This non-American Life

A long night of Berlin’s museums

Our recent trip to Berlin included the Lange Nacht der Museen. Long museum nights are popular in many cities around Europe (we’ve also been to them in Zurich and Munich). Berlin has two a year, with 100 museums around the city opening their doors from 6pm to 2am. Special events for the evening include concerts, demonstrations, and things like the opportunity to destroy your evil things with a special machine (after first attending the Dinge-Sprechstunde, during which an expert will evaluate your thing for evilness).*

The festivities were centered on Museum Island. The big light show entertained us while we were milling around waiting for buses to take us to the more far-flung locations. There were so many interesting-sounding things to do that we had a lot of trouble choosing.

The DDR Museum was serving up ‘typical East-German cocktails’. I was worried that drinking one might make my hair curl up into a mullet.

Several museums had the added bonus of letting visitors participate in The Big Draw Berlin. We doodled at the Museum of Communication and at the Sammlung Scharf Gerstenberg (which has an amazing ‘Surreal Worlds’ collection, by the way).

The big Bauhaus exhibit at the Martin-Gropius-Bau was also part of Museum Night, but we wanted to spend more time there, so we went the next day instead. It’s a fabulous exhibit, probably the most comprehensive presentation of the Bauhaus that I’ve ever seen in one place.

The dance show at the Schwules Museum was quite colorful.

We also hit a fabulous photography show at the Akademie der Künste (right next door to the Adlon hotel, featuring the Blanket Jackson Balcony). I’m sure we visited a couple other museums that night, too, but that’s all I can remember at the moment.

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* I didn’t even make this part up. It happened at the Museum of Things.

Tags: art, Berlin, German culture, Germany, musems

Berlin: as enchanting as ever

After almost three whole months (oh, the horror) of sleeping in my own bed, I finally got out of Munich for a few days in Berlin. Berlin is one of the few places I go back to over and over and over again, because I will never get enough of it. It’s so big and diverse and… atmospherey. You know what I mean?

A highlight of the trip was getting to meet Snooker and Sweet No (oh yes, and Mimi!). And I get to see them (minus Mimi) again this coming weekend at the blogger meet-up. Woo hoo!

We met them at the charming Ampelmann Restaurant and ‘beach bar’, where I could indulge my Ampelmann fetish to my heart’s content. Later Snook took us to the kind of place you just don’t find in Munich: an Indian restaurant with a large outdoor terrace populated with glowing neon-pink plastic palm trees. The food was delicious, too.

We found a couple other new (to us) restaurants we liked this trip, too. MaoThai was yummy, cheap Thai food in big portions. In street food, we enjoyed falafel at a small döner kebab place along Karl-Liebknecht-Straße across the street from Alexanderplatz.

2009 marks 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and naturally the city is celebrating. There’s a great temporary open-air museum up at Alexanderplatz which chronicles the history of the Wall and the revolution which toppled it.

Speaking of museums, we hit a lot of them this trip. More in a later post.

Tags: Berlin, Germany, restaurants, travel

Obamania sweeps through Germany

Germany is all abuzz today as Obama prepares to speak in Berlin. He is on the cover of magazines such as Der Spiegel and Stern. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung is chronicling his every move throughout the day. The televised pre-game show began hours ago.

He will be speaking in front of the Siegessäule, a good 2 km away from the Brandenburger Gate, his first choice of venue. This move was supposedly to appease Merkel, who was not happy with Obama’s first location choice. As much as I love Obama, I too found myself questioning the idea of this speech. Presidential performances in Berlin are the stuff of legends, but Obama isn’t exactly president yet. Why is he trying to trick me into believing he is?

Regardless of my initial skepticism, today I find myself eagerly anticipating this evening’s speech. I hope it will be gorgeous. Legendary, even.

Earlier this afternoon a reporter in Berlin asked his interviewee, “So, what’s the German sentence going to be?” Good question, no? “Ich bin ein Berliner” has already been taken. “Ja, wir können” seems a little too obvious. So what do you think it should be?

ETA (18:45): Wow, look at that crowd! I do believe that it extends all the way to the Brandenburger Gate itself…

ETA (19:14): The crowd is estimated at 100,000 or more. The German commentators keep saying how surprised they are that this reception is for a politician (and an American one at that) and not a rock star.

ETA (20:02): Loved it. It’s hard to decide which channel’s commentary to watch (the speech was on at least 6). We watched the speech itself on CNN to avoid the simultaneous translation.

Tags: Americana, Berlin, Germany

Finally, a stock market that can hold my interest

Home again after a lovely Easter weekend in Berlin. One of our stops this trip was the Brokers Bierbörse, a relatively normal bar with a small twist – beer prices vary over the course of the evening based on demand. Prices are displayed on flatscreen TVs around the bar, and you pay the price listed at the time you place your order.

The highlight of the evening, naturally, was the market crash.

Tags: beer, Berlin, Germany, travel

My TravelBox articles

My four weeks at TravelBox on Slate.com are coming to an end. Here’s a round-up of all my posts over there, for your reading pleasure:

Italy
A culinary layover in Milan
There’s more to the Veneto than Venice

Austria
An Easter weekend in Vienna
Seeking out wine in Vienna (or Wein in Wien)

Switzerland
Switzerland’s answer to Groundhog Day
Switzerland’s off season

Germany
Discovering Berlin’s divided past
Dresden rising

Tags: Austria, Berlin, Germany, holidays, Italy, milan, Switzerland, travel, Veneto, Vienna, Zurich

On Ampelmänner

I meant to write about this in connection with our trip to Germany in December, but I guess it got lost in the holiday shuffle. At any rate, Ampelmänner are back on my mind, so today you’re going to learn about them (or stop reading this post – unfortunately I haven’t found a way to force you to pay attention to me yet).

The Ampelmann, simply put, was the man on the pedestrian traffic lights in East Germany. He came into existence in the 1960s in East Berlin, and lights with his likeness were soon installed all over the country. He stands out amongst other pedestrian crossing signs because of his big hat, dramatic gesturings, and all-around adorableness. The Ampelmann was so popular that he made the jump from traffic symbol to film star in the 80s, coming to animated life in road safety movies that were compulsory viewing for school children. Thus the Ampelmann became even more loved by the East German people.

Flash forward to the 1990s, and the throws of German reunification. Actually ‘reunification’ is a misleading word, since the process was really more of an annexation. As the eastern bloc crumbled, the East German people watched much of their culture go with it. The government poured money into the East to rebuild its horribly-neglected infrastructure, trying to bring the East up to the standards of the West. The skylines of all the major cities were dominated by large cranes. Factories and consumer-goods companies closed left and right, unemployment soared, and life changed at such a fast pace that there was no time to mourn the disappearance of the country where the former East Germans had lived their entire lives.

In the process, the new government started replacing the East German Ampelmänner with the standard, boring West German crossing lights. The Ampelmann, like so many other bits of East German life, went all but extinct during the first half of the 90s. But the East Germans were not going to let him slip away so easily. In 1996 a ‘Committee for the Preservation of Ampelmänner’ was founded, and a resistance movement began.

The manufacture of Ampelmänner was recommenced, and throughout the late 90s the beloved East German crossing lights were reinstalled in cities and towns all over the East (except on major roadways, where the ‘official’ West German traffic signal is mandated by law). This happened while I was living there. It was great fun to hear the history of the Ampelmann from various East German friends, who remembered him fondly from their childhood.

The Ampelmann is now more popular than ever, making appearances as a cult icon on all kinds of consumer goods and tourist kitsch. He even has a girlfriend, the Ampelfrau, which I have only ever seen in Dresden. Keep an eye out for them the next time you find yourself in the former GDR.

Tags: Ampelmänner, Berlin, East Germany, German culture, Germany

A few more things about Berlin

Of course we did more than visit Christmas markets in Berlin in our four days there. Not that we can remember much after all that Glühwein… kidding, kidding. I remember a lot of stuff. Well, some.

To start off our second Berlin trip of the year, we first went to the ever-fascinating Checkpoint Charlie museum. The museum has expanded a lot since the last time I went through it, but it still contains all the exhibits I remember from years ago, like cars and suitcases and shopping bags modified to sneak people over the border. Outside of the museum, in the middle of Friedrichstrasse, a replica of Checkpoint Charlie has been erected, complete with actors dressed as American soldiers who will stamp your passport for two euros (I know this because my mother-in-law excitedly got a GDR visa stamped in hers; I was mildly amused but don’t have enough room in my passport for novelty stamps, even with its extra pages).

We spent a lot of time walking around the east, from Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburger Tor and down Unter den Linden to Museum Insel and Alexanderplatz. These are my favorite parts of the city, where the streets are dotted with cute little Ampelmänner (more on them later). I think the Berliner Dom is my favorite building in Berlin – I find myself staring at it whenever it’s within view.

We also took a trip over to the west on bus 100 (which is fun because it is double-decker and passes by a big chunk of the sites in both halves of the city). We visited the Gedächniskirche (the ruins of a church destroyed in WWII that have been left standing as a memorial) and the KaDeWe (a gigantic, famous department store where you can buy a tiny vial of vanilla extract for 25 euros).

Food is not Berlin’s strong point, at least not when you’re a vegetarian accompanied by someone who insists on eating at German restaurants for every single meal. I ate a lot of vegetable strudel and stuffed mushrooms and salad, and filled up on beer. We ended up eating in the Nikolaiviertel twice, since we weren’t having much luck finding restaurants that were open in other areas (everything was closed for the holidays). The Nikolaiviertel is an artificially adorable little neighborhood which was reconstructed to look like a historic town center. Basically it consists of a church, a couple cheesy handicraft shops, and a whole lot of German restaurants.

Berlin is so different now from when I lived there (in 1997). It’s amazing how much construction has gone on, how many new buildings there are. On this trip I saw the new Hauptbahnhof for the first time – I loved the architecture, but was less impressed with their Swarovski Christmas tree (Zurich’s was better). Still, Berlin is one of my favorite cities, and I’d be happy to live there again someday.

Tags: Berlin, Germany, travel

International Glühwein Tour 2006 (part 2: Berlin)

The last couple days of Glühwein tourism brought us back to Germany – specifically, Berlin and Dresden. I’m pleased to report we had great success in both cities, which offered up a variety of hot, seasonal beverages in a variety of Christmas markets.

First we headed to the ‘nostalgia market’ at Gendarmenmarkt, a relatively new Christmas Market that was specifically designed to be as cute and perfect as possible. Instead of Glühwein, many of the stands were advertising Feuerzangenbowle, which my extensive research revealed to be remarkably similar to Glühwein.

We also hit many other Christmas Markets around Berlin, including one on Unter den Linden and the one around the Gedächtniskirche. So many that after a while, they began to run together a little bit. One that stood out, at least by name, wasn’t a Christmas Market at all, but rather a Hanukkah Market. This took place in the courtyard of Berlin’s Jewish Museum.
We had to go through a metal detector to reach it (as everyone does to gain entrance into the museum). Around the market there were plaques in English and German which explained about Hanukkah and the holiday traditions of German Jews, which had developed into a sort of ‘Chrismukka‘ (‘Weihnukka’ in German) – a combination of Hanukkah and Christmas traditions that incorporated both their religion and the local celebrations that were mainstream in their country (something that occurs in the US, too). And of course, there was Glühwein.

Tags: Berlin, Christmas, Christmas markets, Germany, holidays, travel

Zurich raves, part one

The first time I heard about Street Parade (Striitpareid in Swiss German) was in my Swiss German class. It was listed in the ‘Holidays in Zurich’ section of our textbook, right next to Christmas, Sechseläuten, and Easter. That seemed wacky given that it is, at the end of the day, a giant outdoor rave. But I guess a tradition doesn’t have to be old to count as a holiday (this one has been around since 1992), and when you think about it, aren’t the costumes associated with other holidays (Santa suits, carnival costumes) just as silly as platform shoes and feather boas?

The description of this ‘holiday’ sounded suspiciously like something I had experienced years before while living in Berlin – the Love Parade. A little internet research reveals that the two are indeed related, as the guy who started the Street Parade got his inspiration from the Berlin version.

So as I mentioned, I went to the Love Parade once, many years ago. Apparently I was already an old woman in my early 20s, because I wasn’t that impressed. Sure the costumes were fun to see, but the techno music got old after about 5 minutes. The sun was pounding down on us all day, and the only beverages available were warm cans of beer being sold by some entrepreneurial types out of their clearly ineffective coolers. And standing in the middle of a crowd of a million people, being randomly smushed and moved along in no particular direction… well, less fun than it sounds.

The best part of the whole experience was the video made by a couple of my normally shy Swedish friends. Armed with a camcorder, they approached the ravers in the most outrageous costumes and asked if they could interview them for Swedish television. As the day went on (or I should say, as the beers went down), their ‘interview’ questions got bolder and weirder, and the resulting tape was a masterpiece that would unfortunately never reach a TV audience. A good title for it would have been ‘Everything you wanted to know about the man dressed up like a giant winged dildo but were afraid to ask.’

Anyway, back to the present. Given my memories of the Love Parade, I can’t say that I was thrilled to experience Zurich’s smaller-scale ‘demonstration in support of love, peace, freedom, generosity and tolerance,’ but I certainly wasn’t going to miss out on it, either. So we armed ourselves with the camera, bottles of water, and some rain gear (thundershowers were forecast for the entire day) and headed out. After all, according to my Swiss German textbook, go luege mues mer daa sälber!

To be continued…
(if you just can’t wait until tomorrow, you can go see more pictures here.)

Tags: Berlin, Germany, holidays, Switzerland, Zurich

I love love love Berlin

We spent Easter weekend in Berlin with Kesha and her giant husband (who, by the way, looked quite reasonably-sized among the Germans). I lived in Berlin for the summer of 1997, and hadn’t been back to the city since 1999, so I was eager to revisit my favorite parts and see how the place had changed in the past seven years. Here are some of the highlights from the trip.

Biennial. This large-scale art show was installed in a variety of buildings along Auguststraße in Berlin-Mitte, including private apartments, a ballroom, and a former Jewish girls’ school that has been abandoned for 10 years (and was re-opened just for this exhibit). It was the kind of exhibit that gets into your brain and makes you think, but doesn’t necessarily give you anything intelligent to say. For days afterwards, I went around critiquing almost everything I saw as art.

At the very start of Auguststraße, where it intersects with Oranienburgerstraße, I had the chance to briefly re-visit Tacheles. Back in 1997 it was a mostly gutted and bombed-out shell of a building that had been turned into a couple bars and a cinema by squatters. We used to go there often to see undubbed movies in English, and to drink cheap beer while watching the crazy variety of people around. Today the building has been renovated and glassed-in, but the remnants of the bombed-out part were left there (although cleaned up a bit).

Walking, drinking, more walking. We spent the better part of Saturday wandering through the heart of East Berlin. We started with some shopping and lunch in the hip neighborhood around Hackescher Markt, and then meandered towards Museum Insel, an island in the Spree River which is home to several museums and the magnificent Berliner Dom, an imposing, gorgeous neo-renaissance cathedral.

On our way to Alexanderplatz, the center of East Berlin and the home of the Fernsehturm, we visited the Ampelmann store, which was full of kitschy souvenirs featuring the adorable little guys from the East-German walk/don’t walk signs.

Next we headed to the Nikolaiviertel, an adorable little medival-style area that was created by East-German architects in the 1980s. There we found a nice outdoor café and I forced Kesha to try Berliner Weisse, a bizarre drink that is technically beer, but thanks to the sweet syrup flavoring (you can have “red” or “green”) it tastes more like something that should contain an umbrella. She actually liked it enough to order it again that night.

Afterwards we walked back towards Museum Insel and continued on along Unter den Linden, the showcase of East Berlin. This street, which leads to the former border crossing near Brandenburger Tor, was über-maintained by the GDR to show just how wonderful things were behind the iron curtain. Along the way we stopped to see the memorial at Bebelplatz and the fancy Peugeot design showroom (this is the boys’ fault), and also wandered through a couple random souvenir shops.

Reichstag Dome. When I lived in Berlin, the Reichstag was still under construction (and the federal government had not yet moved from Bonn), so it was fun to see the finished product. We had to wait in line for about an hour to get in, go through the metal detector, and hop in the elevator that whisked us up to the roof. The dome was actually a really nice piece of architecture, and we could look down upon the eagle that dominates the German parliament, which I had last seen in Bonn when the government was still there.

Film Museum. This brand-new museum presented the surprisingly interesting history of German cinema from before Metropolis to after Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run). The stories of the many German actors and directors who fled to Hollywood to escape the Nazis were fascinating. Plus, Marlene Dietrich is a babe.

Stasi Museum. On Sunday we sent our friends off to see the museum at Checkpoint Charlie (a must-see on your first trip to Berlin) and ran off to the Stasi Museum. Situated in the former headquarters of the East German secret police, deep in the heart of East Berlin, this museum is a fascinating reminder of the not-too-distant past. The exhibit is almost exclusively in German, so if you don’t speak the language, make sure you bring along someone who does. Some parts are understandable even without translation, such as the rooms full of various objects designed to hide spy cameras and guns, such as watering cans and briefcases.

Another remarkable thing about this museum is how old the actual Stasi offices seem, even though they were in full operation through 1989. There are no computers, no electric typwriters, and only the old manual-style telephone switchboards (not to mention 60s-era décor), mainly because the last head of the Stasi was an extremely paranoid man, who was convinced that if he used an electric typewriter, someone could find out what he was typing through the power lines.

You can also pick up an application to receive your Stasi file here; all East Germans are allowed to request their Stasi file and find out which of their neighbors were spying on them back in the day.

I was delighted to find that the café in the museum served Rotkäppchen Sekt, an East-German brand of sparkling wine which I remember fondly from my days in Halle. After drinking a bottle ourselves and grabbing another to bring back to Kesha the birthday girl, we headed back out into the cinderblock sub
urbs of East Berlin and took a subway back to Potsdamer Platz.

Potsdamer Platz. The whole area was just a giant Baustelle (construction site) when I lived in Berlin in 1997, so I was excited to see what it looked like now. It looks like the cross between a newly-built city business district and a newly-built American-style mall. But for some reason I liked it.

OK, the part I liked best was the martini bar in the lobby of the Marriot hotel at Potsdamer Platz. Not only were they beautifully presented, but they were delicious, too. My girl-drink-drunk husband thoroughly enjoyed his appletini (served with little marinated apples) and his cosmo (served with dried cranberries). I was ecstatic to learn of the existence of another kind of dry martini that was almost as yummy as a dirty martini – called a ‘salt and pepper’, it was made with Absolut Peppar and served with a salted rim (and blue-cheese-stuffed olives). Yum.
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On Monday morning, Scott flew back to Zurich and I hopped on a train to Halle, a city deep in the heart of East Germany that had been my home for three years.

Tags: art, bars, Berlin, East Germany, Germany, museums, Stasi, travel