And I'm going to blame it all on Berlin. While other pictures have been gathering, and other little day trips have been patiently waiting to be described, Berlin has been sitting heavily in the way, refusing description.
The problem is that there is always just too much to say about Berlin. When I lived there it was great: I would write every couple weeks with some new observation, and I felt like there was an endless well to draw from. Now though, we've visited twice -- two very full weekend trips -- and I have just a very limited representation of pictures (I can be really terrible with taking pictures when I'm with friends, or in places that I know well...). And there's so much to express that I'm just left mute.
The thing about Berlin is that it's got so many layers of rich history -- and they're piled on top of each other, intermingling nicely, grating against one another (think: WWII, Berlin Wall, etc, etc)... And on top of that, there is my own personal history with Berlin, written across all of the streets; my visceral memories of learning Berlin by bike, a year of interacting with the layers...
Better just dive in.
So here is the Berliner Dome.
From my personal history, this is one of the first Berlin sights that I became acquainted with: when I first visited Berlin back in 2003 with Chamber Singers from APU, this is where we performed in the premiere concert version of Eric Whitacre's "Paradise Lost" -- so we spent lots of time inside here rehearsing...But, back to collective history: here are some bullet holes, speckling the Dome. Walking around these huge grand buildings, it's strange to imagine them as battle grounds, hard to imagine WWII being fought in these streets -- but they provide these little reminders of what they've been through.
Following in the war vein, below is a picture of Jacob in one of the Holocaust memorials.
I think this memorial is really great. It takes up a city block, and from the sidewalks at the edge it just looks like a sea of pillars. Once you start to walk in, however, you start to feel the impact of the memorial. When you walk in along the lanes of the pillars, you start to feel that the ground and the horizon is shifting (the pillars lean a bit, and the ground is shaped in hills), and you get glimpses of the outside at the intersections that are sometimes very surprising and jarring. It feels very quiet, but also unsteady...
Very close to this memorial is the Brandenburg Gate -- one of the most common symbols of Berlin. You may recognize it from footage of the Berlin Wall coming down -- some of the most dramatic film clips that they showed internationally were from the section of wall that ran right in front of this gate.
Berlin is still in the process of healing from the wall. Below you can see the double layer of stones in the street, running as a reminder of the barrier that used to exist there.
Here is a display to show what it was like when the wall was functioning -- it was much more than a wall. In most places there were multiple barriers/walls, with sand and a moat, etc in between, and watchtowers to prevent any attempts to cross...
From the ground, peeking through a crack on the far side of the display...
...this is what you see: sand, barriers, the wall on the other side...
Below is a portion of the wall that they left standing, along the river, called the Eastside Gallery. When the wall was functioning, there was no grafitti or anything on the Eastern side, because no one in the East could get within reach of it without being shot. Now, however, this portion of the wall is covered in paintings.
Below is the Oberbaum Bridge -- an important pedestrian crossing between East and West.
And, swinging back to my personal history, that bridge was really close to my apartment, and I loved to ride my bike across it, in the covered walkway. It's such a beautiful way to cross the river -- especially late at night, coming home.
Finally, I'll leave you with one of my favorites -- the TV Tower peeking out behind a very old church at Alexanderplatz.
And of course, I have no pictoral evidence of some of the best parts of our visits: meeting up with old friends (Kara, Sigi, Deia, Carrie), and new (our amazing CouchSurfing host Thomas!), hanging out in several great parks, revisiting my old neighborhood, a trip to the woods, a trip to the top of the TV Tower, seeing a fabulous fountain made up of statues depicting different fairy tales... And each of these deserve a chapter of their own -- but this is all I can manage for now.
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