Berlin: Day Two

Iconic Berliner Dom photo, and proof positive that my mother was in Germany.

We stayed at a hotel right by Volkspark Friedrichshain, which provided just a few of many opportunities to look at statues of Greeks.

Like I said, statues of Greeks. And churches.

Obligatory Jewish shot! It's the Neue Synagoge on Oranienburger Strasse.

After walking around the touristy areas of Berlin for about 10 hours today, I can safely report that this is a pretty cool city, and I don't really need to know all that much about the place to make that observation. Berlin bills itself as a potent mixture of old and new worlds, an image that is reflected almost perfectly by the Reichstag and its totally out of place yet weirdly fitting glass dome, rather questionably by the Chancellor's office and its ultra-modern-facade-but-with-Roman-columns architecture, and all too temporarily by the giant stage currently adorning the western face of the Brandenburger Tor (there was a major party—which I'm pretty sure was the culmination of a gay pride parade—in the Tiergarten today, with the focal point being a live performance from a band comprised of the German equivalents of Meredith Brooks and the flute player from Jethro Tull).

So this happened.

Not really sure what's going on here, but that lady totally has a beard.

 I wish I could say something meaningful about the people in Berlin, but the reality is that the only person we really met today was a rather odd math teacher from New York who likes to spend his summers in Germany. We did pass a lot of dudes in drag (again, gay pride parade, so maybe that's not an everyday thing), a lot of people who were making giant soap bubbles in major tourist centers, a good number of Spanish soccer fans (and about four French fans—the two countries played a Euro Cup game today and Spain won, of course), and one mime.

Mime: the perfect profession for an out-of-work Berliner with three years of Alexander technique experience. 

Seriously, I have no idea what the deal is with the bubbles, but we saw at least three of these bubble-making stations while walking around Berlin Mitte.

From a very superficial perspective, I can say that Berlin has a lot to offer—just look at the pictures, there's some pretty cool stuff here. But one thing I didn't expect to see (and I'm sorry for going in a more somber direction here) was people drinking beers on the Holocaust Memorial.

You see, Germany is not Poland. Everyone in this country is hyper-conscious of Nazism, and German public life is swathed in heavy layers of political correctness. So while it's not entirely surprising to see Polish schoolkids enjoying themselves at a field trip to Auschwitz (not too unlike American kids running around Little Bighorn), I expected Berliners to be much more sensitive about their city's World War II memorials.

The thing is, it's very difficult to be mad at people for using Berlin's Holocaust Memorial as a glorified series of park benches. Without any context, it's hard to tell that the stellae make up anything more than a cute art installation—the signage is intentionally kept to a minimum, and the giant concrete blocks are nondescript enough to leave any uninformed passersby with no knowledge that they are entering a serious site. What's more, I can see the appeal of sitting down amid a forest of concrete after walking through the nearby Tiergarten or, if you're a kid, trying to jump from one giant block to the next—this is the first thing I would have thought of doing had I not known I was entering a Holocaust Memorial beforehand.

I mean, in all reality, if this wasn't a Holocaust Memorial I can't think of a better public place to sit around and have a few beers in Berlin.

Ultimately, it's not really such a bad thing that Berliners aren't entirely somber when they walk by their city's Holocaust Memorial. There's a serious attachment to the past in Germany, and the capital is filled with plenty of not-so-gentle reminders—a plethora of war memorials, still-standing chunks of the old Berlin wall, and more museums (many of which deal with the more troubling aspects of Berlin's past) than you can shake a stick at. So in some sense, it's kind of nice to see Germans taking ownership of a very dark stage of their past by repurposing a guilt-ridden memorial for the most German past-time of all—drinking beer.