Forty-Five: Ich bin ein Berliner

I'm not supposed to like Germany, but I do. There, I said it. I like Germany and I like the 3 or 4 Germans I've met. This time, we went to Berlin to visit cousin Phoebe and her scandalously young boyfriend Matt. They are living in Berlin and touring (oh musicians) around for a couple of months. We stayed near Checkpoint Charlie and spent most of our time in East Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie is a festive microcosm of capitalism (imagine saying that 25 years ago). Lots of souvenir shops, commemorative passport stamping stands, soldiers posing for pictures with tourists for a euro. Also, you can now rent a Trabant - formerly the most common car in East Germany - for a 'City Safari'. Times do change. We saw what's left of the wall, lots of new development in the former 'dead zone', the Holocaust Memorial (I don't think I ever need to see another of these), the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstadt. We strolled along Unter den Linden, walked through Prenzlauerberg and neighborhoods in Kruetzberg, counted Ampelmen, drank beers and saw some crazy art at a squat. We tested out several new playgrounds. We met some of Phoebe's German friends and attended an open mic night at Madam Claude's. We ate some schnitzel and bratwurst, hung around Gendarmenmarkt and several Platzes (Bebel, Potsdamer, Pariser), parks and monuments. The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is something; a huge entry portal (think The Neverending Story) flanked by statues of kneeling soldiers with submachine guns and bowed heads opens onto a park. Rows of sarcophagi and stone reliefs depicting the war from the Soviet point of view lead to a colossal soldier carrying an excalibur sword and a kid and crushing a swastika under his boot.



All in all it was a pretty fantastic weekend, and I want more. Berlin is like Paris in that it's just too huge to assess in one short visit.