ok, I guess I'm done

Look, it's my flight back home:


KLM is my new favorite airline for overseas flight. It has the best in-flight entertainment ever: your very own little screen with games, language tutorials (I learned and then immediately forgot some basic Arabic), and probably 100 movies on demand. Over the two long flights, I watched Singin' in the Rain, Juno, parts of Ratatouille and the last Harry Potter movie, and a couple of episodes of Frasier. It was great.

So, that was my vacation. Frankly, it was a lot of intellectual and emotional work. For my next trip, I would like to lie on a beach and have someone bring me fruity drinks. Kay Ray is looking for vacation ideas for the fall and I think she should go to, like, Cancun and take me with her. (Although that may be a dumb idea, what with the whole hurricane season thing.) (Also, I think Cancun would make me crazy in about two days.) (Ooh, but there's Mayan ruins...and cave diving....)

luisa miller

The reason I went to Leipzig for a day was to see a friend in an opera. The girlfriend of a former colleague of mine (he's now a freelancer in Berlin) is an opera singer, and she was appearing in Luisa Miller. It's a Verdi opera I didn't know at all. She had a small part but did a really lovely job, and it was *so* *cool* to see someone I know on stage! In an opera!! It was in Italian with German surtitles, so I could mostly follow it. And unlike the other opera I saw in Germany, it was not horrible. It was really a very nice production, with a cool revolving set.

Her last appearance on stage was about five minutes into the third act, and S.Ev and I had to leave after that to catch the last direct train back to Berlin. But there was no big break at her exit, so we waited. And waited. And waited. The next 15 minutes was a tender scene between Luisa Miller and her father, and we couldn't be like, ok, guys, thanks for the effort, we're leaving now! (Finally there was an opening and we ran down to the stage door to see her up close in stage makeup, wig, and costume with giant bustle. Heh.)

bach's church

The day before I came home (yes! the parade of vacation photos is about to end!), S.Ev and I took a day trip from Berlin down to Leipzig. The round trip train ticket cost 80 euros. I'm not even going to tell you how many dollars that is, because I can't believe I spent that much on a day trip. (S.Ev was able to get a discounted ticket.)

Leipzig was pretty cool - after a delicious (and cheap) brunch and an interesting (and free) visit to the Stasi Museum, S.Ev and I went to a concert (cheap) at Bach's church. This is where he spent most of his career.

The Thomaskirche has concerts every Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, we weren't there on a weekend when the Thomanerchor - the boys' choir Bach himself directed - was performing. But the choir we heard, a local women's choir, was very good and did a really interesting range of music. They even did a nice job with "Deep River," which, being in English, could have been pret-ty bad. (They got one vowel and one consonant wrong, but S.Ev says I was nitpicking.)

There's tons of music history in Leipzig - Bach, of course, and Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, apparently, was a big champion of Bach's music and helped get it rediscovered in the 19th century. Richard Wagner was born there, and the Schumanns lived there, too.

clever disguise

Construction? What construction?

Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas

This is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - it's commonly referred to as the Holocaust Memorial, but there are separate memorials (or plans to build them) for other groups of victims.

It's a full block of giant cement rectangles, on undulating ground and at various heights. At the edges they're a few inches high; as you walk to the middle, they're several feet over your head. It's on prime real estate a block from the Brandenburg Gate.

I frankly didn't get much out of the above-ground part of the memorial - both times I was there, European teenagers were chasing each other around the blocks. The underground museum, though, is powerful. The shapes of the blocks above extend through the ceiling and tell some of the personal stories. Then there's one room where a recording tells the stories of people who died; there isn't enough known about most people to talk about, but they say if they did tell each victim's story, at this rate it would take nearly seven years to finish.

Going to Auschwitz was awful, but this was the place that made the Holocaust most real. It's important to me to understand the geography of events, and through the room at the memorial that showed photos and maps and explanations of different concentration camps (and mass murders outside of concentration camps) - the ones you've heard of and many more you haven't - I put it all together in my head. It wasn't pleasant.

one, two, three

Last weekend one of the local public TV stations was showing the movie One, Two, Three. It's a Billy Wilder movie from 1961 about a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin who, yknow, experiences wacky hijinks. So I thought I'd give it a try, and it was great! Ok, it was during my naptime (when is it not my naptime?) and I had to get it from Netflix to watch the second half. But: thoroughly entertaining.

It's full of inappropriate jokes about communism and the war - there's a running joke about a guy who says he worked for the underground during the war. No, not the resistance, the subway. And there's the immortal line, "Look, if you guys could burn down the Reichstag, you can set a match to one measly marriage certificate!"

I thought 1961 would be an interesting time in West Berlin, because that's the year the Wall went up. And indeed - according to imdb, the border was closed partway through filming and they couldn't use the real Brandenburg Gate anymore.

So, I recommend it. Topic for discussion: Billy Wilder. Awesome or superawesome? I've seen probably six or seven of the 27 movies he directed, and they've all been awesome, so I think that adds up to one superawesome. Anyone else?

one more polar bear post

Look, Knut's getting a stamp. That link goes to his blog, which includes an English translation of the text on the stamp. I don't think it takes a working knowledge of German to realize that the English translation is wrong. This illustrates the danger of false cognates: "bewahren" doesn't mean "beware."

whole lotta polar bear

And now: a polar bear. No, not just any polar bear. Knut. He turned one in December, so he's not a baby anymore, but he's not a grownup, either.

He rolls in the sand!

He shakes himself!

He plays with water! (He didn't swim while I was there - bummer - but splashing is cute, too.)

He likes to have an audience!

He has merchandise!

He sleeps with - are you ready for this? No. No, I don't think you are. it's too cute.
NO.
Oh, ok.
He sleeps WITH HIS PAWS OVER HIS NOSE.

awesomely cheesy

I kind of ran out of steam on my vacation blogging, because I never know if anyone other than me is actually interested in my vacation. I mean, I don't want to be boring. But tonight I had dinner with E.C. before rehearsal and she reassured me that it's interesting, even if no one leaves comments. Which is not a blatant plea for comments (although I am not above that) but rather an acknowledgment that some posts aren't really the kind that require comments. Unfortunately, I have no other metric for interestingness, but I'm just going to forge ahead in the hope that what interests me must interest at least *some* other people.

Here's something that interests me: wacky museums. And the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie ("House at Checkpoint Charlie") is most definitely one of these. Checkpoint Charlie was the main gateway between East and West Berlin for non-Germans. The museum opened there in 1963 and loomed over the border until the wall fell. The museum reflects one dude's personal obsession with the wall.

The guy who started it had contacts in the escape-helper community, so it has tons of escape-related artifacts, like cars that were modified to hide people, ultra-lights that flew into East Germany and brought back friends and relatives, and a big old-fashioned console radio that a teenage girl escaped in. And a platform that a family used to escape with a hot-air balloon. And movies about escapes. And diagrams of tunnels. And so much more. There are photographs and writing everywhere you look. Whoever put it together wasn't overly concerned about objectivity, context, or whether one should avoid repeating the same information - even the same photographs - in different parts of the museum (sometimes even in the same room).

Here's a picture. See those two suitcases up at the top right corner? They have a hole cut between them, and a girl escaped in there.


I described the museum to S.Ev as "awesomely cheesy." I think it's too bad that this is the only exposure most people get to information about the Wall, because there are really fascinating and well-thought-out memorials in other places, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. There's nothing like a good wacky museum.

die BVG wird bestreikt

When I got back to Berlin, everything was all good for a day. Then everything went on strike. Ok, not everything. But the buses, the trams, and one of the two subway systems stopped running. One subway system, the one that doesn't have as many stops, was still going, so I was still able to get to most of the places I wanted to go, but still - annoying. Especially considering how much my darn feet hurt. (The day I left, I read in a newspaper at the airport that the other subway line was going on strike the next day.)

Apparently this happens fairly often. They even had these cute little bags ready to hang on bus stops and tell you there's no service:

poland to germany by sweat lodge

I took a night train from Krakow back to Berlin. Ok. I've taken night trains a few other times, and I have fond memories of the movement of the train rocking me to sleep and waking up more or less refreshed at my destination. We've already established that I disproportionately remember the good stuff, but I really thought I liked night trains.

Well, I was wrong. I had a couchette, so I was one in a compartment of six beds (five were occupied) and the heat was on and it was so. hot. It was really not comfortable. And everyone else seemed to be asleep, so I couldn't really open the window and make them all listen to the train noise. And when I left the door to the hallway cracked open a little, the guy in the bottom bunk would shut it. Thanks, dude.

The idea of the night train is to avoid giving up a day of sightseeing, but I basically ended up doing that anyway - I was so tired when I got to Berlin, I spent a lot of the day napping.

Anyone else? Experience with night trains? I swear I took a really lovely one once from Oslo to Stavanger in Norway, but that was in a compartment with just two beds and it was in summer, so, less scope for overheating.

concentration camp

I haven't posted in a couple of days because I've been putting off blogging about Auschwitz. It was horrible. I didn't think at the time it affected me that much, but it got worse and worse over the next two weeks. Anyway, here are some pictures.


The "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate was at the entrance to Auschwitz I, the first camp set up in the Polish town of Oświęcim. It looked nothing like I imagined - it was all solid brick buildings and a very small area. And if I remember correctly, people there died primarily from starvation. (Although many were executed, and it's also the camp where Joseph Mengele did his medical experiments.) The prisoners were forced laborers at German-owned factories nearby. The exterminations were at a different camp, Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was built later a few kilometers away.

It was raining pretty hard the day I was there, and it was the very beginning of March, and there were still a lot of people. Most people were in tour groups. I was glad I saw it by myself. Leaving the fenced-in area of the camp:


This next picture is the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazis destroyed most of the camp when they retreated. This camp is where the large-scale exterminations took place.


In the next picture: Those rail lines brought people in. On the bare patch where the rail lines split, that's the ramp where the "selections" took place - where the Nazis decided who would live and who would go straight to the gas chambers.


Beyond those fences (below, looking across the ramp) were once rows and rows of barracks. Birkenau is vast, over 400 acres.

Ruins of a gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau:

Over a million people died at the Auschwitz camps, the vast majority of them Jews. Here's the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's entry on Auschwitz.

hotel saski

I upgraded greatly, accomodations-wise, in Krakow. My room had high ceilings, extreme cleanliness, a bed I didn't have to make myself, and TV. TV! I feel a little shallow for being so excited about TV, but I *like* watching TV when I travel. Partly because, unlike my house, hotels have cable (European hotels don't have Comedy Central, but CNN International carries the Daily Show) and partly because it's fun to watch local TV.

My hotel TV got five or six Polish channels, about four German channels, German MTV, CNN International, BBC World, and Eurosport. (My favorite sports channel.) One night I sat in my hotel room and flipped back and forth between a table tennis tournament on Eurosport and In Her Shoes dubbed in German. So my TV gave me random international sports...and language practice!

Oh, the hotel, if you're looking for a place to stay in Krakow: Hotel Saski. Superb location half a block from the town square; includes a giant buffet breakfast of deliciousness; nice staff; I paid a little over $100 a night (stupid weak dollar) but it was worth it.

off to poland

At 6:30 on a Thursday morning, I got on a train in Berlin and headed to Poland. I barely slept the night before, I was so worried about getting around with no Polish knowledge and freaked out about going to Auschwitz. So, once I got on the train, I pretty much passed out and woke up seven hours later in Warsaw. Well, I also woke up every time a conductor came by and woke me up so he/she could check my ticket. (Unfortunately, I don't know how to say in Polish: "Dude, I've been sitting here since we left Berlin. My ticket is still valid.")

buses

Check it out, in Berlin they can tell you exactly what buses are coming and when. D.C. is supposed to get a system like this, but...I'll believe when I see it. Actually, I won't even believe it then. They have the displays in some bus stops, but I've never seen them show any information.

In Berlin some of the main routes also have double-decker buses. They're yellow and awesome. Part of the awesomeness is that they go along major tourist routes and allow you to feel superior to the people who pay $30 a day to ride the tourist buses. Here's the view out the front of the upper level of one of the buses:

bahnhof zoo

Remember the memoir I was reading, about teenage heroin addicts and prostitutes in Berlin in the 70's? Well, I went to the main location of the book - the Zoologischer Garten train station, known as Bahnhof Zoo. So, yeah, it's just a train station. (And considerably cleaned up in the last 30 years.) But it was a handy place to buy my ticket to Poland.

Also, this is the "Zoo Station" of the U2 song - it used to be where all the trains came in from Western Europe, but they've built an awesome new main train station a few miles away.



I wanted to go see the housing project where the main person in the book grew up, too, but by the time it came up on my list o' tourism, the subway was on strike.

I'm about halfway through that memoir now, and I've learned lots of sex- and drugs-related vocabulary, but I don't think I'm going to finish - it's gotten where she's using heroin a couple of times a day, and I just can't handle all the needles.

nefertiti

It's fun to visit famous pieces of art:

The Egyptian Museum has a great collection, and I don't see much Egyptian art regularly, but I was just too museumed out after the Pergamon Museum to spend much time there.

italian teenagers

I was really looking forward to going to the Pergamon Museum, because about 10 years ago I went to Pergamon - it's in Turkey - and it was totally cool. But I always thought, I'm never going to make it to Berlin to see the stuff from here. And voila. I made it to Berlin.

So my expectations for the Pergamon Museum were probably a little too high, and the view of the Pergamon altar (which German archaeologists dug up, brought back, and reconstructed) was obstructed by masses of Italian teenagers. I don't actually know if they're all Italian, but they were various teenagers from various European countries, and they were in my way wherever I went in Berlin. (Not always the same ones, I assume.)

Once I kind of got over the teenagers, the various friezes from Pergamon were really pretty cool.The museum also has a big collection of Islamic art and a few other ginormous things like the Pergamon altar.

It turned out that my favorite part was the Greek and Roman sculpture, which I didn't know I liked. But look at this guy:

What's not to love?

shopping cart technology of awesomeness

The grocery store near S.Ev's is on two levels, and the way you get to the basement is down a moving walkway ramp thing. The first time I went there I stood at the top for like two minutes unable to figure out what I was supposed to do. Turns out, when you put the cart on the ramp, it sets a brake of some kind so your cart doesn't get away from you.


Excellent, right?

church of reconciliation

The Church of Reconciliation was built on Bernauer Straße in the late 19th century. It happened to be on the south side of the street, so when the border closed, the church was in the east. Most of the congregation just happened to be in the west, and eventually no one was allowed to go there from either side. For decades it sat in the death strip and border guards went around it, but in 1985 the East German government did this:



Which, I mean, talk about your terrible PR. Everybody could see that happening, idiots.

This is the church that is there now:


It's really lovely, made mostly of wood and packed earth. They have a service every weekday in honor of one of the people who died trying to escape.