Driverless Car

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJ3-i2RA9l2lCb3LTRY5E47PvGOQ?docId=0d92c8c7c60e445991c3fea789f2703b

Wonder if we've seen it traveling around Berlin...

Berlin Wall Memorial

After exploring Mauerpark we visited the Berlin Wall Memorial along Bernauer Strasse. It was quite interesting. The wall was built along the street, so overnight people were separatred from their neighbors. On the positive side, many people were able to escape through these houses.

A map of the area after the wall was built


The poles show where the wall used to be




There were paths in the grass showing where escape tunnels are

Mauerpark

We've been to Mauerpark a couple of times now. It's a great place to spend a Sunday afternoon. There's a flea market on what used to be the Western side of the wall and a park on the Eastern side.




There's an ampitheater here where people perform music and there's karaoke as well.




This is a robot thing that on a grocery cart. It seems that this guy has been working on it for a while. When it's working, it moves its head and arms and squirts water, but it often seems to breaks down, so the guy welds on the spot.

Soccer Fans

Something kind of incredible about the soccer game was the fans. The opposing team's fans were caged off from the rest of the arena. They had their own concession stands and significants amounts of security protecting them/the home team's fans.


They do get pretty crazy, though:

Wolfsburg

On Sunday we went to Wolfsburg for a soccer game. Wolsburg is the home of VW and it shows.

From Drop Box

Here are some pictures of the stadium maybe an hour before the game:

Berlin Tour Part 5

The tour ended on Museum Island. More pictures:

Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom)


Gardens and Humboldt Box


Man dressed as a satyr playing a bagpipe.

Berlin Tour Part 4

About halfway through, we realized that we were on the wrong tour:


Next time we'll try out the Bierbike.

We also went to Bebelplatz, which is where thousands of books were taken from the collection of Humboldt University and burned because they weren't in keeping with Nazi ideology. There's a memorial in the square that consists of empty underground bookcases that can be viewed through a glass plate set in the square.

Drexel!

Saw this near Checkpoint Charlie:

Berlin Tour Part 3

Next, we went to Checkpoint Charlie. It was filled with tourists and is a pretty fake place, in that the checkpoint is a replica, the soliders standing at the checkpoint are actors, and the signs are replicas. Anyway, here are some pictures:






The pictures of the American solider is of a real soldier that guarded the checkpoint. On the other side is the picture of a DDR soldier.

Berlin Tour Part 2

We visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial) along the tour. It consists of many concrete blocks that grow in size towards the center. The floor also sinks in the middle, so as you walk through it, the temperature decreases and the sounds of Berlin sort of disappear.


We also walked by a place where Trabis (the DDR cars) can be rented. They even give Trabi tours of the city.


This is a long stretch of the wall in Mitte. The wall has been chipped away over the years by tourists, so the wall is now protected by a fence.

Last Weekend

Last Friday, Jules, Steve, and Erik came to visit us in Berlin. When everyone arrived, we went out for dinner and drinks. Jules and I got the two flavors of Berliner Weisse, a wheat beer, flavored with cherry and woodruff (although sometimes the red flavor is raspberry) syrup.


The next day we went for a walking tour of Berlin. It started at the Brandenburg Gate and went all over. Here are some pictures from the tour:

The Reichstag


The US Embassy with its Statue of Liberty bear. There are a bunch of these bears all over Berlin, decorated in keeping with the location.

More pictures later.

Metropie

Yesterday we discovered the German Whole Foods!
http://www.biocompany.de/
It's so clean and well lit and filled with bright colors. A bit pricier than Netto, but so worth it. We got fancy spices and yummy potato beer bread!

On the way home, we saw this yesterday outside of Alexanderplatz:

From Drop Box

It's a tram car filled with plants. The exhibition was called Metropie. Pretty cool.

No Problems Here...

So here's what's going on in Europe right now:


And here's how the Germans feel about it:


Oddly enough, the people at work don't seem terribly concerned about this, even the Germans. It might have something to do with the age range and lack of financial holdings of the typical grad student and post doc, though, because other Germans seem to care. News about the debt crisis is on the front page of the newspapers most mornings. Anyway, should be interesting to see how things work out. Also, if you're planning on visiting Europe, now would be a great time. The exchange rate is extremely low (1 Euro = $1.376). When we got here it was about 1 Euro = $1.45 and when Keith was in France in 2008, it was 1 Euro = $1.56.

Reference: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2011/09/09-06-11-EOTM-European-Minifigure-Union.pdf

The Circus Has Come to Town

Right outside our window:

Graffiti Courses for Older Germans

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,778978,00.html

Kartoffelhund

Josie likes potatoes. And yes, that is a dangerously ripe lemon behind her on the floor.

Crazy weekend. Lots of fun. Will post more later.

Can This Be Real???

On my way home from recycling glass this afternoon, I noticed that the grocery store across the street was open. At first I thought that I was wrong, but the doors were open and people were walking out with items. Next, I considered that I had my days mixed up. Nope, it's Sunday and the grocery store is open. What in the world is going on?

Denise the Highlander?

I know that we already posted about the Victory Tower, but we failed to describe the decoration around the bottom. There are scenes of German history and successful wars in bronze reliefs and a mosaic. It was kind of surreal to see bullet holes and pieces of granite missing from the columns from WWII.





On a lighter note, we saw a familiar face in the mosaic:

Berliner Dom and the Humboldt Box

Our fourth stop on the Lange Nacht der Museen was the Berlin Dom. Here's a picture Keith took a couple of weeks ago during the day of the cathedral:



It is as beautiful inside as it is outside.



The building suffered considerable damage during the Second World War, so it is really amazing how beautiful it is now.

We were lucky to be able to hear a wonderful choral group perform while we were there. The acoustics are incredible in the cathedral. The crypt of the Berliner Dom contains the remains of many influential people from Germany's history, including King Friedrich I (the King of Prussia!) and his wife, Queen Sophie Charlotte. We also learned that the title of Elector (Kurfürst) was a very prestigious one. It refers to the election of the Holy Roman Emperor, and therefore, the title of elector was second only to the Emperor. However, it was not a title of nobility, so electors generally had other titles as well.

Anyway, here's a picture of the Dom that Keith took from the top of the Humboldt Box later that night:


Keith and I have been wondering what the Humboldt Box is since we first saw it. It's a strange cubic origami looking building on the edge of a large expanse of grass that was the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace) until it was torn down by the DDR in 1950 to make way for parade grounds and in 1973 the Palast der Republik, the seat of parliament for the DDR. The Palast der Republik was demolished 2006-2008 (it took so long after reunification to demolish it because of all of the asbestos). The Humboldt box outlines this history as well as the future for the location. The facade of the palace will be reconstructed on three sides (the fourth side facing the river will have a streamlined modern feel) and the building will be used as a cultural-political forum. The Humboldt Box itself had a number of exhibitions on sound and Eastern medicine and citrus and anthropology and some other stuff, plus a DJ spinning techno beats. Kind of a strange place, but interesting nevertheless.

Overall, a very enjoyable evening.

Computerspielmuseum and others

The second museum we went to was the Computerspielmuseum in Friedrichshain. As we entered, we caught the end of a choral performance, which was amusing to watch because they were standing on a staircase along with life sized statues of Zelda and Link.

It was actually a fun museum. They start from the beginning of computer intelligence. I'm not sure what this is supposed to be, but I was amused by it:



Keith talked with ELIZA, played some games, and we both got to try out active shutter 3D on some racing game. Here is the only known photograph of me playing a computer/video game:



I stopped after crashing >5 times in 20 seconds.

Next, we went to the Märkisches Museum, which is actually only a couple blocks from our apartment. It is a museum devoted to the history of Berlin. I really want to like this museum, but the people were jerks. The people at the front didn't understand when we asked if we had to leave our belongings at the coat check and literally pushed me in the coat room's direction and the coat room attendant took my purse. When I asked her why, she said something about having priceless artifacts and liability and something I didn't understand about the police. Listen. I have been to many museums with far more "priceless" items (the British Museum and the Louvre, for example) and none of them took my purse. Furthermore, while walking through the museum it became apparent that I was the only woman whose purse had been confiscated. Apparently I looked like an extreme security risk.

There were legitimately some cool parts of the museum and perhaps I would go back (without a purse, obviously), but I'm still pretty irritated. Two bears live in the park next to the museum, so I will definitely visit them. The museum had Hitler's four foot tall globe, but most of Europe was missing, like it had been peeled off.

After that we went to the DDR Museum, which was a lot of fun. It's a very interactive museum with lots of information and artifacts from Eastern Germany, including a Trabi that you could pretend to drive and a typical DDR apartment. It was interesting to be there with a lot of people who had lived in the DDR and the whole feel of the museum was quite affectionate.