July 15-17 Berlin, Germany
We were going from one group of fun people to
the next. In Berlin, met up with Jan-Eric, a good friend of Kelly's sister, and stayed in
the flat of one of his friends.
Jan-Eric had a final to deal with, but we still
were able to have dinner with him and meet his friends Oliver, Nicole, and Nils. They told
us we had to see the InfoBox which highlighted all of the changes going on in the
Potsdamer Platz area of the city.
The Potsdamer Platz area formed the largest
construction site in the world; we thought that little honor would have been bestowed on
Chicago. We saw photos Jan-Eric had taken of the area just four months ago, and it looked
like a completely different corner. There was a line-up of gigantic buildings, Sony,
Daimler-Chrysler, and several others had taken over the area.
It was fairly impossible to tell where the wall
had been. We learned later that much of the city's land was divided up soon after the wall
came down. Unfortunately there had been no universal plan for the area, so it was snatched
up piecemeal. Hence, the buildings aren't too aesthetically pleasing and they weren't
designed to work together--to give a "feel" to the area. Massive capitalism is
the feel we got!
We saw the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag
and wandered through the Tiergarten. The flat we were staying at was in the Turkish area
of the city, which was appropriate because we were writing about Turkey for this site at
the time!
After our first day of exploring we felt the
need for a "down day" and didn't get to see much of the former Eastern part of
the city. We were sorry it happened while we were there for such a short time, but we
figure we'll be back. Unfortunately, when Kelly opted to bypass Berlin for Switzerland 10
years ago she also figured it (and the Wall) would still be there when she returned. Oh
well. Hopefully Berlin has seen enough major changes for at least another decade or so.
We did meet up with Jan-Eric and his friends
for a night of clubbing at the Oxymoron. Although it seemed to be an "off" night
for the place, it was a beautiful evening and we rather enjoyed sitting outside and
chatting instead.
We opted to stay up the rest of the night
because we had to catch a 7 a.m. train to Prague for our volunteer workcamp. Auf
wiedersehen!
