Berlin

The second stop on our three city tour of Germany was Berlin. Berlin is a city full of rich history.  This city uses memorials and museums to serve as a reminder of what they never want to see happen again. We saw many momuments and went to lots of museums but here one that stand out in our minds.

1) The Reischstag, the capital building, is where parliament gathers.  Interestingly, they have designed a glass dome that gives a 360 degree view of Berlin and gives parliament a view of the people walking through the glass dome, which reminds them that they are not working for themselves but for the good of the people.
2) The Holocaust Memorial was designed by Peter Eisenman to commemorate the six million Jews that died during the Nazi regime. His design is unique because it consists of 5-sided gray slabs of different sizes (from ankle high to towering above you) that are arranged in a maze-like manner. When you begin to walk through the memorial, it is warmer and the slabs are smaller but as you plunge deeper into the middle, it becomes colder and the slabs begin to tower above you. Purposely, there are no names or dates on these gray slabs because the architect wants you to deeply think and feel what the gray slabs might mean and represent to you regarding the holocaust.
3) Checkpoint Charlie is the American checkpoint for people trying to enter the West side of Berlin from the East.
4) Brandenburg Gate
5) Museum Island
6) My (Joyce) top favorite museum was the Jewish Museum. I have much respect and admiration for the architect and designer, Daniel Libeskind, because he created a thought-provoking, deeply felt, interactive and hopeful museum. He intentionally created a museum that was not only about the holocaust but also covers over two millennia of the life, history and culture of Jews.  
7)The topography of terror, an outside museum, was neat. Not only because of the immense information provided about the rising of the Nazi regime and the effect it had on Jews, gays and gypsies, but also because of its location. It is located by the Berlin wall behind the "Dead Zone", where people were killed for trying to cross over the Berlin Wall.
8) Tacheles Gallery which is a place that showcases and houses art and artists in a grafittied building and the East Side Gallery where amazing murals are painted on the remaining part of the Berlin wall.

Besides learning, experiencing and soaking in all of the rich history of Berlin, we also went on an alternative city tour, which showed us Berlin’s squats, subculture, and street/ grafitti art. On this tour we saw the squats that artists created/lived in and still create art to this day. We learned much about the different types and levels of graffiti (tagging, stenciling, wall pastings and etc..). Our favorite graffiti were by artists that had a political or social statement to make about the past, present and future of Berlin. We also loved the East Side Gallery (located by the river), where murals are painted on the Berlin Wall. A sad reality is that much of the grass roots art culture is being erased by the capitalist media spree that is trying to overtake the art culture in Berlin.

Don’t think that we were being square during our visit to Berlin.  We definitely got our party on during the weekend but DANG were we in for a huge surprise when we found out that going out at 1am is like going out at 10pm in the States…clubs don’t start rocking until 3am and are open until 10am.  It was insane but tons of fun!  Berlin is the place to P-A-R-T-Y!