I’m skipping over most of last week. Sorry. Here’s the short story. Since last Monday, I went to my first wine tasting club class. I have my next one tomorrow — we get to taste six wines a class, organized by vineyard region. On Wednesday night I went to the Royal Danish Theater to see a ballet, which though I was hungry during the three hours, I enjoyed very much. I had my first exam at DIS on Thursday morning. I think it went well enough. Then on Friday, this post begins.

It’s a 50 minute nonstop flight to Berlin TXL from CPH, just on the outskirts of the central part of Berlin. I traveled with Abby, a new friend at DIS from Massachusetts.

East Berlin Wall Gallery with Abby.

We walked A LOT on Saturday, seeing the East Berlin Wall Gallery with iconic murals created post the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Tor, the big gate entering the central and hipster part of the city known as Mitte, and the Holocaust Memorial — officially known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The Memorial is a full city block covered with 2,711 concrete slabs of varying heights arranged in a sloping grid. As you walk through the cement blocks, you are supposed to feel confused and uneasy. We walked across Museum Island, visiting the Pergamonmuseum (Greek and Roman ruins and art), Alte Nationalgalerie (classical and impressionist artists like Monet, Manet, Renoir, and more) and the Neues Museum (home to the bust of Nefertiti), and admired the impressive Parliamentary Building called Reichstag. Checkpoint Charlie felt like something we had to see — it was pretty similar to the underwhelming experience of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. On Sunday we decided to give our feet a serious rest and try out public transportation. We started at the top of the Fernsehturm TV Tower for a 360° panorama view of the city — you can take the elevator (lift) 207 meters in just 40 seconds. Got on the S-bahn train to visit Charlottenburg Palace, a summer home for Sophie Charlotte, the first Queen of Prussia, took the train back to Tiergarten (like their Central Park) to confirm that the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is a truly horrendous attempt at a restoration project. The top of the bell tower was destroyed during World War II and in 1959 and 1963, the new buildings and tower were built. We spent a few hours at the largest zoo in Germany — marveled at the polar bear and disappointed to find out that their panda, Bao Bao, died three years ago — bused to the Jewish Museum, an experience I have mixed feelings about as I continue my strugglesome exploration of what it means to be Jewish/why we commemorate something that affected/affects more than just Jews (genocides continue to happen across the globe today — what makes Jews so special?). The museum, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, has symbolic and historic modern architectural elements, especially in the underground axis system that connects the old building to the new building and the voids, empty spaces running through the building. As is the case with many Jewish Museums and Holocaust Memorials (see above), the crisscrossing of hallways, winding yet sharp turns and corners and empty spaces are intended to make visitors feel nauseous and uncomfortable. Again, I brood over my internal dialogues about Jewish-ness, societies and perceptions.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany.

The gardens at Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin.

I heard at least six languages spoken while walking around Berlin — German, obviously, English, French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and a Middle-Eastern sounding language that wasn’t Arabic but I’m naively not sure what it was. Both coffee shops we went to for breakfast had birds flying around inside, trapped and trying to get out. This came full circle when a bird almost flew into my face while I waited at the gate to board our flight back to CPH. While walking to the East Berlin Wall Gallery, a woman stopped us on the sidewalk outside a gas station asking for help in German. She needed us to hold the air pump at the appropriate pressure so she could refill her tires. One of the stranger things I’ve been asked to do by a stranger in a foreign country that speaks a different language. There are these blue, pink and purple pipes that snake around the city above ground, about 10 feet from the sidewalk. Turns out the blue ones bring in clean water while the pink/purple ones bring out dirty water. Apparently you can see the colored pipes from space. Berlin needs these because the ground water level is just two meters below the sidewalks, so all building foundations are in puddles, this according to a blog I found during a random Google search.

Blue pipes carry clean water into Berlin.

Also, there was construction pretty much everywhere which made our views of the city a little less spectacular. At one point, I could stand in one place and see at least 16 cranes.

As with Danish, German has it’s own alphabet. Street signs include a funky looking letter that to this American appears to be a lower-case f with a 3 attached to it. The ezsett, ß, as it is called, is pronounced like an s. So a street named Invalidenstraße (which I walked on to find dinner on Saturday night. We went to Tommi’s Burger Joint, reminiscent of The Burger Joint in NYC — rumor is the Burger Joint in København is the original) is pronounced in-val-id-en-stra-sss-eh, I think…According to wikipedia, only rarely, is a capital ẞ used. In the past, a long s (ſ) was used as well. We saw both on street signs, but more of those long s’s with the 3-like thing attached.

A non-visual highlight of this trip: We were asked for directions twice! We were unable to offer help though as we were tourists too, and the people asking us approached speaking a language other than English, but the fact that we were even asked suggests that we have mastered the European look. That is an accomplishment I am proud of.

For more pictures from my travels, check out See What I’m Seeing. This week you’ll find my favorites of the East Berlin Wall Gallery, among others.