Berlin, Part I

I have been criticized recently by a sizable majority of this blog's readership (3 of 5) for posting too sporadically, and posting too lengthily when I actually do write anything. I've also been prompted by my significant other to get on the ball and relate the tale of our Berlin-Madison trip while the memories are still fresh. So here, in bite-sized chunks, goes:

We spent the first day in Berlin as zombies, trying to beat jet lag by walking around, struggling to keep our eyelids apart. Setting out from Melanie's mother and stepfather's apartment, which is nestled near a slight bend in the River Spree a few hundred meters from the Bellevue S-Bahn stop, a quiet, green little quarter with a pleasant mix of old churches, modern offices, and Turkish groceries, we set out into Tiergarten, the city's fabulous analogue (and precursor) to New York's Central Park.

We wandered the paths of Tiergarten until we hit upon a small biergarten in a clearing, ate a bit of sausage and potato salad and drank some real bier! Actually, I had an Alster (mixed limonade and bier), one of the various Mischgetränke that are quite refreshing on a hot day (others have strongly contrary feelings on this subject). Enjoying the uniquely German pleasure of relaxing in a biergarten was the perfect way to start our visit, an experience marred only by the discovery that a bird had shat on the back of my shirt sometime during the meal.




Full and sleepy, we pressed on past the the Reichstag, long since unwrapped, and trotted down Friedrichstrasse to Dussman, a terrific big bookstore. But we were hard pressed to keep from nodding off on our feet and could hardly muster the concentration to read more than a few sentences, so we rode the S-bahn back to Bellevue and tumbled into the apartment on the verge of collapse. After a quick dinner of Aufschnitt with the folks, we were trundled into bed and slept until the next afternoon.

After a leisurely post meridiem brunch, we met with Papa and Petra near the former site of the Palast der Republik, the former home of the East German parliament and a major East Berlin cultural and entertainment center, housing restaurants, discos, a bowling alley, and the like. Long left standing in disrepair, it was gutted because of asbestos, then never rebuilt and finally torn down -- probably due to politics more than health concerns, or, perhaps because it was the site of an Einstürzende Neubauten concert. Let them explain:



In its place is simply a large open lawn, dotted with sunbathers, picnickers, and frisbee games.



After a picnic on the grass, we wandered to our evening entertainment, the Rhythym in Motion show by Sheketak, an Israeli dance and percussion troupe.


Something like STOMP with a bit of rap and physical comedy thrown in, they were quite energetic and pretty good, but not superb -- more towards a very high level of street performance.





Entertaining nonetheless. After the show, M. and I wandered back towards Bellevue and tried to find a place to get a drink outside by the river, but we ran into an absurd level of inconvenience everywhere we went and finally just headed back to the apartment to turn in for the night.