Jewbacca.com - Entry from Europe Journal - Summer 2003 in Berlin, Germany

So here is my travel journal from my backpacking trip to Europe. It's more involved than my day log stuff that's already been up the site. There has been some complaining (you know who you are) that my daylog was rather boring and that it focused too much on the details of transportation. I can't promise that this is less boring, but's there's certainly a hell of lot more of it. Occasional parts of the journal have been omitted to protect the (not-so)innocent. These parts really weren't that common, but hey - use your imagination. Keep in mind that this is a journal and things like punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph breaks, grammar, and spelling may or may not been a part of the writing process. Not to mention my almost criminal use of parenthesis. Like my pictures, the writing is quite erratic as far as consistency of content. The journal style kind of mutates over the course of the trip. Read at your own risk.

6/29 - Berlin, Germany

I'm more than halfway to Prague, but this entry concerns Berlin. I left this afternoon, after having been there one night. For some reason I thought there was a night train, but I was mistaken. When I left Brussels on Friday night, I stayed up a bit late talking to some Korean girls I met in the station, as well as the rest of the people in their cabin.

The Korean girl who spoke more English kept making amusingly blunt comments (example: talking to a couple: 'Is she your girlfriend?' 'Yes' 'So you love her?'). Entertaining, although I still haven't caught up on my sleep. Got into Berlin around 8 am, and managed to get a bed at Circus, one of 'Europe's Famous Hostels' (this is the 4th or 5th one I've been to). They were quite accommodating and let me use a shower even though check in wasn't til 2 pm. Having cleaned up a bit, I set out on what is my daily routine at this point: sightseeing. First I went to the Eastside Gallery, which is a 1.3 km stretch of what's left of the Berlin Wall.

East Side Gallery (a 1.3km strech of the remaining wall)

It's covered in murals painted shortly after the reunification, most of which have faded or succumbed to graffiti and people taking a piece (I watched several people do it). About a 3rd of them were redone in a few years ago, and those were pretty interesting.

From there I walked down into the Mitte area, and went to Haus am Checkpoint Charlie (a museum about occupied Berlin).

It was a really interesting, lots of information (thankfully in English, as well several other languages). They had all sorts of devices used for getting across the wall (gliders, balloons, homemade scuba gear, fake US military uniforms, and trick cars, suitcases and welding machines to mention a few). It also was a lot larger than I thought it was at first, I'd turn a corner thinking that was all, and then there'd be a whole other wing. After that I headed up to Potsdamer Platz.

I knew that the Christopher Street Day Parade was going on that day, and I walked right into the preparations for it. I went into the Film Museum, which was really neat (I've been really enjoying going to non painting related museums lately). The silent film section was great, lots of clips you could watch and all sorts of info on German actresses(not many actors) and directors from the time period. They also had an entire section on Marlene Dietrich, including wardrobe and some very entertaining film clips. They also had a SciFi section dealing with special effects from stop motion models to modern CG. It was a little low on substance, but still amusing. When I came out of the museum, the parade was in full swing, and it was immediately apparent that it was a gay pride parade (I hadn't known what the parade was for). Floats in this parade seemed to be composed entirely of buses or trucks playing loud music and full of half naked people dancing.

After that I walked passed the Reichstag and went looking for Bebelplatz, the square famous for a huge Nazi book burning in 1933. When I got there, I found that the square had been ripped up and was under construction of some sort.

The guidebook said to look under the glass plate, and I was dying of curiosity. There was one small part in the middle left untouched, so I squeezed through one of the fences and walked over (several people then followed my example). I found the glass, and wiped away about an inch of construction dust, under which was a recessed cube holding empty bookshelves.

The only part of Bebelplatz not ripped up by construction - under the glass is a set of empty bookshelves

Very interesting idea for a memorial (not sure if that's the right word, seeing as how it was books, not people). After that I went back to the hostel and passed out. Slept for a couple of hours and then went to an 11:30 showing of the Matrix Reloaded. Yes, I'd already seen it, but this was in IMAX. The place where the theater was extremely cool, it's a partially open air mall covered by a very high glass ceiling. Neat architecture, I somehow managed not to take a picture. I'd been there earlier (the film museum is there), but it looked much better at night. The Matrix wasn't altered for IMAX, but it still looked great on that big of a screen. Also, it made a hell of a lot more sense this time around. Fortunately the subway was still running when I got out at 2 am, cause I was a decent ways away from the hostel. For some reason (impatience I would guess) I decided to walk from the second station (there was a transfer, much closer than the first). Nothing happened, but it's amusing what imagined dangers danced through my head as I walked down the dark streets. This morning I slept in til about 10:30, thanks to a heavenly noon checkout time. After discovering there was no night train to Prague, I put my pack in a locker and went to see what I could in 4 hours. I stopped by the Neue Synagogue

, which has giant concrete blocks in front of it for about a block (for car bombs I would imagine). Headed to the Brandenburg Gate

, and then wandered through the Tiergarten, stopping at the Siegessäule

, which was unfortunately closed. Then I went to the Kaiser-Wilgelm-Gedächniskirche, church partially bombed out in WWII (also closed, damn sundays). I had some schnitzel and potatoes nearby before heading back to the train station.

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