Before leaving the hostel in Dresden I ran into Rick in the lobby. Turns out we were both staying at the same hostel, the PLUS Berlin (an absolutely fantastic hostel- it even has a sauna and pool) so I told him I'd send him an email when I got there. He was heading out ahead of me. I hopped my train to Berlin getting in around 5pm and to the hostel around 5:30 or so.
The hostel was massive- apparently in an old warehouse or something but it has to be able to accommodate over 400 people. I checked in, sent Rick and email, and headed to the room concerned if I'd ever find him in this massive complex. As fate would have it, guess who is in my dorm room napping on the bed when I open the door? None other than Rick himself. What are the odds? 1:400 I suppose.
I crashed out for a brief nap and then we decided to get some grub. The hostel restaurant/bar was equally if not more impressive than the hostel itself. A contemporary Italian kitchen and full bar with very reasonably priced food and beer. Pastas were 6 euros and the pizzas were 5-7. And they were excellent. Still feeling a bit out of it from the night before, we decided to take it easy and walked around the happening Friedrichshain neighborhood. Ultimately we settled on a shisha bar where we had a grape shisha and a few rounds of Berliner beer before calling it a relatively early night.
As an aside, one really cool thing about Berlin, like the rest of Germany, is that you can drink anywhere. But in Berlin, people really get after it. And just about every store sells bottles- the first beers we got of the night were at a video store we passed just over the bridge. Also- before calling it a night we had a kebab. Kebab's are the preferred late-night food of Europe, much like a New Yorker might grab a slice of pizza after a long night at the bars. You'll find kebabs in every city in Europe but the best are in Germany, and the best of the best are in Berlin due to the large population of Turks. So if you love kebabs, aside from Istanbul, Berlin is probably your best bet.
The next day, Sunday, neither Rick nor I had any plans until about 6pm when we were supposed to meet James at his apartment for what he had deemed would be an "insane" night. We'll get to that later. So to kill the day, I offered to walk around the city center with Rick and show him a few of the sights I could remember from my tour back in 2009.
For those of you hoping to get a nice history less of Berlin and the full Wanderlust treatment, I hate to disappoint but I've already been to Berlin. So on this trip I saw basically none of the touristy things except what we accomplished on this walk. But if you want to inform yourself on the history of the city and Germany as a whole at a high level, I suggest you check out the wikipedia article. Anyway, walking from Alexanderplatz toward the museum island you'll first encounter the Berlin Rathaus, in my mind the least impressive rathaus I've seen in Germany, therefore worth a picture.
Nearly adjacent to the Rathaus is the Berliner Fernsehturm (Berlin TV Tower), which stands imposingly over Alexanderplatz. I was able to get a really nice shot of it with the clouds in the background so if you like scenic shots of pointy phallic needles, you'll love this.
Next we visited the Berliner Dom and in the plaza just across the street from it they had set up a really innovative concept. A giant map of the city of Berlin with huge pins marking interesting things to see and do. Very creative.
On the museum island I was also happy to see that they had not patched up all the bullet holes in the colonnade left over from World War II. It was one of my favorite features in 2009 and since that entire area was under renovation I had feared it would all look as good as new.
We then passed this building of the Humboldt University which I believe houses the faculty of the law school. It's noteworthy because in 2009 it was under complete renovation. They've done a great job. Curiously, now the building directly across the square from it is under a similar complete renovation. In Berlin, there's always something to be renovated or rebuilt.
No mini-tour of Berlin is complete without a trip to the Reichstag (or German Parliament building). On this day the wind was billowing making the German flags fly in a most picturesque fashion.
Finally I took Rick by one of my favorite monuments of the city: the Holocaust memorial. It's a great memorial that has the somberness requisite for such a monument but also provides the visitor the opportunity to form their own impression of it. I've never looked more German than in the obligaory photo I snapped of myself.
After our walk we met at James' apartment (a huge 5 bedroom place that they somehow scored on the super cheap), where we pregamed with some rum we acquired at a little shop. Around 9 or so we headed to the first of many shows. The plan was to go to a preliminary concert by Livingston before proceeding to the Manta Ray label party where there would be additional live performances, bands hanging out, and of course lots of label people and the like. Allegedly it was to go until 8am. Whoo hoo! The first band Livingston was really good in that mainstream rock sort of way.
I thought the lead singer looked a bit like Owen from way back in Madrid. After the show we moved on to the second venue- a very elite club- where I met Jasper the manger of the next band to perform, Dance on the Tightrope. Jasper was a real cool cat and his band was in my opinion the best of the night. I will absolutely download some of their music.
As the night wore on, RBV's became the call of the evening and eventually I found myself talking to the owner of the label. I bought him a drink and we chatted about the music industry in Berlin. He disappeared briefly and when he returned he slapped a VIP bracelet on my wrist and I was escorted back to the VIP room at the rear of the venue. It was there when I reached my peak form. The bar temporarily ran out of beer so I did shots with the guys from Livingston.
Then, when those ran out, a couple guys from Dance on the Tightrope and the guys who played after them and I found some beers and continued the party. I'm not sure exactly when we left that venue but it was late, very late. We next attempted to go to an outdoor club called Carnival or something like that but there was some sort of miscommunication with the entry people and we ended up just standing there. Eventually James got aggravated and we decided to leave but not before this picture was taken presumably between the hours of 5 and 6am.
We ended up back at James' but not before Rick had acquired a bottle of Jim Beam, which he then used to challenge James to a drinking contest. Finally exhibiting the maturity I knew was buried down there somewhere, I refused to engage in such behavior and procured myself a water. As this "contest" was going on from 6am until 7 or 8am, James' flatmate and fellow band mate Scott and I talked about various topics before I evidently faux-accused him of being inconsiderate with his smoking.
That pile of white comforters on the left of this picture is where I crashed for the night. It was a pretty ridiculous night. The next day I felt pretty bad but not nearly as bad as James and Rick who nearly finished off the Jimmy B.
Regardless, after acquiring a kebab and proceeding to the hostel, the remainder of the afternoon was spent in recovery with dinner in the steadfast Italian restaurant. The night was equally calm- Rick gave me two seasons worth of Mad Men which I began watching and we just chilled out in the very comfortable room at PLUS.
The next day wasn't much more exciting as it was administrative task day for me. Rick split the joint to get his bike serviced and I determined it was high time for laundry. The original plan was to knock out the laundry and then proceed to the lobby and do some writing as the internet had stopped working in our room, but my plan was thwarted on both fronts. The laundry took about four hours and when I got to the lobby it was packed with Russian high school students checking into the hostel for some school trip.
The night was much more fruitful, however, as Rick and I hit the Kreuzberg neighborhood in search of a cool bar. Unluckily it was cold and rainy that night (and it was a Tuesday) so it wasn't quite as hopping as we had anticipated. We did see Sweden tie Germany in a World Cup qualifying match which I personally got great amusement from. Something about hearing German's shout "nein nein niiiiiieeeeeennn!!" just tickles me.
We ended up at some place where I had a tremendous rapport with the bartendress and then we ultimately proceeded to a Russian bar until close. On the way back to the hostel we found the Berlin-equivalent of Shake Shack. It was SO GOOD. And it was located in a park under a bridge- and it had cheese fries. Halo Berlin!
The next day I was determined to do something. And what I decided upon was to walk from our hostel up to museum island and visit whatever museum struck my fancy. I didn't really know which way I was walking, especially as I got closer to the city center, so I just let my sense of direction forge a vague path. This turned out to be less effective than I had hoped as I ended up crossing the channels and the museum island about 4 times until I actually figured out where I needed to go. But I did see a nice bit of Berlin and came to realize the water is much more prominent through the city than I had presumed.
I'm glad I wasn't living in Berlin during the cold war- given my propensity to find my way into places I don't belong with and sometimes without my knowledge, it's likely I would have been shot simply wandering into the wrong part of town by accident. Eventually I was able to make out the green dome of the Berliner Dom and snapped this photo which I love because it doesn't look real.
After wandering around for a while I made my decision: the National German History Museum. Usually in these circumstances I find myself interested more in art, however, this day just seemed like a day for history. And frankly, I'm glad I chose such even despite the fact that 3-4 hours is not nearly enough time to get through this museum. I'll spare you the full rundown but suffice to say I spent the majority of my time in the sections on Prussian unification and WWI and WWII. Here are a couple of the cooler things, starting with some extremely old copies of Martin Luther's three volumes on the reformation of the church.
Next is this really freak mask worn by doctors while examining patients during the black death. Can you imagine if you had the plague- you're exhausted, feverish, bordering on hallucinations, and suddenly a dude bursts into your room wearing this?
That is beyond terrifying. Gives me the willies just looking at it. Imagine if he had it so the eyes glowed yellow... Anyway, do you remember the Siege of Vienna by the Turks where they were soundly defeated? Here's a tapestry depicting it.
And Napoleon's hat and sabre left after the defeat at Waterloo. Very cool.
And what museum is complete without a Penny Farthing?
And Kaiser Wilhelm II's field marshall uniform which he wore at the front nearly every day, even though he rarely participated in the day to day decisions of the battles or, frankly, the overall conflict.
This I found particularly interesting. All of these notes are worth hundreds of millions (and in some cases billions) of marks. It wasn't until November 1923 when the new currency, the Rentenmark, was issued that hyperinflation was stabilized. Under the new policy, one Rentenmark (the coin) was worth 1,000,000,000,000 marks (1 trillion). Whoa.
And of course, for your viewing pleasure- a piece of the Berlin Wall.
That night we again met up with James and his band at their apartment. They made us a fine feast including some of the best stuffing I've ever had. Quite a bit different than my father's recipe- this was like half stuffing/half sausage rolled into balls and baked. Oh baby. After dinner we set off in search of libations and ended up at this cool bar where I was introduced to a new "drink" (a shot really) called a Mexicana. Essentially it's a Bloody Mary in shot form but with tequila instead of vodka. Sounds terrible but in a small dosage it's actually pretty good.
There were five of us and the first round we all chose between the Mexicana or the Hemingway- a shot that as far as I could tell was some sort of gin and fruit juice. I then suggested that for our second round everyone had to do the opposite of what they got the first time. Then, since only 2 of the 5 of us had bought rounds, naturally it was only fair for the other three to each buy a round. At this point the wheels began turning and I proposed a game I would pay dearly for the next day.
The rules of the game were simple. Above us on a giant chalk board were a list of probably 2 dozen shots of all types and character. Almost all under 2 euros each. The man whose turn it was to purchase the round got to select 2 from the board. The first, the primary, was a shot that he had to take. The second was an alternative. The rest of us would then have a choice between the primary or the alternative. If no one selected the alternative, someone could request a new alternative.
What this game boiled down to was basically just a series of retaliatory selections- honing in on one person's two most hated shots and picking them so that they would be forced to take one or the other. We played three rounds until everyone had bought 1 round, where, all of us now feeling very jovial, it was universally agreed to continue forth into another round of 5. So 10 shots. Not proud of it. Fortuitously some of them ended up being "mixed" shots meaning not all alcohol but still. Bleh.
After this adventure we made a speedy retreat to Kruezberg where oddly we ended up in the same pub Rick and I had visited a few nights before. One beer was all I could manage before calling it a night, but prior to doing so we noticed an interesting phenomenon. James' lead singer (and I'm embarrassed that I forgot his name in the days since) had somehow grown a mustache (where seemingly no mustache had existed before) during the time elapsed since dinner! It must, then, be said that Mexicanas will put hair on your face.
As imagined, the next morning was a bit rough. Or should I say afternoon. Frankly it was one of the worst hangovers I've had in my 7 months of traveling and I was instantly reminded of why I don't do shots anymore. It seems I had grown a bit cocky, developed a bit of the old hubris, in my months of success. That next day was certainly enough to knock me down a peg, and moreover, I've since issued a moratorium on shots for the remainder of my time in Europe. Three cheers for a beer, and wine is fine, but shots no more are a friend of mine.
In a way my last day in Berlin could technically be chalked up as R&R, but really unless you change one of those R's to "recovery" it doesn't quite apply. That said, I really did enjoy my time in Berlin. Other than getting the amount of writing done I had hoped, I did accomplish all of my other goals. I saw some of the non-touristy areas, I went to a museum, I hung out with locals and got to really dig into the local music scene, and I gobbled down my fair share of Berliner kebabs. Next up would be Hamburg, where I would be reuniting with some dear friends from way way back in Porto.
Oh and at some point very late in one of those long nights out, I wrote myself this simplistic but surprisingly profound note to discover in the morning, "No one truly understands art- we all just make guesses at it."
Who is that guy? And how do we channel him into something productive?
No mini-tour of Berlin is complete without a trip to the Reichstag (or German Parliament building). On this day the wind was billowing making the German flags fly in a most picturesque fashion.
Finally I took Rick by one of my favorite monuments of the city: the Holocaust memorial. It's a great memorial that has the somberness requisite for such a monument but also provides the visitor the opportunity to form their own impression of it. I've never looked more German than in the obligaory photo I snapped of myself.
After our walk we met at James' apartment (a huge 5 bedroom place that they somehow scored on the super cheap), where we pregamed with some rum we acquired at a little shop. Around 9 or so we headed to the first of many shows. The plan was to go to a preliminary concert by Livingston before proceeding to the Manta Ray label party where there would be additional live performances, bands hanging out, and of course lots of label people and the like. Allegedly it was to go until 8am. Whoo hoo! The first band Livingston was really good in that mainstream rock sort of way.
I thought the lead singer looked a bit like Owen from way back in Madrid. After the show we moved on to the second venue- a very elite club- where I met Jasper the manger of the next band to perform, Dance on the Tightrope. Jasper was a real cool cat and his band was in my opinion the best of the night. I will absolutely download some of their music.
As the night wore on, RBV's became the call of the evening and eventually I found myself talking to the owner of the label. I bought him a drink and we chatted about the music industry in Berlin. He disappeared briefly and when he returned he slapped a VIP bracelet on my wrist and I was escorted back to the VIP room at the rear of the venue. It was there when I reached my peak form. The bar temporarily ran out of beer so I did shots with the guys from Livingston.
Then, when those ran out, a couple guys from Dance on the Tightrope and the guys who played after them and I found some beers and continued the party. I'm not sure exactly when we left that venue but it was late, very late. We next attempted to go to an outdoor club called Carnival or something like that but there was some sort of miscommunication with the entry people and we ended up just standing there. Eventually James got aggravated and we decided to leave but not before this picture was taken presumably between the hours of 5 and 6am.
We ended up back at James' but not before Rick had acquired a bottle of Jim Beam, which he then used to challenge James to a drinking contest. Finally exhibiting the maturity I knew was buried down there somewhere, I refused to engage in such behavior and procured myself a water. As this "contest" was going on from 6am until 7 or 8am, James' flatmate and fellow band mate Scott and I talked about various topics before I evidently faux-accused him of being inconsiderate with his smoking.
That pile of white comforters on the left of this picture is where I crashed for the night. It was a pretty ridiculous night. The next day I felt pretty bad but not nearly as bad as James and Rick who nearly finished off the Jimmy B.
Regardless, after acquiring a kebab and proceeding to the hostel, the remainder of the afternoon was spent in recovery with dinner in the steadfast Italian restaurant. The night was equally calm- Rick gave me two seasons worth of Mad Men which I began watching and we just chilled out in the very comfortable room at PLUS.
The next day wasn't much more exciting as it was administrative task day for me. Rick split the joint to get his bike serviced and I determined it was high time for laundry. The original plan was to knock out the laundry and then proceed to the lobby and do some writing as the internet had stopped working in our room, but my plan was thwarted on both fronts. The laundry took about four hours and when I got to the lobby it was packed with Russian high school students checking into the hostel for some school trip.
The night was much more fruitful, however, as Rick and I hit the Kreuzberg neighborhood in search of a cool bar. Unluckily it was cold and rainy that night (and it was a Tuesday) so it wasn't quite as hopping as we had anticipated. We did see Sweden tie Germany in a World Cup qualifying match which I personally got great amusement from. Something about hearing German's shout "nein nein niiiiiieeeeeennn!!" just tickles me.
We ended up at some place where I had a tremendous rapport with the bartendress and then we ultimately proceeded to a Russian bar until close. On the way back to the hostel we found the Berlin-equivalent of Shake Shack. It was SO GOOD. And it was located in a park under a bridge- and it had cheese fries. Halo Berlin!
The next day I was determined to do something. And what I decided upon was to walk from our hostel up to museum island and visit whatever museum struck my fancy. I didn't really know which way I was walking, especially as I got closer to the city center, so I just let my sense of direction forge a vague path. This turned out to be less effective than I had hoped as I ended up crossing the channels and the museum island about 4 times until I actually figured out where I needed to go. But I did see a nice bit of Berlin and came to realize the water is much more prominent through the city than I had presumed.
I'm glad I wasn't living in Berlin during the cold war- given my propensity to find my way into places I don't belong with and sometimes without my knowledge, it's likely I would have been shot simply wandering into the wrong part of town by accident. Eventually I was able to make out the green dome of the Berliner Dom and snapped this photo which I love because it doesn't look real.
After wandering around for a while I made my decision: the National German History Museum. Usually in these circumstances I find myself interested more in art, however, this day just seemed like a day for history. And frankly, I'm glad I chose such even despite the fact that 3-4 hours is not nearly enough time to get through this museum. I'll spare you the full rundown but suffice to say I spent the majority of my time in the sections on Prussian unification and WWI and WWII. Here are a couple of the cooler things, starting with some extremely old copies of Martin Luther's three volumes on the reformation of the church.
Next is this really freak mask worn by doctors while examining patients during the black death. Can you imagine if you had the plague- you're exhausted, feverish, bordering on hallucinations, and suddenly a dude bursts into your room wearing this?
That is beyond terrifying. Gives me the willies just looking at it. Imagine if he had it so the eyes glowed yellow... Anyway, do you remember the Siege of Vienna by the Turks where they were soundly defeated? Here's a tapestry depicting it.
And Napoleon's hat and sabre left after the defeat at Waterloo. Very cool.
And what museum is complete without a Penny Farthing?
And Kaiser Wilhelm II's field marshall uniform which he wore at the front nearly every day, even though he rarely participated in the day to day decisions of the battles or, frankly, the overall conflict.
This I found particularly interesting. All of these notes are worth hundreds of millions (and in some cases billions) of marks. It wasn't until November 1923 when the new currency, the Rentenmark, was issued that hyperinflation was stabilized. Under the new policy, one Rentenmark (the coin) was worth 1,000,000,000,000 marks (1 trillion). Whoa.
And of course, for your viewing pleasure- a piece of the Berlin Wall.
That night we again met up with James and his band at their apartment. They made us a fine feast including some of the best stuffing I've ever had. Quite a bit different than my father's recipe- this was like half stuffing/half sausage rolled into balls and baked. Oh baby. After dinner we set off in search of libations and ended up at this cool bar where I was introduced to a new "drink" (a shot really) called a Mexicana. Essentially it's a Bloody Mary in shot form but with tequila instead of vodka. Sounds terrible but in a small dosage it's actually pretty good.
There were five of us and the first round we all chose between the Mexicana or the Hemingway- a shot that as far as I could tell was some sort of gin and fruit juice. I then suggested that for our second round everyone had to do the opposite of what they got the first time. Then, since only 2 of the 5 of us had bought rounds, naturally it was only fair for the other three to each buy a round. At this point the wheels began turning and I proposed a game I would pay dearly for the next day.
The rules of the game were simple. Above us on a giant chalk board were a list of probably 2 dozen shots of all types and character. Almost all under 2 euros each. The man whose turn it was to purchase the round got to select 2 from the board. The first, the primary, was a shot that he had to take. The second was an alternative. The rest of us would then have a choice between the primary or the alternative. If no one selected the alternative, someone could request a new alternative.
What this game boiled down to was basically just a series of retaliatory selections- honing in on one person's two most hated shots and picking them so that they would be forced to take one or the other. We played three rounds until everyone had bought 1 round, where, all of us now feeling very jovial, it was universally agreed to continue forth into another round of 5. So 10 shots. Not proud of it. Fortuitously some of them ended up being "mixed" shots meaning not all alcohol but still. Bleh.
After this adventure we made a speedy retreat to Kruezberg where oddly we ended up in the same pub Rick and I had visited a few nights before. One beer was all I could manage before calling it a night, but prior to doing so we noticed an interesting phenomenon. James' lead singer (and I'm embarrassed that I forgot his name in the days since) had somehow grown a mustache (where seemingly no mustache had existed before) during the time elapsed since dinner! It must, then, be said that Mexicanas will put hair on your face.
As imagined, the next morning was a bit rough. Or should I say afternoon. Frankly it was one of the worst hangovers I've had in my 7 months of traveling and I was instantly reminded of why I don't do shots anymore. It seems I had grown a bit cocky, developed a bit of the old hubris, in my months of success. That next day was certainly enough to knock me down a peg, and moreover, I've since issued a moratorium on shots for the remainder of my time in Europe. Three cheers for a beer, and wine is fine, but shots no more are a friend of mine.
In a way my last day in Berlin could technically be chalked up as R&R, but really unless you change one of those R's to "recovery" it doesn't quite apply. That said, I really did enjoy my time in Berlin. Other than getting the amount of writing done I had hoped, I did accomplish all of my other goals. I saw some of the non-touristy areas, I went to a museum, I hung out with locals and got to really dig into the local music scene, and I gobbled down my fair share of Berliner kebabs. Next up would be Hamburg, where I would be reuniting with some dear friends from way way back in Porto.
Oh and at some point very late in one of those long nights out, I wrote myself this simplistic but surprisingly profound note to discover in the morning, "No one truly understands art- we all just make guesses at it."
Who is that guy? And how do we channel him into something productive?
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