Week 15: Berlin and the week of catastrophe

Well, as promised this weekend I was whisked away to Berlin for a weekend of sightseeing. As frequently seems to happen, I managed to be at the right place at the right time and caught an annual unidentified diversity festival happening all weekend, complete with parade, live music, and blocks of vendors. All of this really means lots of drunk Germans. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.

We arrived bright and early... 5 AM to be exact. But it was worth it for the price... round trip bus ticket to Berlin for 40 USD. Can't beat that! Heather, Jared, and I hit the hostel to drop off our stuff before making our way to the zooliogisher garten metro stop and walking over to the old post office where our bike tour began. Randomly, Dave Armstrong SMS class '02 is giving the tour. How strange. Anyways, the tour was really informative, and involved a beer garden so I was all about it. Plus everyone loves riding bikes... especially members of the Buhler Bike Gang (Brandon and Laura if you are reading this, go us.) Later we headed back to the hostel and had a little nap before heading back out in search of dinner and other delights. The sights that night:

Sunday consisted of going to the top of Reichstag, or the House of Parliament, a famous work of sustainable architecture by Sir Norman Foster. Cheers, mate. I pretty much loved it, not going to lie.

We had lunch in front of the Bradenburg Gate where a massive stage was set up and bad covers of 80's American music were being performed. Not only did I hear Pretty Woman, but also Summer of 69. It was pretty strange. There were a lot of vendors selling international food... or so it seemed. Then we walked over to Checkpoint Charlie and got a better look at the remaining piece of wall.

From there we hit the Jewish Museum, another famous work of architecture by Daniel Libeskind (Denverites- think the Modern Art Museum that is all pointy... its the same architect). Anyways, the museum had excellent content and the architecture had moments that I found to be very well developed, but overall lacked clarity and justification. Do another draft next time Daniel.

By this time we were very tired and went off in search of dinner. This landed us amongst the festival. If we saw a lot of vendors before, they were nothing compared to what we entered into. Foods, beers, and goods from all the world could be found in the 4 city block area the festival was taking up. In addition, there was a parade going on that people seemed to jump in and out of whenever they felt like it. Live music was everywhere. It was a really good time but I got sooo tired....

Before we went home that night we stopped off at a pub our bike tour guide leader showed us. It was at the top of an old bombed out building near the TV tower and shared the space with an art house. There was a lightning storm going on and it was really cool to watch from up there while drinking a beer and shooting the shit. Here I am on the way out...

On the third day we headed first thing to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Wow. At first when we saw Checkpoint Charlie I was like ok, that was a little underwhelming. But the museum was so cool. The history behind that place is amazing and the museum tells you so many personal stories of how people crossed the wall with tunnels, zipcords, flying and diving contraptions... I really enjoyed seeing it all. It made me wish I had paid more attention in history class.

A quick walk took us to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, a controversial creation by Peter Eisenman. I found it very successful in accomplishing its goals in a straightforward manner. We lunched there before moving on to the northside of town for further exploration. Here I am on the first day riding my bike in front of it.

Basically after the we just wandered around for a while, drank beer and then ate dinner. That nipple is rather polished...

The famous TV tower...

And then we went to see the opera Salome. I really enjoyed it, despite not speaking any German. Following the performance we headed back to the hostel to gather our stuff and then hit the bus station to return to Prague. Another successful trip for the books.

Tuesday morning found me knee deep in credit card fraud. Apparently somewhere in the last week someone started making online purchases with my card at the most amusing places including family savers club, esssleep.com, and the south beach diet... Yes, funny choices of spending, but not such a funny situation. I officially have no credit card to fall back on for possibly the rest of the summer... not a good situation! So I had that turned off and then worked like crazy on studio all day (except for a run) before heading off to see a ballet performance of Cinderella! I LOVED it. Ballet is my favorite fine art I think. You get the music and the dance with acting too.

And then I came home and worked my little fingers to the bone in vectorworks (autoCAD for MAC). My project was due Thursday morning. Or so I thought. I have to do more work on it for tomorrow.

So to sum up the catastrophe: my cell phone is broken, credit card out of order, 2 broken cameras, 2 packages lost in the mail, one barely working spacebar, studio not done, 1 camera at the shop still.... and all of this is supposed to be resolved by Monday... its going to be a long day... and I said goodbye to Tomas today and almost cried... I'm going to miss Prague and the people I love here!