this is the voice of re:mote induction.Thursday, November 06, 2003
BERLIN
-well i keep promising myself that i will write more about our trip to berlin in october, and with a return to the city planned for the start of december for the information wants to be free festival then it makes sense to get some of that done.
-while we were there before it had been the holiday weekend for the reunification of germany. that weekend we had wondered along to the brandenburger tor and the reichstag. the tor is a gate way through which royalty used to pass along one opening and everyone else through others. it became a symbol of victory and was central to celebrations held in berlin. in the war against napoleon the statue of the chariot on top was taken as spoils, but was later returned. ironically at the moment as you walk down the road, past the embassys and coffee shops the gate is obscured. apparently, not being a football fan, germany have the next world cup, or something, so there is a giant football positioned right in front of the gate. this means the gate doesn't become visible until you are closer.
- through out our trip to the city we had seen statue/models of bears everywhere - the bear being one the symbols of berlin. these bears we kept seeing were based on the buddy bear collection - a work commissioned for peace - where artists from all round the world painted the basic bear to represent their country. these bears were, until this week, located in a big circle by the brandenburg gate. many of this bears bore striking designs - with a guide book available to show the various design stages, artists details, and in most cases an explanation of what the designs actually represented. the exhibit has now finished, and the bears should be on tour - eventually being dispersed after an auction to raise money for unicef.
- through the gates the park lands of the tiergarten lie, stretching from here to the zoological gardens. the this garden covers a big area in berlin, and although it was deforested after the war, by people desperate for fire wood, it has been restored since. to the right of that point you can see the reichstag - the german parliament building. the building contains the history of the attempts to bring democracy in under the kaisers, how things changed after the first world war, how that led to a period of flux, the constantly changing governments that led to the rise of hitler and the second world war. upon reunification the reichstag was made the seat of government for the new germany - with the dome on top being refitted as a big glass structure, with a crystallized spire that plunges into the building and to the top of the dome. entry to this building is free, but it can take a considerable length of time to get in - as it is the government building, security is high and this is what takes the time. air lock style entrances lead to metal detectors and the whole airport security type set up. from there a lift takes you up to the top of the building. you can wander around the roof, looking across the city from there. but you can also go up a spiral walk way that takes you to the top of the dome, which puts you higher, and gives a clearer view of the area.
-when we went that sunday there was a considerable queue, which was seeing little movement. even the distraction of a brass band playing ABBA's greatest hits didn't encourage us, so we left that day to come back the next morning. unfortunately it was busy again, even worse the weather on our visit had started to turn. so we spent a particularly cold hour queuing to get inside. returning a couple of nights later, to get night photos of the dome, we found the queue was a lot smaller - so we decided to go in again, and this time it was a lot quicker. entry is possible to about 10, with the actual closing time being later than that.
-when we had turned around and left the reichstag that first time we decided to see if the queue at the Fernsehturm was any smaller. the Fernsehturm is a radio tower which was erected by the east germans during the cold war, located in the alexanderplatz area of the city, and visible from a lot of places. like many radio towers/tall buildings, you can enter and go to an observation level at the top. while there were people waiting, we decided to hang around to see how long it took. in the end it didn't take that long, though perhaps wasn't really worth the visit, the observation deck gave a good view from the top, but personally i enjoyed the one from the berlin dom church more on the first day of our visit. one item of novelty value, and no doubt related to the aforementioned football - the urinals in the gents at the top of the towers had green netting on the inside, with little goal posts from the top, and a little football hanging by wire from the cross bar. which was different.
-as i already mentioned at the other end of the tiergarten from the brandenburger tor there is the zoo. while much of our time in berlin was spent in the mitte area, the trip to the zoo was one of only a couple of trips into charlottenburg. i have mixed feelings about zoos - seeing some of the apes and big cats, and their obvious discomfort can be distressing. on the other the chance to see all these animals in the flesh, and hopefully preserve some of them can be a good thing. regardless, we spent several hours wandering around the zoo, and were quite lucky in that it didn't start raining until we were just about leaving anyway.
-sony have large offices at Potsdamer Platz, a huge glass structure, which includes a film museum, a cinema with several screens, a shop to buy the latest sony merchandise, a number of restuarants/bars, as well as a chunk of a preserved hotel which used to be on the site and was particularly trendy in pre-war days. depending what you are looking for will depend what you make of the sony center. we had been told it was particularly worth seeing by my sister, who had been there coincidentally a few weeks before our trip. the day we were there the film museum was closed and it felt like a big captive advert for sony, so i wasn't especially impressed.
- as i've been writing i've been checking out some relevant sites, where i have just across this site in particular - which seems to have a good selection of photographs covering many of the things i have mentioned in this and previous reports of our trip - http://www.berlin-motive.de
- in terms of eating and drinking there were a number of places we visited, and plenty more that we never got to for various reasons. one place we stumbled on while looking for lunch one day was schwarzenraben, which we quite liked the look and feel of - so we returned quite regularly in the evenings for drinks. since then i've discovered that this is apparently quite a trendy venue in east berlin, but even with that we found it to be a spacious and comfortable bar to hang out in. past the actual bar there is a long restuarant area, which seems to have garnered a good reputation, although other than the lunch where we found the place we never got round to trying the food. down stairs was a cocktail bar, which seemed to also be used for functions. and it looked like there was perhaps a beer garden at the back of the restuarant. on top of all that, there were additionals which made it even more of a flexible and enjoyable place to hang out - service was at the table, so no need to stand at a crowded bar for a drink; at the weekends there was fresh ramen noodles for sale, a noodle kitchen being set up at the front of the bar; there was an AOL sponsored computer in a corner, which allowed customers to access the internet for free (within reason). it is strange to think that the building used to be a cinema, which was split into for men and women - especially as a couple of nights after we were there, they were having a showing of short film and party to go with that.
-there were a couple of other places that worthy of note food wise. but i can't find the details of those just now, so i'll post about those when i get home.
-well i keep promising myself that i will write more about our trip to berlin in october, and with a return to the city planned for the start of december for the information wants to be free festival then it makes sense to get some of that done.
-while we were there before it had been the holiday weekend for the reunification of germany. that weekend we had wondered along to the brandenburger tor and the reichstag. the tor is a gate way through which royalty used to pass along one opening and everyone else through others. it became a symbol of victory and was central to celebrations held in berlin. in the war against napoleon the statue of the chariot on top was taken as spoils, but was later returned. ironically at the moment as you walk down the road, past the embassys and coffee shops the gate is obscured. apparently, not being a football fan, germany have the next world cup, or something, so there is a giant football positioned right in front of the gate. this means the gate doesn't become visible until you are closer.
- through out our trip to the city we had seen statue/models of bears everywhere - the bear being one the symbols of berlin. these bears we kept seeing were based on the buddy bear collection - a work commissioned for peace - where artists from all round the world painted the basic bear to represent their country. these bears were, until this week, located in a big circle by the brandenburg gate. many of this bears bore striking designs - with a guide book available to show the various design stages, artists details, and in most cases an explanation of what the designs actually represented. the exhibit has now finished, and the bears should be on tour - eventually being dispersed after an auction to raise money for unicef.
- through the gates the park lands of the tiergarten lie, stretching from here to the zoological gardens. the this garden covers a big area in berlin, and although it was deforested after the war, by people desperate for fire wood, it has been restored since. to the right of that point you can see the reichstag - the german parliament building. the building contains the history of the attempts to bring democracy in under the kaisers, how things changed after the first world war, how that led to a period of flux, the constantly changing governments that led to the rise of hitler and the second world war. upon reunification the reichstag was made the seat of government for the new germany - with the dome on top being refitted as a big glass structure, with a crystallized spire that plunges into the building and to the top of the dome. entry to this building is free, but it can take a considerable length of time to get in - as it is the government building, security is high and this is what takes the time. air lock style entrances lead to metal detectors and the whole airport security type set up. from there a lift takes you up to the top of the building. you can wander around the roof, looking across the city from there. but you can also go up a spiral walk way that takes you to the top of the dome, which puts you higher, and gives a clearer view of the area.
-when we went that sunday there was a considerable queue, which was seeing little movement. even the distraction of a brass band playing ABBA's greatest hits didn't encourage us, so we left that day to come back the next morning. unfortunately it was busy again, even worse the weather on our visit had started to turn. so we spent a particularly cold hour queuing to get inside. returning a couple of nights later, to get night photos of the dome, we found the queue was a lot smaller - so we decided to go in again, and this time it was a lot quicker. entry is possible to about 10, with the actual closing time being later than that.
-when we had turned around and left the reichstag that first time we decided to see if the queue at the Fernsehturm was any smaller. the Fernsehturm is a radio tower which was erected by the east germans during the cold war, located in the alexanderplatz area of the city, and visible from a lot of places. like many radio towers/tall buildings, you can enter and go to an observation level at the top. while there were people waiting, we decided to hang around to see how long it took. in the end it didn't take that long, though perhaps wasn't really worth the visit, the observation deck gave a good view from the top, but personally i enjoyed the one from the berlin dom church more on the first day of our visit. one item of novelty value, and no doubt related to the aforementioned football - the urinals in the gents at the top of the towers had green netting on the inside, with little goal posts from the top, and a little football hanging by wire from the cross bar. which was different.
-as i already mentioned at the other end of the tiergarten from the brandenburger tor there is the zoo. while much of our time in berlin was spent in the mitte area, the trip to the zoo was one of only a couple of trips into charlottenburg. i have mixed feelings about zoos - seeing some of the apes and big cats, and their obvious discomfort can be distressing. on the other the chance to see all these animals in the flesh, and hopefully preserve some of them can be a good thing. regardless, we spent several hours wandering around the zoo, and were quite lucky in that it didn't start raining until we were just about leaving anyway.
-sony have large offices at Potsdamer Platz, a huge glass structure, which includes a film museum, a cinema with several screens, a shop to buy the latest sony merchandise, a number of restuarants/bars, as well as a chunk of a preserved hotel which used to be on the site and was particularly trendy in pre-war days. depending what you are looking for will depend what you make of the sony center. we had been told it was particularly worth seeing by my sister, who had been there coincidentally a few weeks before our trip. the day we were there the film museum was closed and it felt like a big captive advert for sony, so i wasn't especially impressed.
- as i've been writing i've been checking out some relevant sites, where i have just across this site in particular - which seems to have a good selection of photographs covering many of the things i have mentioned in this and previous reports of our trip - http://www.berlin-motive.de
- in terms of eating and drinking there were a number of places we visited, and plenty more that we never got to for various reasons. one place we stumbled on while looking for lunch one day was schwarzenraben, which we quite liked the look and feel of - so we returned quite regularly in the evenings for drinks. since then i've discovered that this is apparently quite a trendy venue in east berlin, but even with that we found it to be a spacious and comfortable bar to hang out in. past the actual bar there is a long restuarant area, which seems to have garnered a good reputation, although other than the lunch where we found the place we never got round to trying the food. down stairs was a cocktail bar, which seemed to also be used for functions. and it looked like there was perhaps a beer garden at the back of the restuarant. on top of all that, there were additionals which made it even more of a flexible and enjoyable place to hang out - service was at the table, so no need to stand at a crowded bar for a drink; at the weekends there was fresh ramen noodles for sale, a noodle kitchen being set up at the front of the bar; there was an AOL sponsored computer in a corner, which allowed customers to access the internet for free (within reason). it is strange to think that the building used to be a cinema, which was split into for men and women - especially as a couple of nights after we were there, they were having a showing of short film and party to go with that.
-there were a couple of other places that worthy of note food wise. but i can't find the details of those just now, so i'll post about those when i get home.
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