Berlin in a Day

Well today was quite a day. I started out walking to the Jewish Museum which i felt was down the street from my hotel. What felt like a mile and a half later, i arrived. This was sort of a highlight for my trip to berlin as I am fascinated with the Jewish life in Europe during WWII and the horrible things that were done to them. Never in the history of man has such a systematic destruction of a culture happened, I hope it never happens again.

Anyways I arrive from the backside of the Daniel Liebskind's signature building, the building in which he built his career from, and what a site. Rising out of the park-like setting is a building clad in zinc, shiny but showing it's age. The landscape surrounding it is rather natural save for the one planter grid that looked to be designed by Liebskind himself. I get to the front and am greeted with what looks to be an abnormal amount of police. I get there a bit early and go down the street for some cafe and a bagel (with veggies and cheese mmm) and come back, the museum was closed for the day! some kind of special event going on! i am going to try tomorrow hopefully it will be open...

Stop two on the list Potsdamer Platz, Berlin's glittering commercial center. The main center designed my Helmut Jahn, a Chicago architect I might add, is quite impressive. However i see many elements from the Thompson Center in Chicago that he designed as well. This is just more refined, if we could transplant this design into the space of the Thompson Center, I would be a happier person! I hung around a bit looking at the various buildings and snapping some photos and then head on west to the Brandenburg Gate.

I decide to take the long way through Tiergarten, Berlin's Central Park. This park is amazing you could spend an entire vacation just going through this park! the thick forests and occasional formal elements make this park an enigma to me. I felt this to be a more wild form of park space than central park's spaces that Fredrick Law Olmsted did in New York City. I love the fact that once you enter the park you feel you have escaped the city altogether and that except for the casual biker, you are the only one left in the city. The paths open up to large fields that I can only image were used for parade grounds, military camps, protests and celebrations throughout Berlin's history. The sense of history in this city is just overwhelming sometimes.

Onward to the main attraction. The Brandenberger Gate. I remember first seeing this image when I was 8 years old. My parents made me sit in front of the TV and watch boring footage of people tearing down some stupid wall. I realize today they did the right thing. To be at this space that is now today a celebration point was at one time a place of great turmoil. Today the Gate is a huge tourist destination, kind of a carnival or side show of Berlin. People taking pictures, listening to tour guides, calling family back home wherever that may be and im sure the pickpocket or two lingering around. Great place to visit, cant imagine cars ever getting through those spaces, it is much smaller than i thought it would be.

Off to something a bit more somber. The Holocaust Memorial did not get completed until 2005, 50 years after the fall of Berlin, but i think it was worth the wait. US Architect Peter Eisenmann spent a lot of time designing this simple but effective memorial. A football field of 4' by 4' granite slabs that are lined in numerous rows that rise from flush with the ground to over 20 feet of your head. They lean to one side and break rank, pierce the sky overhead as to engulf you in the consequence of the "ultimate solution" This is a very emotional place, quiet, somber, in your face. I recommend if you dont do anything in Berlin, come see this memorial, spend no less than 30 minutes here, i spent an hour today.

Lunch time, then more meandering around the city. I ended up in Alexanderplatz again and had dinner at a place that was in my lonely planet guide. Walked around some more and took some night time pictures of the Potsdamer Platz. All in all a great day, tomorrow should be better, bike tour and a tour of parliment. Stay tuned for more adventures...

Be well;

Craig