Berlin

What’s better than celebrating your birthday?Celebrating a friend’s birthday!

During the first May bank holiday, J, V and I packed our very small, RyanAir-sized bags and hopped over to Berlin for a three-day fun fest in celebration of V’s birthday.

Can you see Johanna making a funny face out the window?

J and V love Berlin, but I’d never been, so I wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was about.

Now I know.

We arrived on 1 May, which is basically the American equivalent of Labor Day. However, I doubt there’s a place at home that has a massive techno street party where 500,000 people congregate to drink and dance to amazing music. It was a blast.

One of J’s good friends lives right in the center of town, which is where all the madness really is. Luckily, she threw a big party so we could watch the throngs from above while enjoying all the music. It was the best of both worlds.

I’d also never basically hung myself out of a window before. This picture was supposed to be proof, but it has turned into a (quite good) selfie.

Can you blame me for getting distracted with these jams?

As fun as the party was, after a while we wanted to go down and join the madness.

The evening gets a little blurry after all the music and beer…

The next morning, we decided to be proper touristy- mostly at my instigation, being the only person who had never been to Berlin before! We started at the Jewish Museum, a MUST if you’re in Berlin. It is very well done- the right mix of history and emotion. Although a central topic is the Holocaust, the museum considers the entire history of the Jewish people.

The building itself is amazing. It was built by Daniel Liebskind and won numerous architectural awards. The space itself seems to contribute to the overall feeling of the museum and various exhibitions there…look further and I’ll explain…

The Garden of Exile, which is supposed to represent the experience of European Jews in exile, is a sunken plot of rock and concrete pillars placed on slanted ground. The overall effect of pillars and slanted ground makes you feel slightly sick and extremely disoriented.

The permanent installation “Fallen Leaves” was probably the most haunting for me. 10,000 metal faces are placed on the floor in a barren concrete room, and you can walk across them. The noise is slightly like dishes clashing in a busy kitchen, but they bounce off the walls of the room in such a din that its unsettling and chaotic. It doesn’t help that when you look down, you see these faces contorted with pain and suffering. The installation is dedicated to victims of genocide everywhere.

The museum is very interactive. One of the exhibits even allowed us to write words of wisdom on pomegranates, the fruit of wisdom in the Jewish faith. I didn’t leave a note, as I have nothing of note to impart, but I did read quite a few. This was my favorite.

“Learn from your mistakes and never forget.”

I was also able to write my name in Hebrew. Sadly, I can’t read it.

Next we moved on to Checkpoint Charlie, something I’ve heard about for years and honestly never thought I’d see in person.

I also got to see a wee bit of the Berlin Wall…

After a trip down some of history’s low points, the only place to go was up. Up= the Ritter Sport store, where I got to make a candy bar out of my favorite chocolate.

First I got to pick whether I wanted dark or milk chocolate. I wish I had a chocolate sink in my flat…

then I selected the fillings…I chose chili, raspberry bits and sprinkles on the outside, an odd mixture that I think sums up who I am as a person perfectly!