Flohmarkt am Mauerpark- One of my favorite Berlin finds. There are apparently tons of flea markets in the city- I only made it to one, and that was the only one I needed! It was a hippie haven, in the northeast part of the city called Pranzlauer Berg (the "coolest" area of the city- think Uptown Minneapolis). I bought an awesome screen printed T-Shirt with Herman Hesse's Liebeslied (Love Song) poem on it. Brooke bought a board game called Traumtelefon (Dream Phone!) There were 1 euro waffles with Nutella. Adorable hippie children, handmade voodoo dolls, old East Germany memorabilia, and the usual mounds and mounds of junk. It was really quite overwhelming. And wonderful.
Superbowl! Of course I had to watch the Superbowl, so we scouted out a bar that was going to play it. We rolled into Kilkenny Irish Pub on Hackescher Markt near the Goethe Institut at about midnight when the game started. Oh gotta love a 7 hour time difference. It started out me, Brooke, and few other program kids and 2 guys from the Goethe Institut. But at half time they decided to leave so they could get up and go to school the next morning. Brooke and I decided that was lame, so we stayed to watch the whole thing. Good thing we did! The second half was a-MAZE-ing! We moved from the table we'd been sitting at with our group to sit with a group of American guys studying in London and visiting Berlin for the weekend. It was really fun to hang out with boys and watch some kick-ass football. The only thing missing: the commercials. The commentary for the game was the regular American live feed, but for the commericals they would switch back to the British broadcasting room- Sky One I think the channel is called, for some commentary (haha football commentators with British accents) and then a few commercials. Not only were the commercials way less witty and funny as the normal Super Bowl ones- they would simply have never been shown in the US, much less during the Super Bowl. Perfect example: a Pierce Brosnan ad for men's facial cream. Soooo un-manly.Brooke and me and the guys (with the victorious Plaxico Burress in the background)
Berlin Zoo: We of course had to go see Knut- the darling polar bear cub that caused such an international craze based on his ridiculous cute-ness. We immediately noticed that we certainly weren't in an American zoo due to the fact that we were so close to the animals! The rhino were the first large animals near the entrance and it was actually a little concerning how little of a barrier you felt between yourself and the giant animal with a huge horn. The Europeans certainly aren't as liability-crazed as the Americans are! Another highlight was certainly the hippos. We had great timing and went into the building right at feeding time. There were pieces are bread flying from seemingly the heavens, and it appeared as if the trainer was having target practice with the hippo's giant mouths. It was great- there were so many of them and they were huge! One had crazy teeth, and they were some younger ones that were real cute.
Glanzlichter der Revue: At Friedrichstadtpalast Theater, "Europe's revue theater." I'm pretty sure this performance defies description, but I'll try for the sake of posterity. Well first of all our very sweet "Gastgeberin" (the lady living in house we rented rooms ≈ landlady, I can't speak English anymore) knew that I'm a dancer, and told us that one of her daughters worked at a theater and sometimes got cheap tickets to performances. So when she asked us if we were interested we of course said yes. So a while later she gives us 3 tickets (we dragged Erin along). Haha- turns out "dance" performance was a very loose/broad term because what we saw I certainly would not call a dance performance. It was oh so much more. The title translates literally to "Shiny Lights the Revue" or the dictionary tells me "Spectacular Highlights the Revue" which is actually a pretty appropriate title. It was certainly shiny and definitely spectacular. The performance was in "revue" or sort of vaudeville style. There was singing in 3 languages (German, English, and French), big showy costume numbers, some with pseudo-Vegas style can-can dancers, some with real Moulin Rouge-style can-can-ers. The stage could rotate, elevate, and at intermission switched to have a giant functioning water fountain. There were acrobats, a mini zeppelin came flying in, and pirates descended from the ceiling. I am not making this up. I certainly gasped more than once, and gave Erin and Hannah looks of disbelief that what I was seeing was actually happening.
Wannsee: As you can probably tell by now we were real busy in Berlin. I didn't even realize it till looking back at the pictures! There is just sooo much to do in Berlin! That meant that I only ended doing one day trip out of the city, although I had originally wanted to do more. Hannah, Brooke, Natasha, and I went to Wannsee- a nice little town on the outskirts of Berlin on a lake (See means lake auf deutsch). But like a lot of Germany, this pretty town has a Nazi past. We mainly went to see the Wannsee Conference house, the site of the infamous meeting of top Nazi officials to plan the "Final Solution" of the Jews. The villa was lovely, as were the gardens- and the museum exhibit was one of the better ones I've seen. Besides the downer history, it was lovely getaway from the hectic city.
Valentine's Day (Berlinale, Bode Museum, Deutsches Essen)
Valentine's in Berlin. Well first of all a big event in Berlin in February was Berlinale (the Berlin Internatioal Film Festival). The whole of the city was a-buzz in the weeks leading up, as were the people at the Goethe Institut. The program finally came out, and rumors flew around that is was just impossible to get tickets. The turned out to be very untrue, so one after noon Brooke, Hannah, Natasha, Carlye, and I spent at least an hour perusing the enormous catalog (and that was just for 3 days out of the week long festival!) and we came up with a few hot prospects. "Corazones de Mujer" (Hearts of Woman) was our #1 pick. It was in Italian, Arabic, Spanish and pretty great. The other tickets we scored were for "Hey, Hey It's Esther Blueburger" an Australian film with Keisha Castle-Hughes and Toni Collette about a Jewish 13-year-old and her adventures trying to fit in at a preppy private school and a public school at same the time. That film we saw on Valentine's Day, Brooke was my Valentine, and Hannah and Natasha were "valentines." The theater was gorgeous, with a big red curtain in front of the screen. And the director (/writer?) was there and she was real cute and answered questions. It was really impressive to see the translator translating right on the spot and doing a pretty good job. At one point she was searching for the last part of an answer, and all four of us yelled out the answer to help her out.
Then we went to the Bode Museum (mostly sculpture) to take in our weekly (/daily) dose of art, and then to super yummy real German food at a little pub type place on Friedrichstraße.
Adventures with Friends (Playground(s), Shisha, Kauf dich Glücklich, Giant See-saws)
Unfortunately it wasn't until the later half of our time that we started bonding with some great friends in Berlin-- why can't that sort of stuff happen immediately when you arrive?! Well, anyways, I'm not even exactly sure anymore how we met Mark and Andrzej (pronounced on-jay) (it probably involved Stammtisch- "table reserved for regular guests" basically every Wednesday the basement floor of Café Zosch was semi-reserved for Goethe Institut students, and great-if smoky (despite the recently enacted smoking ban in Berlin)- place to meet people.) (Enough parentheses?) Anyways, where was I? Oh right, meeting Mark and Andrzej. Well they are great guys. Mark was born in Mexico, but grew up in Nevada. His mom is German and his dad (Mexican?-)American. Which means he has pretty much the best name ever= Mark Hernandez Reinshagen. Most Mexican-German name ever. And then there's Andrzej Matykiewicz, who has probably the most Polish name ever, but is in fact British. We had some great adventures with these guys at numerous locations, including a playground (Berlin's full of 'em) that reminded Mark of a pirate ship, and had a sweet zip-line.
(Andrzej and Mark)
Ok, well I think all of February at once is just too ambitious, and I want to publish what I've got so it doesn't take hours to read one post. Hope this little update is fun, and I promise to keep working on it!Love, Alice
See more pictures on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019664&l=521cc&id=19401857
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019822&l=898fe&id=19401857
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019967&l=951fc&id=19401857
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020096&l=8828d&id=19401857
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