Happy New Year from Odense, Denmark. The party was a blast and I had so much fun playing games, watching fireworks, and dancing until my heart couldn't take it anymore. In my attempt to catch you up on happenings, here's what happened on Boxing Day.
26 Dec:
Woke up maybe around nine or so. After getting ready, we ate the breakfast buffet the hostel had to offer. It was pretty good, all you can eat, and featured some stuff I wouldn't eat for breakfast -- like salami and cheese sandwiches. But I didn't eat those. It was cereal and bread with jam for me.
We set out to find the free tour like we did in Paris, and this one was much easier to find. We got out of the metro stop and they were RIGHT THERE in the corner of the Parisisa Platss. So we signed up and waited for the tour to start, and start it did.
Our tour guide was Chris, originally born in southern England, moved to Connecticut when he was five. About nine years ago, he set off on a two-year journey across the world. One of his first stops was Berlin where he met a girl. Although the thing with the girl didn't work out, he had already fallen in love with the city and that was where he decided to stay. He now works as a free lance tour guide for various companies, not just New Europe.
I'm going to tell you about the Parisia Platss. The Parisia Platss featured a giant gate with a statue on top of it. Originally, the statue featured Essa the Goddess of Peace. It was a grand gate that royal people walked through to get into Berlin. Until one day, a short little French dude named Napoleon walked through those gates, looked at that statue, and said "I want that for myself." So he took Essa the Goddess of Peace and placed her in his Louvre in Paris. As you might imagine, the Germans were furious. They teamed up with Russia and England to go into Paris and steal back their statue. Their mission was successful, but they made a few changes. They replaced the olive branch in her hand with a really awesome war staff and renamed her Victoria Goddess of Victory! Then they renamed the plaza Parisia Platss. Get the humor? The statue overlooks the plaza, so now they have VICTORY over PARIS. In a more ironic sense, the statue now looks directly at the French Embassy.
We also looked at the German government building, which features a giant glass dome you can go in on most days. These days do not count as most days because of terrorist threats. But the idea was that when people go up in the dome, they can watch the German government work under their feet. The message is that politicians are supposed to be under the people serving them instead of over the people ruling them.
There is a monument to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the middle of Berlin. This is made specifically for the Jewish victims and not any other victims because they really were the main target during that horrible time. The monument features rows and rows of monoliths of various sizes on a very uneven terrain. Chris mentioned three views people have had about this monument. The first was that of a graveyard, as in the monument is a graveyard for 6 million people and each monolith represents a certain amount of unnamed people who died. The second was that of a bar graph. Three people dying is a tragedy, six million people dying is a statistic. To combat that phrase, the monument has six people and their stories on one end of the monument. You're supposed to read those stories and then look behind them at all the people just like them that lost their lives. The final interpretation is that it's like a lambyrinth. The ground is uneven and the monoliths aren't the same height and you can very easily get lost between those things. Something might pop out of one corner and completely frighten you. In a way, it represents how living through that time was. You don't know who to trust or where to go and before you realize what just happened, it's too late. Very fitting interpretations, no?
We got to walk through the monument. I wasn't very emotionally charged as I did so. But I wasn't very prepared to do anything of a Grand Emotional sort, and the Holocaust is always a Grand Emotional Thing. Luckily, the tour didn't just cover Holocaust stuff. They have a separate tour for that one.
We saw the location of Hitler's bunker after that. This is just the location, though, this isn't the real thing. The real bunker is still around . . . sort of. It's buried under ground and was well protected by bombs and such until apartment buildings were put up around it. The constrution workers, along with the rest of the city, didn't like the fact that the bunker was still in tact, so they drilled a bunch of holes into the roof of the bunker before setting off some more explosions on top of it. That crumpled the ceiling and put the thing in ruins real good. The only thing that lets people know the bunker is still there is a little sign at the location. Germany likes to remember the Holocaust through the victims and not the perpetrators. Maybe in three centuries someone will restore the bunker and make a museum out of it, but it's still too soon for that.
Saw a section of the Berlin Wall then. The Berlin Wall is protected by a fence to prevent people like me from going up to it and chipping off a piece for themselves.
After a couple more stops, we stopped for a warm-up break at a place called Aroma Cafe. Although they're a chain, they really do make the best hot chocolate you will ever drink in your life. Ryan and I both got hot chocolate and a sandwich, which was good but not as filling just by itself. I was still hungry and eyeing up a giant pretzel behind the counter, so I got one. Ryan ate it with me. Now we can say we both ate a real pretzel from Germany. Mwahaha! But the hot chocolate.
The hot chocolate is made by pouring melted chocolate into the mug and filling the rest with really really hot milk. You stir it yourself really good (gotta get it really good because it takes a lot for melted chocolate to mix with milk) until it's just the way you like it. And when you drink it, it's like you're drinking a Hershey bar. In fact, they might use something akin to a Hershey bar to make the melted chocolate. It's so delicious I have to attempt to make it on my own when I get home. It should be well worth the effort. Ryan and I are both pretty sure this one experience with hot chocolate ruined hot chocolate in general for us. At least for a while.
Speaking of chocolate, there is a really famous German chocolate store that features famous German monuments made entirely of chocolate in the windows. Of course, we took pictures of the Chocolate Parisia Platss gate and the Chocolate Titanic and a Chocolate Cathedral that was bombed (the real cathedral was bombed, having that chocolate masterpiece bombed would be heartwrenching). We also walked along Freidrickstrass for a short while before walking through a Christmas Market in the middle of a square that demonstrates accurate French-German relationships.
The square features three things, two churches and a concert hall. One church was Calvinism and the other was Protestantism (I forget which one was French and which was German, so just assign a faith to one of them). On Sundays, people would go to church at the same time, and when church let out, they would attend a concert in the concert hall afterwards. The French and the Germans get along just fine, and all is right in the world. Accurate demonstration of German-French relationships, no? (I'm going to take the time here to say that the French Embassy features a piece of architecture that resembles gun turrets. Remember the Parisia Platss? Just sayin'.)
We also walked by the Hamberg University, which is the famous world-reknowned university of Germany. About twelve Nobel Prize winners either got their degree or worked with this university. A memorial in the giant square in front of the university marks the site of one of the largest book burnings in early Nazi regime history. The book burning burned about 20,000 books of various authors, mostly Jewish or radical thinkers. In memoriam of those books, a basement below the square is filled with bookshelves that would fit about 20,000 books if they were full. But they are purposefully empty. A clear window in the center of the square looks down at those bookshelves. To the side, a plaque marks the memorial. One of the quotes on it is really quite freaky.
in 1820, a German writer named Heinrich Heine wrote a play called Almansor, and it features the quote “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen". This quote is on the plaque and translate as "where they burn books, they will also burn people." This was written in 1820. This giant Nazi book burning happened in 1933 when the Nazi regime was just taking off. We all know how that regime ended. That's a pretty freaky foreshadow when you come to think of it.
I have to say that this tour also featured points later in Berlin's history that deals with the communists coming in and taking over and the East Berlin vs. West Berlin thing. How the East Berliners wanted to go West because they had such a higher standard of living and the East Berlin rulers weren't going to have any of that. We visited Checkpoint Charlie but Chris said he didn't like it at all because it was really just a tourist trap and not like the real Checkpoint Charlie, which is where West Berliners could cross to the East side and cross back to the West. But that's a point in history I'm not that familiar with, so I didn't understand some of the things that were mentioned during those parts of the tour. Yes, I understood that the communists thought one way and the people were okay with that until they learned what it's like to be capitalist. But I don't really grasp the concept that well. I don't remember it that well from school, so I think that's why.
Moving on, the tour ended by a giant famous church I can't remember the name of, but it ended with the dramatic cries of people because the Grand Finale Story was the story of how the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Yes, I understood that someone missed a meeting this sparked an Awesome Hand of Fate to descend down upon Berlin and cause enough havoc to change history. But really, Ryan and I caught that whole story on video, so you're better scrolling down the sidebar and looking for a new link in the "Interesting Stories" section featuring a title akin to "How the Berlin Wall Came Tumbling Down (Berlin, Germany)". My plan is to get the video files from both Ryan and me, edit them together to make one coherent YouTube video, and embed that video onto a separate page for your enjoyment. This will happen, however, when I return to the States, so give it about two weeks.
When the tour was done, we were both really really cold. My feet had been taking turns which would be colder than the other and Ryan didn't have a layer under his jeans which made his legs colder than mine by a long shot. We were by Alexander Platss which is a fairly decent touristy area, so that's where we wandered. We walked into a cute little shop with crazy things that I liked. One of the items was a small compact-like container that when you opened it turned into a hair brush. I thought about getting that for my friend Jessica back home because on our road trip to Ann Arbor, she would always brush her hair whenever we got out of the car. (In her defense, her hair is REALLY THICK so it tangles really easily and no one likes tangled hair.) I thought about buying this, but it didn't happne. Sorry, Jessica. We also saw some other awesome things, like salt and pepper shakers that you wind up and can send across the table so you don't have to pass it to five people at a dinner party. And various designs for rubber ducks. It was a really cute and colorful shop. We also wandered into a few souvenir shops looking for shirts and such.
There were two Christmas Markets around Alexander Platss. We walked into one and I kept complaining about wanting to get Gluewin, which is German for mulled wine which is just hot wine. Ryan said he wasn't a wine person, but I still wanted some. We didn't get any yet, though. We walked through the market, saw that it was open until eleven, warmed up at the metro station which had a bunch of shops inside. At a souvenir shop in the metro station, Ryan saw a shirt that he really really wanted but they didn't have his size. The woman working said that he could visit another shop of the same name by the university if he really wanted it. So we set off that way.
The store was open so we went in and walked around. Ryan bought Dad and Adam their Christmas gifts and I bought Ryan the shirt he wanted as his Christmas gift. I also got a shirt for myself and some postcards. For the record, my shirt from Berlin is awesome. We tried looking for something Ryan could get Mom all over, but nothing seemed to scream "YOUR MOTHER WILL LOVE ME SO BUY ME RIGHT THIS MINUTE!" He wanted to get something she would use, that she liked, and that was nice. It's harder than it sounds. I won't say what Dad and Adam got for Christmas because they read this and that would just ruin the whole thing.
We walked into another Christmas Market and didn't see anything that interesting. Christmas Markets are like the markets in London. People set up booths and they try to sell stuff and a lot of the booths tend to sell the same stuff so in that regard you can do a lot of shopping around for the best deals. Christmas Markets after Christmas are only for the tourists anyway, though. According to the people we talked with, Christmas is celebrated December 24, people spend time with their families on the 25th, the 26th this year was Sunday ad marked the end of Christmas, so the city picked up again on Monday. Those are the three days of German Christmas. We were lucky we caught these markets while we still had a chance.
After one Market, we walked into the other. We FINALLY got some mulled wine (Ryan's with amaretto) and didn't think this "security deposit for the mug" thing through. He finished his before me (smaller sips) so he turned his non-chipped mug in. But mine was chipped so when we said we weren't going to turn that one in, I pointed this out and he said "Awww. We did not think this through." No we did not. No German Christmas Market mugs for us. We also bought a brat for each of us at the market. Well, Ryan had two because he was still hungry, but one brat was enough for me. It was good. Brats in Germany, although they taste like brats from Wisconsin, do not fit into the bun. The bun is shorter than the rest of the brat so you hold the bun and have to eat the two ends sticking out on either side before you get some bread with brat bites. This is a warning to all you people going to Germany and ordering brats.
I wanted to get this one ring I found earlier. It was made of copper and looked really unusual but I figured it would work in a steampunk costume somehow. However, it was 15EUR and Ryan pointed out that copper turns your hands green. Better luck next time. For some information about steampunk and what it is, click here.
So about this time was when we decided to return to the hostel. We were Berlined-out for the day and wanted to get some rest and pack up for tomorrow. Which we did. One of the landmarks we passed while going back to the hostel was this giant structure like a tent but it wasn't a tent. There were advertisements for a circus around it, and we both wanted to know if this structure is just amazingly portable or if it were permanent with a visiting troupe. So we asked the reception guy at the hostel and he said that it was a concert hall and he hasn't heard of that circus name. But it was a concert hall and the circus was just visiting for who knows how long. That answered out question. Also, can I get a password for the internet?
While waiting for the internet, Ryan and I played a game of Carcasonne. I taught him the rules, but I didn't really teach him the really complex rules. Mostly because I don't remember them and I've always had David help to navigate on how they work whenever I played previously, so we just skipped those those things. But I taught Ryan the game and he seemed to like it. When we were done, there wasn't a line for the computers, there were two open, and no one came to queue up behind us. So it's a good thing we played that game.
Afterwards, we packed up, made a plan for the next day, and promptly went to bed. Wait, I think I retired before he did because he was writing to Mirijam. All together now: "D'awwww".
No comments:
Post a Comment