Well, I’ve been in Berlin for nearly two months now, and in a few days I’ll be taking a bus to Leipzig, center of the huge protests that helped to topple the Berlin Wall in 1989. I’ll be staying there for two weeks (no time at all compared to Berlin), but hopefully I’ll be able to get a good sense of the city and its history. Meanwhile, I’ve had an amazing time in Berlin. I feel fairly good about the amount of sketches and drawings and photos I’ve made while here, and though I could go on exploring this city for much longer (there are still a handful of places which I won’t be able to see) I’m very satisfied. Here’s my favourite things that I’ve done in Berlin, ranked. Most of the stuff I enjoyed so much because it was so significant to my thinking in terms of creating a body of artistic work, but then there was other stuff that was just plain fun.
5: The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Okay, it’s technically in Oranienburg just outside of Berlin, but oh well.
Given the size of the camp and museum, it was like a totally different experience the second time around. For one thing, this time I came without a tour, and entered for free as a result. I came with the intention of sketching more than I had before, and seeing more of the museum than I had before. I didn’t grasp the size of the place the first time. Anyway, morbid as I am, I enjoy learning about the horrific history that took place within the guarded walls of places like Sachsenhausen. To see how prisoners lived and died, were stripped of their citizenships, possessions, family and friends, is a potent experience. Both times that I came here, I experienced a long period of being alone, seeing no people in any direction. I could find things for myself and was often surprised at what I stumbled across. For example, one of the exhibition rooms, full of artefacts and explanatory signs, has stairs leading into the basement that I never noticed. I went down there and found shockingly political artworks painted on the walls. They were cartoons of anthropomorphized vegetables going about daily camp life: washing, being inspected, walking from place to place. They were painted by Hans Fischer, who was apparently popular Germany during and after the Third Reich. However, the paintings are clearly cynical of camp life, with the ‘guard’ carrots sharpening knives, little vegetables dragging big bloated vegetables, and potatoes being herded in large numbers into baths (the Nazis often pretended that the gas chambers were “showers” to get cooperation from prisoners). The paintings, to clarify, were done during the Soviet occupation of the camp, when Fischer was held for three years in captivity. I couldn’t believe such tongue-in-cheek political art was painted and left up during the entire operating time of the Soviet concentration camp. Also during this second visit, I also stumbled across the extension of the camp erected when the Soviets took control of it in 1945. It was basically like a third-world village of stone shacks. Nobody else was around, as if people didn’t know that this area was still part of the museum. I also entered one of the watch towers where an odd and incredibly out-of-the-way little exhibition was set up, detailing individual instances of death and suffering in the camp. This is one of the places I visited that filled me with a strong desire to go online as soon as I got home and order every history book on the Holocaust that I could find.
I wrote more on my first time visiting the camp in one of my January 2016 blog posts.
Given the size of the camp and museum, it was like a totally different experience the second time around. For one thing, this time I came without a tour, and entered for free as a result. I came with the intention of sketching more than I had before, and seeing more of the museum than I had before. I didn’t grasp the size of the place the first time. Anyway, morbid as I am, I enjoy learning about the horrific history that took place within the guarded walls of places like Sachsenhausen. To see how prisoners lived and died, were stripped of their citizenships, possessions, family and friends, is a potent experience. Both times that I came here, I experienced a long period of being alone, seeing no people in any direction. I could find things for myself and was often surprised at what I stumbled across. For example, one of the exhibition rooms, full of artefacts and explanatory signs, has stairs leading into the basement that I never noticed. I went down there and found shockingly political artworks painted on the walls. They were cartoons of anthropomorphized vegetables going about daily camp life: washing, being inspected, walking from place to place. They were painted by Hans Fischer, who was apparently popular Germany during and after the Third Reich. However, the paintings are clearly cynical of camp life, with the ‘guard’ carrots sharpening knives, little vegetables dragging big bloated vegetables, and potatoes being herded in large numbers into baths (the Nazis often pretended that the gas chambers were “showers” to get cooperation from prisoners). The paintings, to clarify, were done during the Soviet occupation of the camp, when Fischer was held for three years in captivity. I couldn’t believe such tongue-in-cheek political art was painted and left up during the entire operating time of the Soviet concentration camp. Also during this second visit, I also stumbled across the extension of the camp erected when the Soviets took control of it in 1945. It was basically like a third-world village of stone shacks. Nobody else was around, as if people didn’t know that this area was still part of the museum. I also entered one of the watch towers where an odd and incredibly out-of-the-way little exhibition was set up, detailing individual instances of death and suffering in the camp. This is one of the places I visited that filled me with a strong desire to go online as soon as I got home and order every history book on the Holocaust that I could find.
I wrote more on my first time visiting the camp in one of my January 2016 blog posts.
4: Meeting the Managers of the Watch Tower
I also wrote about this in one of the January 2016 blog entries. It was the first time while in Berlin that I really connected with someone, based on the interest in history. I had gone to the cold war-era watch tower near Potsdam to do a sketch or three. The person who was watching the tower that day came over with interest and asked about the sketches. One thing led to another, we ended up talking, and he offered to let me climb the tower for free (after giving me a number of postcards of the site). He was really very friendly and even offered to meet me some time later. We exchanged email addresses and had dinner later on. We met with the person who organized the preservation of the watch tower in the first place, Joerg Moser-Metius, afterwards, and visited his apartment. There, I got to see a ton of historical artefacts from the era of German division: original military and border patrol uniforms, of all ranks and varieties, original sign boards announcing things like “You are now leaving the American sector,” and French/Russian equivalents, a huge fiberglass East German coat-of-arms, real weapons used by the GDR government, and artistic photographs taken by a military correspondent on both sides of the wall. There was a signed document from Mikhail Gorbachev congratulating Moser-Metius on the success of the exhibition, and more. The whole experience was amazing. It was absolutely weird to think that simply sketching a guard tower (which I’d had no interest in even entering, initially) led to all this interacting and learning. I never thought I’d be privileged enough to see a private collection of things like this. I think the work that the Berlin Wall Expo team are doing is absolutely wonderful. Their website can be found here: http://berlinwallexpo.de/en/
3: Organ Concert at the Berliner Dom
The Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) is one of Berlin’s most iconic landmarks. Still blackened by the fire and ash that covered the place due to bombing, it’s a huge place. Immediately upon finding it, only a few days into my trip, I wanted to go inside. Unfortunately, getting in for free means waiting. The usual way people get in is by paying for guided tours. I didn’t want another case of being herded place to place without really being allowed to linger, so I thought about going in the alternative way: I could either attend mass (no thanks), or go to one of the cathedral’s occasional free concerts. They have pricier concerts as well, but after seeing on their website that there were free ones coming up in February, I decided to go in that way. It was billed as a student organ concert. I had somewhat low expectations because of the mention of “student,” but was blown away. First of all, the inside of the inside of the cathedral was incredible. Much of it was rebuilt after the bombings of World War Two, but it flowed seamlessly together and I couldn’t tell which parts were restoration and which were original. The organ was on the left as I came in, and, placed on a high balcony, was at least two stories tall. It naturally had the power to make the room quake on its loudest notes—the wooden pews vibrated with the music. That organ made the whole place come alive, and I could place myself into the history of the stone while listening to renditions of Bach and Liszt. The music lasted for two hours, and I can’t describe the feeling of it. I did a sketch for the first half, and for the second half, I bundled up my jacket into a pillow and laid down on the pews, facing the ceiling. There weren’t many people in the place, so it was easy to do without bothering anyone. From there I just stared up at the ceiling and stared at the intricate architecture which had been rebuilt over catastrophic bombing damage in the 1950s. It was amazing. The music went right along with the architecture, and I knew that music like this had filled the space for over four hundred years. After it ended and people began clearing out, I took a ton of photos given the low light. If I ever come back to Berlin I will certainly try to get in to their free concerts again. I’m sure they’re just as good as the pricier ones.
2: Hohenschoenhausen Stasi Prison
This is another one that I already wrote a full blog post about (dated under January 2016). You can check it out with more detail there. Like the concentration camp, I visited this place twice, the second time with a press pass that allowed me to move freely through the museum. I included this on the list because it was one of the few times where I had (almost) full control to explore, sketch and photograph a historical site as I wanted. I am so glad that I took the effort to contact the museum’s press associate to authorize this extra-exploration. Normally, visitors are only able to see the prison via guided tours and aren’t allowed to wander. I saw as many rooms as I could, did a big series of sketches that I’m sure I can use for some strong larger works, and was allowed to really sink into the atmosphere of echoing, empty hallways. It was one of those times where I could clearly understand the day-to-day of the prison (having seen the movie “The Confession,” from 1970 directed by Costa-Gavras, helped). The museum had hallway after hallway of prison cell, interrogation room, documentation rooms for new inmates, rooms where psychological torture was carried out (physical torture slowed to a trickle after the East German government took the prison over), and offices of administrators of the prison. I could zone out and totally immerse myself in the history of the place, and the sketches I made when I went back just flowed the whole seven hours I was there. Really glad that the staff and press associate accommodated my request and made everything easy.
1: The Abandoned Refugee Center/Meeting Mascha
Okay, yeah, I’m not decisive enough to have an indusputible “favourite” thing that I did in Berlin. Whatever. The two things that made up my best times in Berlin are still worth writing about side-by-side, despite being two totally different experiences. It taught me that the best things can often come out of just taking things in your own hands and breaking away totally from typical tourist experience.
The Abandoned Stuff
I already wrote extensively about the abandoned refugee center that I explored in my previous blog post, but I could keep talking about it. The experience was unlike anything I had done before. Climbing a tall fence with “do not enter” signs everywhere, ducking to keep out of sight of surrounding people, and finding a whole new, illegal world to explore was really memorable. I could see what happens when million-dollar facilities go to waste and rot, with plants and weeds forcing their way through broken windows, with signs of life and death everywhere, uncleaned for the past fourteen years. There was always a sense of danger—the place was incredibly ominous, but that was part of why it was so exciting to be there. The fact that there were hints that the place was about to be developed into an apartment complex (the trees that once surrounded the abandoned buildings had been cleared by construction vehicles) added to the interest, making me think I might be one of the last to see the place in such a state. It was also, of course, tied into history—the buildings had been part of the Balkan refugee crisis of the late 90s, and so paralleled the Syrian refugee crisis of the day. I’d gone to Berlin to see history and signs of the past, and that’s exactly what I got here. It was undiluted, raw, without tourists or explanatory signs (or safety, for that matter). I can still clearly feel how thrilled I was after I got out of the place again—walking down the street and realizing that I had gotten away with it, that nobody had seen me.
It’s certainly gotten me thinking of doing things like this again. I would write more detail on it here, but I’ve already written so much on it. For more detail and photos, check out the other blog entry (also under February 2016).
It’s certainly gotten me thinking of doing things like this again. I would write more detail on it here, but I’ve already written so much on it. For more detail and photos, check out the other blog entry (also under February 2016).
Hanging out with Mascha
And tied for the best thing I did in Berlin: meeting Mascha. I guess I’m not as anti-social as I thought? And I never would have guessed that I would have been able to actually make friends in Berlin. I’m usually so withdrawn and introverted that I would go through most days only talking to people in order to buy tickets to go into a museum or get food at the grocery store. Minimal human interaction. Sometimes I’d meet people and briefly talk with them or hang out a little (I met a fellow Canadian at the Stasi prison tour and took the S-Bahn back into central Berlin with him, we talked about history and staying in Berlin, for example), but nothing really extended.
I met Mascha through another friend, Marie, who lives in another part of Germany. Marie let me know that she had a friend currently staying in Berlin, and asked if she wanted to get me in touch with her. I figured it’d be cool, though I was honestly quite nervous about it. I had to ask if she spoke good English so I could at least interact without embarrassing myself! Then I sent Mascha a few emails and we talked a bit. Being that she seems as much a dork for cartoons and heavy metal as I am, I figured we could probably get along alright. She wanted to meet me at a comic convention. I was picturing something fairly big, with cosplayers and nerds everywhere, with tons of vendors and artists and a big room. I was surprised when the directions I got turned me down a small residential apartment street. There was a bar on the corner that I nearly walked past. The ‘convention’ was in the basement of this bar. It consisted of five tables and people shuffling around in the dim light. By the time Mascha showed up (only ten minutes later), I’d seen everything. At first, I found the interaction kinda awkward, and the whole thing was quickly looking like exactly what I had been afraid of—neither of us were saying much to each other, and not five minutes in, she said she had to go smoke and disappeared upstairs. I actually kinda thought that she wouldn’t come back!
We left shortly after that and sorta started walking and talking, and then we went back to the bar for a drink (being the sober wuss that I am, I only took a sip from her water bottle, heheh). Throughout the night, we basically walked and talked all over the place. Mascha wanted to show me some of the local metal bars. She turned out to be really awesome—we showed each other our sketchbooks, discussed metal bands and music in general, and shared stories. Mascha speaks Russian, English and German, from the Ukraine, and travels at least as much as I hope to be able to travel myself, going around Europe and the UK. Absolutely awesome. She seems to know everything about going from one place to another on the cheap, from finding work fast to making use of food banks and the like. Kind of a backpacker, in other words?
We ended up going to three bars: one we left right away because they were only playing sports on the TV (boring). The second one we sat around in for a couple hours. Learned something about Europe that night: smoking inside bars is a-okay. I usually get sick pretty quickly from being around cigarette smoke, but I actually handled it pretty decently, and the conversation was strong enough that I didn’t mind as much as I would normally. Mascha was pretty considerate about it and asked me occasionally if I needed to step out for air. She made sure not to blow smoke in my direction :D The bar was really cool—the ceiling was covered in guitars of all kinds. We were sitting next to a framed and signed Jeff Beck guitar.
The next bar we went to was one that Mascha called the “Judas Priest bar,” and I could immediately see why. Inside, peering through the fog of cigarette smoke, I saw that nearly every decoration on the wall and ceiling was Judas Priest inspired: there were life-size statues of Rob Halford and his motorcycle, a floor-to-ceiling statue of the “Killing Machine” album art, etc. There were flat screen TVs playing metal music videos, demons on the wall, etc. It was so casual in there that Mascha and I ended up sitting on a windowsill. We also got free pretzels! Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this place—the brightest thing in the room was the TV screens.
We actually had to get through a gigantic police blockade to get in to the area where a few of the bars were. Thinking of the attacks in Paris and the recent threat in Munich, I was understandably nervous to see literally hundreds of full-armed cops with riot gear and big guns standing all around, accompanied by dozens of armoured police vehicles. I was hesitant of getting any closer to things, figuring we’d either give up or take a long way around to get to the bar. Mascha just strolled confidently up to the line of cops and asked in German how to get through. Turns out that the cops weren’t altogether blocking people from getting around, but they were forcing people to bottleneck, only letting a few people in at once. There was a protest going on within their perimeter, and because of the amount of people and police I couldn’t read a single sign. I had the suspicion that this sign-blocking was intentional—maybe it was some sort of hate-oriented protest? I don’t know. Anyway, we pressed through the police perimeter, but there was always at least one police van per block pretty much all the way up to the area with all the bars. When we came back through a few hours later, the cops and protesters were all gone.
In the end, meeting Mascha was one of the few times where I truly felt at home in Berlin. I’d been sure that we probably wouldn’t be hanging out for much longer after that ‘comic convention,’ but we didn’t end up going home until around one in the morning. I didn’t think it could be so easy to meet friends internationally. I’m thankful that she took the time to learn English at some point, because (since I speak German so badly) it wouldn’t have been possible for us to hit it off otherwise! Also glad that Marie (my other friend) got me in touch with her.
When I leave Berlin, she will be leaving to visit New York City for a few months. It’s going to be her first time in America. I wish her luck! We’ll probably keep in touch afterwards. Actually, we’re planning on meeting up again just before I leave for Leipzig. Also, last thing, I took a picture of Mascha in mid smoke-blow, and I’m honestly pretty proud of it, haha.
I met Mascha through another friend, Marie, who lives in another part of Germany. Marie let me know that she had a friend currently staying in Berlin, and asked if she wanted to get me in touch with her. I figured it’d be cool, though I was honestly quite nervous about it. I had to ask if she spoke good English so I could at least interact without embarrassing myself! Then I sent Mascha a few emails and we talked a bit. Being that she seems as much a dork for cartoons and heavy metal as I am, I figured we could probably get along alright. She wanted to meet me at a comic convention. I was picturing something fairly big, with cosplayers and nerds everywhere, with tons of vendors and artists and a big room. I was surprised when the directions I got turned me down a small residential apartment street. There was a bar on the corner that I nearly walked past. The ‘convention’ was in the basement of this bar. It consisted of five tables and people shuffling around in the dim light. By the time Mascha showed up (only ten minutes later), I’d seen everything. At first, I found the interaction kinda awkward, and the whole thing was quickly looking like exactly what I had been afraid of—neither of us were saying much to each other, and not five minutes in, she said she had to go smoke and disappeared upstairs. I actually kinda thought that she wouldn’t come back!
We left shortly after that and sorta started walking and talking, and then we went back to the bar for a drink (being the sober wuss that I am, I only took a sip from her water bottle, heheh). Throughout the night, we basically walked and talked all over the place. Mascha wanted to show me some of the local metal bars. She turned out to be really awesome—we showed each other our sketchbooks, discussed metal bands and music in general, and shared stories. Mascha speaks Russian, English and German, from the Ukraine, and travels at least as much as I hope to be able to travel myself, going around Europe and the UK. Absolutely awesome. She seems to know everything about going from one place to another on the cheap, from finding work fast to making use of food banks and the like. Kind of a backpacker, in other words?
We ended up going to three bars: one we left right away because they were only playing sports on the TV (boring). The second one we sat around in for a couple hours. Learned something about Europe that night: smoking inside bars is a-okay. I usually get sick pretty quickly from being around cigarette smoke, but I actually handled it pretty decently, and the conversation was strong enough that I didn’t mind as much as I would normally. Mascha was pretty considerate about it and asked me occasionally if I needed to step out for air. She made sure not to blow smoke in my direction :D The bar was really cool—the ceiling was covered in guitars of all kinds. We were sitting next to a framed and signed Jeff Beck guitar.
The next bar we went to was one that Mascha called the “Judas Priest bar,” and I could immediately see why. Inside, peering through the fog of cigarette smoke, I saw that nearly every decoration on the wall and ceiling was Judas Priest inspired: there were life-size statues of Rob Halford and his motorcycle, a floor-to-ceiling statue of the “Killing Machine” album art, etc. There were flat screen TVs playing metal music videos, demons on the wall, etc. It was so casual in there that Mascha and I ended up sitting on a windowsill. We also got free pretzels! Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this place—the brightest thing in the room was the TV screens.
We actually had to get through a gigantic police blockade to get in to the area where a few of the bars were. Thinking of the attacks in Paris and the recent threat in Munich, I was understandably nervous to see literally hundreds of full-armed cops with riot gear and big guns standing all around, accompanied by dozens of armoured police vehicles. I was hesitant of getting any closer to things, figuring we’d either give up or take a long way around to get to the bar. Mascha just strolled confidently up to the line of cops and asked in German how to get through. Turns out that the cops weren’t altogether blocking people from getting around, but they were forcing people to bottleneck, only letting a few people in at once. There was a protest going on within their perimeter, and because of the amount of people and police I couldn’t read a single sign. I had the suspicion that this sign-blocking was intentional—maybe it was some sort of hate-oriented protest? I don’t know. Anyway, we pressed through the police perimeter, but there was always at least one police van per block pretty much all the way up to the area with all the bars. When we came back through a few hours later, the cops and protesters were all gone.
In the end, meeting Mascha was one of the few times where I truly felt at home in Berlin. I’d been sure that we probably wouldn’t be hanging out for much longer after that ‘comic convention,’ but we didn’t end up going home until around one in the morning. I didn’t think it could be so easy to meet friends internationally. I’m thankful that she took the time to learn English at some point, because (since I speak German so badly) it wouldn’t have been possible for us to hit it off otherwise! Also glad that Marie (my other friend) got me in touch with her.
When I leave Berlin, she will be leaving to visit New York City for a few months. It’s going to be her first time in America. I wish her luck! We’ll probably keep in touch afterwards. Actually, we’re planning on meeting up again just before I leave for Leipzig. Also, last thing, I took a picture of Mascha in mid smoke-blow, and I’m honestly pretty proud of it, haha.
So yeah, looking back I feel like I've had a great time here. In a narrow space I learned how to shop and cook for myself almost every night, how to commute and figure out fast transportation, and now I can get around Berlin and live her quite comfortably, aside from not knowing German even half as much as I'd like to. The German's coming quite slow, but that's my only complaint. I've seen and done so much and made a ton of sketches. I can't wait to see what Leipzig and the other towns have to offer. Just need to find a place to stay in Weimar and then all my destinations will be nailed down. I've got about two months left, meaning I'm halfway through being here. Can't believe it's going by so fast!