Berlin: here we are after the first train travel of our
interrail!
Berlin is a city that surprises me every time…
The first time I came I was 17 and I was on a school trip … of course at that age you do not care where you go on a school trip, they could also bring you to Busto Arsizio, and to you, however, it would seem a wonderful journey: you miss class, you spend time with your peers, you are on your own, without parents…
However, in our case we ended up in Berlin, that is much better than Busto Arsizio, and we were all so damn excited!
I don’t really know why, but I was not expecting much from that city. I had never heard anything very good about it, and not even bad…just a normal city without anything interesting, from my point of view.
But in the end I think that’s one of the places I was most surprised from, in my entire career of honorable girl with a suitcase. I remember that every vision was a pleasant surprise: the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial , this church whose bell tower was bombed, left in memorial sign with the obvious scars of the fire and bombs. Beside it, they have added a futuristic structure of dubious beauty in which, however, there are some unique and interesting colors.
The ruins of the Berlin Wall , with a small bronze plate that runs along the city’s walking paths in its place, which moved me with its intensity and excited me a lot. The Brandenburg Gate , huge and beautiful.
Everything had surprised me, and I had probably idealized it in all these years since then, so much that I talked about it very well to my traveling companion as well, thus creating high expectations in her too.
So, this time too, I was again surprised by Berlin: when we arrived there and my second trip there started, I was feeling betrayed and sad, because the magic that had struck me the first time, that modern and a bit sad fashion I perceived, those futuristic buildings…This time nothing seemed to be leaving a trace on me, it was really grey, and dark, and cold, and I was not feeling anything intense.
Still I can not explain why. My traveling friend suggests that it was precisely the over-expectation we had to destroy the city, as well as the fact of coming from Prague, which not only is a jewel of a city, but had also given us two days of beautiful weather and springly sunshine. Whereas Berlin, with its somewhat sneaky way to show itself, got surrounded by clouds just before our arrival, adding to the cloudy and cold environment also some terrible moments of stormy rain.
Initially, my friend pointed out to me that she preferred Prague, and for me it was unexpected since there was nothing different from the first time. But then, after seeing the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall still standing (the famous East Side Gallery, adorned with numerous graffiti, some beautiful, others of questionable interest…) I realized that there was something strange for me too.
Maybe it was the gloomy weather, maybe we were tired, maybe the complete lack of historical information in the area, but that wall didn’t touch me at all!! Similarly the whole day in the former East Berlin deluded me, and finally it did so also the “bad tooth“, the church of which I have spoken before and that had greatly impressed me: I found it almost completely covered by scaffolding for work restructuring…such a delusion! Love was passed!
The second afternoon was spent at the Jewish Museum, a little bit for historical interest and much more to escape the rain and wind, and it was definitely interesting.
The building is done, again, in a somewhat ‘futuristic’ and … let’s say particular architecture, if not really horrible. Surely it must be interesting from the top (it’s a building in a zig-zag pattern , consisting of a series of straight lines that intersect), but as you pass by it on the street it’s hard to hold back a grin, looking at his gray walls broken by long and narrow cuts in various directions….
The entire architecture makes sense after entering it: each arm is a theme, a different area of interest related to Judaism and the Holocaust…an interesting way to think about what has happened, especially in the interactive rooms. Not those with computers, those honestly disgusted me as they were reeeeeally boring. I mean the LIVING rooms: places where you could really interact with history and with the museum. The best were two: one with a high ceiling and no fake light, just the gray-blue darkness coming from the narrow window, no heating, and a heavy door slamming behind you to make you feel trapped and isolated. exactly like them, in the concentration camps. Terrible.
Another one, instead, has floor covered up by a thick layer of iron faces…
heavy, gray masks with a scared aspect, screaming under your feet while you walk on them with the noise of metals colliding, while some rays of light pass through a window from another room, giving the scene a unique intensity.
A huge museum, where we entered with the idea of staying there for a couple of hours and we remained 4 hours instead (and in the end we were so tired that we skipped some areas, otherwise we would have remained even more!).
Then I unsheathed my last ace in the hole to find some of that spirit of Berlin which had plagued me the first time:
Potsdammer Platz , in my humble opinion one of the most interesting plazas I’ve seen, very “American” but with a unique style, and the beautiful Sony Center , dominated by large white sails illuminated with soft colors …it’s a show you can’t miss.
Above all, I had gone there only by day. going back at night was a new experience, much more intense, and I recovered a bit of that sense of love and respect for the city I was missing. So we spent the evening drinking beer and chatting sitting on a pub’s chairs, warmed by blankets made available from the bar, illuminated by the pink and pale blue light of the sails, which gave the scene a sense of dawning…
Then, on the way home, we stopped at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another “attraction” that you usually visit during the day (but we do not like to do things as they should) and we happened to pass by around midnight.
I was never there during the day so I can not express an opinion (I’ve read that there is a “museum” beneath the ground which delves into the underground lives of the Jews to whom it is dedicated, then it must surely be a more complete experience going there during the day), but I assure you that Night has a very special charm.
I don’t really know how to explain what kind of a place it is: we may say it’s a labyrinth made of rectangular stones, that vaguely remind coffins…
Initially the coffers (2711 to be precise) are low and you can clearly see in front of you, but the more you enter the maze, the more they grow in height and the light decreases, and every corner becomes dangerous, no longer with the same appearance, and it really seems to be hearing the voices of Jews, Gypsies, gays, dissidents, and all those who died in the Nazi gas rooms…
It’s a weird feeling.
Finally, the final blow, the one that made us open our hearts and change our minds about the city, was the view of the Brandenburg Gate. Huge, tall, imposing, bright…and just that last night the sky had finally reopened and the wind calmed a bit, the city gave us this piece of surprise so special to both of us: there was not a car, a passerby , a dog…just us and the silence.
It did not seem very normal in a metropolis, don’t you think? It was actually really weird, because the night before we were shocked to see how full the subway was at night, at 5am. I can only guess that germans do not get out on sunday nights.
And thus it ended the German part of our trip. The final result is ambiguous, as you might have read … I liked it, but yeah, but no, but maybe ….
For sure it’s not a simple city like Prague …it is a complex city, angry, rebellious, living, even a little bitchy at times … but here is its charm.
