Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

It appears that after too many months of inactivity while I had no wireless connection in India my little laptop has completely forgotten how to connect to the internet. I've been trying and trying, but something is amiss. This is sad for many reasons, but especially because it means I probably can't post any more pictures to this blog. I shall try to write very descriptively.

I began my day today intending to partake in the free walking tour of Berlin that my hostel offers. Then, as I was eating breakfast I recalled that if there is one thing I hate about tourism it is guided tours--audio tours, bus tours, walking tours, all of them awful. The tour was also supposed to be 3 hours long, and if I've learned anything from Gilligan's Island it is to always avoid the "three-hour tour."

Instead, I opted to explore the city on my own, visiting most of the same sights the tour would have taken me to without the drawback of all of that tedious historical information. I observed, while walking, that Germans tend to actually abide by crosswalk laws. This is baffling after Hyderabad, where crosswalks have yet to be introduced and if one wants to cross the street one must close one's eyes, say a prayer, and step into oncoming traffic. For the first stop on my solo walking tour, I took myself to the "East Side Gallery." This is the name given to the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, now something of a community art project where several blocks worth of the old wall are covered with layers and layers of graffiti murals. It is a very interesting thing to see, but the best views of the wall are only had after jay-walking Hyderabad-style to the other side of the street through oncoming traffic. My improved perspective of the wall was just the first way in which my walking tour was definitely better than the hostel walking tour and my second stop was somewhere that I know that tour wouldn't have gone, so already I was winning as I moved onto location number two.

Berlin's coat-of-arms is a big scary bear, and as a result Berliners really love bears. I had read that in the center of the city there is a public park which contains two actual bears who act as mascots of the city. Naturally then, my first order of business after seeing the Berlin wall was to pay a visit to the Berlin bears. I found the pair of braunbären, Schnute and Maxi, relaxing in their bear-house in Märkisches Park being generally adorable. I spent a rather long time observing the bears before continuing my tour.

After a long walk in the rain I finally arrived at the Berlin National Gallery, which apparently is closed on Mondays. Pity.

Another ride on the U-Bahn led me to Brandenbuger Tor, a big historic gateway in the center of the city where the Berlin wall was ceremoniously torn down in 1989. It is also right next to Berlin's holocaust memorial. I thought the memorial looked kind of strange from the pictures that I saw of it, but it turned out to be very cool. It is a plaza filled with thousands of rectangualr granite pillars of varying heights. As you walk into the memorial the pillars get taller, the sounds of the traffic become muffled, your path gets darker, and it becomes harder to see the outside street. It's all very haunting. There is also a museum with the memorial which is supposed to be really interesting, informative, and well worth the visit. It too is closed on Mondays.

Berlin is generally less touristy than Amsterdam was. This lack of tourism, combined with Germany's strong sense of national pride means that the German language is predominant and English is rare. In Amsterdam, English seemed even more common than Dutch and I had no hesitations about speaking English to communicate, but here it is not as simple. This is just somewhat problematic for me since my knowledge of German is limited to the phrase "Ich esse keine fleisch," (I don't eat meat). So far there have been no major communication breakdowns, but I'm expecting one at any moment.