The next morning after our adventure to the North involved
us going to see the housing projects built during the IBA in the 50s. These
large buildings were designed in a modern style and created to house large
numbers of people after the war. The first building was designed by a French
architect and was made to be a self-contained community. Its floors are called
streets and you can ride bikes down them. They are also all made to match one
another so that you can combine one or two to get bigger apartments. The
building is not that attractive, with carved men and random color bits on the
windows to try and make it look halfway interesting. But the idea is an amusing
one and the people who who gave us a tour live there and seem to love it.
They’ve done a little remodeling inside and combine a few apartments. They were
extremely nice and let us into their home for our tour.
Later
we went to what I was told was somewhat equivalent to our Chamber of Commerce.
The building was designed to look very mechanized. We were only allowed in
certain areas but I liked the elevators.
We saw
an old church which was mostly destroyed but it still preserved in it’s damaged
standing condition and the added new church in a modern style. We couldn’t
really see the old church since they were doing some sort of work on it and had
the entire outside hidden, but we were able to go inside and see a bit of what
used to be. Then we went on into the new church which is actually very pretty
for a modern church.
Tuesday
morning was our trip to the dutch embassy which is a pretty cool building. It
has a lot of symbolic meeting. Things like stairs being too steep on purpose
because that’s a cliché dutch thing apparently. Also all of the rooms open up
in some small way to another room. They have a green glass floor along one
hallway which is a lot of fun. We also learned about how they have to have
housing due to the regulations in that area and so they have apartments for
employees. There is a straight view through the building from the river to the
television tower in Alexander Platz which is pretty cool. Apparently no one is
allowed to build anything which will obstruct this view.
After
that we headed over to Alexander Platz for lunch which has this awesome thing
in it.
Then we
had a look around at the housing complexes in the East, in answer to the IBA in
West Berlin. There buildings are not terribly exciting.
Then we
walked along Karl Marx Allee which shows off the nicer portions of East Berlin,
the face they would present to the foreign press.
We
continued the Soviet train of class with a trip to the Soviet Memorial and
discussion of the Cold War. The memorial is massive and still standing. A lot
of work has been done to preserve the past, even the unhappy past. There is a
massive statue in the center which shows a soviet soldier holding a child and
crushing a swastika under his boot. This was their idea of the time, communists
as defeaters of the Nazis. No mention of the horrible oppression they
themselves committed.
Tuesday
night Liz, Emily, and I went to a Metric concert at the Postbahnhof. The venue
was cool, the band, as usual, was great. They played most of the songs I love
by them and some new things. I was really glad they were great live. We also
discovered this fascinating thing at the venue: a vending machine for shoes. It
dispenses little shiny pair of flats so that when your heels start to hurt you
can just change! It was adorable.
Wednesday was Berlin Wall day. We started the
day at Check Point Charlie and continued on to the Berlin Wall Memorial where a
section of the “death strip” is still preserved. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum
was extremely interesting and informative but horribly laid out. There is just
not enough space for all of the cramped exhibits and people they allow into
that tiny building. But that aside, there is a ton of information on the
beginnings of the political beginnings of the cold war and lots of crazy escape
methods and stories from real people attempting to circumvent the wall and the
law. This literally includes tunnels, hot air balloons, scuba gear, flying
machines, and fake passports. Most of these handmade.
The
Wall Memorial was just as interesting focusing on the actual layout of the
“Wall.” This actually consisted of an inner wall, barbed wire, dogs, areas of
metal spikes on the ground, big barriers to stop cars, trip wires which
signaled guards, the guards themselves, trip wires which automatically fired
guns, bright lights to keep everything like daylight all night long, and
finally the outer wall--what people saw from West Berlin. The complexity of it all was staggering.
There
were also markers showing where both escape tunnels were and where the Stasi
dug their own slant-wise tunnel to cut them all off.
Thursday
our group did a split and some went to Dresden to look at architecture while
others of us stayed in Berlin to hit a few more museums. We began in the Berlin
museum. It was small and to the point, with a few videos of really interesting
footage of the Berlin Wall era.
(Model of the Royal Palace)
(The Humboldts, began Humboldt University)
(sets designed by Schinkel)
(Awesome picture of the young emperor in a dress with a sword)
Next we
finished out museum island by going to the Bode Museum. It contained an
extensive collection of Medieval and Renaissance art from Western Europe into
Byzantium. It also contained a massive Canadian coin minted a few years ago
worth one million dollars which I still do not understand. This coin was the
one point of confusion in an otherwise very interesting coin collection.
Another cool exhibit was a small case which showed the step by step process of
making a cast bronze statue. There were a lot of interesting and beautiful and
weird art pieces, worth the trip.
(don't blink)
(Artemis)
St. George's Portal
(Giant Canadian Coin)
(St. George's arm reliquary)
Our
last activity of the afternoon was to wander into the New Synagogue. Called
“New” in that it was built after the “Old Synagogue.” The New Synagogue itself
was build in the late 1800s and was mostly destroyed in World War II. It was
set on fire doing the November Pogrom but a local police force actually put it
out, apparently against all orders, so it suffered less damage than it might
have. After the war it was repaired enough to make a small museum of local
Jewish history which I found fascinating. It talked about schools, hospitals,
and businesses built and run by the Jewish community before the war. There is
also a small but beautiful dome we were able to go up into. But it is
definitely prettier on the outside.
Tonight
will be the Germany vs. Italy soccer game, both very good teams. We will be out
in the Tiergarten again cheering on our temporary home team!
6/26/12
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