC thing was starting to become a bit of an obsession. You know how it is that when you can't have something, it makes you want it more.
While I remember - must take photo of this ad for Max Raabe I keep seeing, because he really does look unsettlingly like lovechild of Mark Gatiss and Matthew Newton.
I never did get round to taking a picture, but via Google Images I found a cropped version of the picture of Max Raabe used on the ads (he's a singer, it turns out, so I think they must've been advertising a new album or something). Pictures of Mark Gatiss and Matthew Newton provided for comparison. It's not just me who's seeing the resemblance, right?
Feeling mild sense of birthday gloom re: lack of milestones reached. Probably means it's time for bed.
Day 4
Started my 23rd birthday by watching a cartoon about an elephant tourist/wildlife documentary-maker visiting and talking to Australian animals. Still not convinced it's not all a giant wind-up on the part of the Aussies.
This turned out to be a German dub of British kids' show Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies. My comments on the 'not convinced it's not all a giant wind-up' relate mainly to the stuff about monotremes. I mean, really, Australians? Duck/beaver mash-ups and weird little porcupine things that lay eggs? You are definitely having us on. I'm not believing it until I actually see a duck-billed platypus lay an egg right in front of me. And even then I'll be checking to see if it's a puppet.
Anyway, seeing as I went to Berlin Zoo that day, it seemed thematically appropriate.
Zoo lovely and quiet in the morning - good timing.
Flamingos - their legs barely look real. Keep imagining them bitching at one another in ludicrous John Inman voices whenever they squabble.
Always thought elephants kept their genitals retracted - disabused of this notion by sight of giant dangly elephant cock. - oh, he's put it away now. Thank god, I was feeling a bit inadequate.
So yeah, turns out that like horses, elephant's penises extend when they wee, and take a while to go back. And like horses, the sight is somewhat startling.
Watching small children being pursued by goats in petting zoos never gets old.
One thing I did not mention: THE TINIEST LITTLE GOAT.
WHO IS A TINY LITTLE GOAT? YOU ARE A TINY LITTLE GOAT! (I pretty much did think exactly that when I saw it. But I didn't say it out loud, because some guy on his own getting all excited over a baby goat in a petting zoo is slightly weird. SERIOUSLY THOUGH, LOOK AT THE TINY GOAT.)
Aw, they have a wave machine for the shoreline birds!
Ostriches have visible ear-holes - correction, not ostriches, but rheas.
Though later when I found the actual ostriches, it turns out they have visible ear-holes too. It's a slightly unsettling sight.
I didn't realise white wolves were an actual species before now. This lot seemed pretty tame, given the way they were chasing the keeper around.
Felt a bit sorry for the polar bears - one clearly displaying repetitive behaviour. Only other animal I've seen that in also a bear, also at a German zoo. I love bears, but I'm not sure it's right keeping them in captivity.
I love that the German word for coati is 'Nasenbar'.
We have sealions and elephant seals - the Germans also call harbour seals 'seahunde' and fur seals 'seabaren'.
Unfortunately decided to go for a wee at the same time as approx. 5000 small boys. Felt like Gulliver in Lilliput. Adults still trying and failing to herd them all in one direction as I write this.
Finally had some Currywurst - tasty, but overpriced at the zoo. Also definitely not curry. More like frankfurter in barbecue sauce.
That's the famous Currywurst there. It's actually quite tasty - the sauce is slightly spicy and a bit sweet, made from some kind of combo of tomatoes, Worcester sauce and curry powder, which is the justification for the name. Not much of a justification, if you ask me, but it's good (guilty) eating, whatever you call it.
Nocturnal animal section v. good, particularly the bats. Rather charmed by the aardvarks, and I had no idea bush babies could jump like that.
That's the last note I took from Berlin Zoo, but there was a lot more to the zoo than that - rhinos, hippos, various penguins, some rather bored-looking kangaroos, all manner of apes and monkeys, various vultures, a bunch of adorable arctic foxes who spent the best part of half an hour fighting over a dead rat, and an aquarium that inexplicably has a statue of a dinosaur outside.
It's not cheap, compared to some of Berlin's attractions, but I spent a good four or five hours there without getting tired or bored, and there's a truly astonishing range of animals kept there. Some of the enclosures are a bit small and I felt some of the carnivores showed signs of being somewhat stir-crazy, but that's pretty common with older zoos located in cities.
Old bit of Kaiser Wilhelm Church turned out to be surrounded by scaffolding + boards for restoration - whole area turned out to be surrounded by stores and tourists. Bugger.
Weird moment in Story of Berlin exhibition - one girl photographing another, posing at the Kristallnacht section pretending she's punching in the smashed shop window. I mean, really, though?
In general - Story of Berlin expensive and slightly disjointed but killed an hour or so - further judgment to be passed when I've gone round the bunker. I did, at least, learn that the Stasi used to store people's smells so sniffer dogs could find them.
Okay, bunker tour justified admission price - that was astonishing (and fucking creepy). I somehow doubt many of the 3k+ people it was meant to hold would have survived the two weeks - not because of radiation but simply beause you'd lose all reason cooped up down thre. Not that you'd really have much to survive for anyway, mind you.
The Story of Berlin museum is located inside a shopping centre off Kurfurstendamm. As per my notes, the museum section gives you a quick run-through several hundred years of Berlin's history - it's not bad, but the layout means the chronology sometimes gets a bit out of order, and it doesn't go into much depth.
Included in the ticket price, however, is a tour around a civilian fallout shelter that lies beneath the shopping centre, and that's truly astonishing. It was originally an underground car park, but during the Cold War, the builder was paid to convert it into a shelter. It was intended to hold 3600 people for 14 days, but as I said, I can't imagine many of them would make it - it'd be incredibly cramped, claustrophobic and uncomfortable, diseases would spread fast, fights would probably break out, and you'd have bugger-all to go back to at the end. One aside that stuck with me was that the 'medical room' only had three things in it: bandages, penicillin, and Valium.
Bit of a grim way to end one's birthday, but all was not lost...
Finally found a KFC! Bought box of mini fillets. It was like licking the face of God.
And on that happy ending, the notebook finishes. There's not much to be said after that; my return home was pretty uneventful, and I had a peaceful weekend mostly spent napping, and not doing any of that bloody writing I said I was going to do. Still haven't written a goddamn word of fic. It's just not my year for that, by the looks of things.
That said, I did get some reading done; I received the first three books of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, and read the first one on the journey to and from Berlin. I wasn't immediately sold but within the first three chapters or so I was hooked.
The premise is, in a nutshell, 'dragon-riding aviators during the Napoleonic Wars', and centres in particular on one guy, Will Laurence, who has a perfectly good career in the Navy until one day his crew capture a dragon egg from a French ship, which rather inconveniently hatches, and even more inconveniently, the hatchling immediately imprints on him. And once a dragon's taken a shine to you, that's it, you're responsible for the bugger, so Laurence and his scaly pal get sent off to join the Royal Aerial Corps. The rest of the book covers Laurence and Temeraire's (Temeraire being the dragon) training and their first real battle.
It's pure fluff, but of a very charming variety - Laurence and Temeraire are both wonderful characters and their friendship is completely adorable, and while I would've appreciated a little more depth of characterisation for some of the support cast (because the book is quite short and mainly plot-driven, Novik generally tells you stuff and moves along where other authors would linger; it's a matter of taste and I did appreciate the fact that she doesn't waffle on and on like some fantasy authors, but my weakness for banter is well-known and there were some wasted opportunities), the main players are well-drawn and I really, really love the main concept. I've only finished book one but I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the rest, which promise to be just as good fun.
On a small side note, I also quite liked that Will Laurence is, like myself, a Nottinghamshire lad, and his well-to-do family live at Wollaton Hall. Which is a real place that I visited several times as a kid, because it's now a small natural history museum, set in a rather pleasant park. That little detail just really tickled me.
Inevitably, of course, I think this is fertile territory for AUs, though I haven't yet decided what I want more: the Temeraire cast in WWII (though that could possibly venture into grim/inappropriate territory, seeing as Temeraire is, in canon, more of a 'heavy bomber' class of dragon than a nippy little fighter), or BoB/The Pacific characters as pilots and dragons. It's a little worrying how easily I can visualise Harry Welsh as an excitable little talking dragon.