Berlin

Open Air Gallery on Saturday, too bad for the Artists it was raining

Berlin was a lovely city, I think that the two days spent there were definitely not enough time. After my very successful train ride from Frankfurt, I got to the hostel, which was nearly in Alexanderplatz, at about half past nineish. The hostel itself was really nice, I stayed in an 8 bed dorm room, and the bathrooms were just down the hallway. On the main floor there was a common place and a bar, which was nice.

Graffiti Everywhere 

I think there is so much to do in Berlin, and I didn't even scratch the surface. At first I was unsure about how I felt about the city, there was a lot of older (ugly) buildings juxtaposed against newer buildings, and tons of graffiti everywhere. But after a day, I think you don't notice the grimy looking graffiti-covered buildings, as such, anymore. In Berlin, I went to three museums, I wish I saw more, but as I can spend 4 + hours in a museum, I just couldn't fit it. I went to the German History Museum, the Museum at the Bauhaus Archives and the Jewish History Museum. I really enjoyed each of them, even though their subject matter and format was really different.

The History Museum was arranged chronically, from Roman times to the "Present". Present, being pretty much the end of the cold war. A lot of the medieval history overlapped with the history I had learnt in the Military museum in Paris, apparently a lot of history is war. But I really enjoyed reading about the world wars and cold war in Germany, I think that we never learnt much about the cold war in High school, I guess it was really recent then.

Armor in the History Museum, it looks a tad ridiculous doesn't it

The Jewish museum I think is a must, it's a pretty big museum, so you can easily skim over the parts that don't interest you, which I did a fair bit of. But the museum itself is really cool to see. The bottom level has three "axis" (aka hallways) that each represent something different, and holds symbolism, I won't try and relay this info, because I'll probably get it wrong, but look it up if you are interested, or go to the museum. I wish I had more time at this museum as well, but it was my last night in Berlin and I was meeting a friend for dinner. If that hadn't been the case, I would of definitely gone back the next day.

bauhaus-archives

Museum at the Bauhaus Archives--If you are an Industrial Design student, I think you pretty much need to go to this exhibit, The Bauhaus being such an influential school. It showcases important designs which were done at the school by students and professors, as well as a chunk of information about the school, the classes, the professors and showcases some exercises done by students. When I was there the special exhibition was "Female Bauhaus: Benita Koch-Otte" who was a textile designer who studied and worked at Bauhaus.

If you are planning to go to 3 museums in Berlin, it is worth it to get a museum pass, which for a student is 9.50 Euro. Unfortunately, it didn't cover the History Museum, so I wasted a Euro or two on it, and paid 4 Euros for that museum. If you only wanted to use the pass, you could probably skip the History Museum in favour of one of the two Art Galleries or the Pergamon museum which are all right near it.

Jewish Memorial

I won't name all the "landmarks" that there are in Berlin, because there are like a million, and a lot are within just a couple minutes of Alexanderplatz. The most astonishing was the Jewish Memorial, which I almost missed, but my friend showed it to me the night before I left. It is definitely creepy at night though. The East Berlin Wall was also really cool, both are an S-Bahn ride from Alexanderplastz.

I also accidentally ran into two (mini) exhibitions. One was at Check-point Charlie, where they have a lot of information about the checkpoint and the wall, which was really interesting. The other was also about the wall, and at Potsdam Platz, where they had a few pieces of the wall on display with information boards. These were very interesting to learn more about the wall and the DDR.