The Final Days

Bonjour tout le monde!

It's D again, taking back my blog and finishing up the saga of our Berlin trip. Sorry it has taken so long! Since the Berlin trip we made a journey up to the North of France and Belgium for a research trip (historical research for me, beer research for A). It was a pretty nice trip, but the best part was definitely the beer, the food made with beer, and the waffles. Not much beats an authentic Belgian waffle! It was nice to go back to Brussels after my time in EU sleep-away camp last Spring, but the weather was very gloomy. Someday soon we will post about the beer.

Anyway, now we're back in Paris and this week I dove headfirst into doing some oral history. It was very traumatic beforehand, mostly because of my extreme fear of talking to people, and in particular of talking to people in a foreign language for hours and hours. But my subject was very nice and fixed me lunch (un pique-nique, she said, after she brought out several cold salads, foie gras, cheese, fruit, wine, etc.), and endless cups of tea. And she told me lots of things that are making me rethink my diss. Now that I think about, I'm still a bit traumatized, especially since I promised myself I would have something written before BS descends on Paris in a few weeks. She may kill me if I have nothing to show.

It seems so long ago, but the lovely Berlin trip has been brought back up thanks to the fact that we have discovered all the Life magazine photographs (free for your perusal on the interwebs), and there are so many amazing photos of post-WWII Berlin. Plus I haven't yet told you about the Stasi museums, the films, the flea market or the HUGE Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park.

Ok, so where did we leave off? Ah yes. Knut and the Clärchens Ballhaus - both awesome in their own special way. Saturday morning was a bit rough, especially since we arrived back at our hotel after Friday night's festivities at about 3:30 am. We slept in a bit and decided to check out Kreuzberg and have some authentic Döner, which was very delicious! The day was very grey and cold, and we didn't end up taking too many pictures. We wandered up to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, found out it's just a stupid tourist attraction, and then went to the Starbucks across the street for tea (you'll notice there's a Starbucks in just about every major border crossing area now!). 

We also went to the Jewish Museum, which is in a building built by Daniel Libeskind, who I have very mixed feelings about. I actually thought the building was pretty cool, but the museum itself was not my favorite. It just feels like it is missing something really important... but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Perhaps it's that the space is not utilized to its full potential - it's a building filled with black spaces and sharp angles but the way the exhibits are organized made me feel like I was in a children's museum - everything was very interactive and techy. But I still think it's worth a visit if you're ever in Berlin.

We walked from there over to a plot of land that was called "The Topography of Terrors" in the guidebook. Apparently it was the Gestapo headquarters and there is now a photo exhibition on it. It was closed when we got there, but apparently they are renovating the area to put a real museum there. Across the street is the area where you can rent a Trabant, something that greatly appealed to A. Fortunately I managed to talk him out of it, although I imagine it was more the fact that I had just possibly broken my ankle by falling off a curb sideways. 

We walked from there back to Potsdamer Platz to see if there were any movies playing at the movie theater that shows everything in English, and to my delight, the Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading was there! We experienced the interesting behavior in German movie theaters where everyone has an assigned seat, and where they sell ice cream in the theater after the ads! The movie was disappointing, but may improve on further viewings - the Coens kind of work that way for me. We also saw that the following day they were playing the Baader Meinhof Komplexe, which is a new movie about the RAF, and Germany's Academy Award entry. I won't say too much about the film here, since A. may want to comment, but we were fairly disappointed with it as well. It's a strange one...

Sunday and Monday, our last two days in Berlin, were some of the best days of the trip. We started Sunday with a lovely brunch with my journalist friends (who were responsible for the Ballhaus escapade) in Prenzlauer Berg. Once again A. and I were shocked when they complained about how expensive the place was (8 euros for all you can eat brunch), but the food was really good, and it was fun to hang out with my friends. After brunch we split up, and our new friend Ella took us to meet up with some of her German friends at one of Berlin's largest flea markets at Mauerpark, which was an area between the Berlin walls that has since been turned into a park. I have frankly never seen anything like it! Stalls of random crap that went on forever! If you ever need bike parts, or pots and pans (or really anything!) this is where to go. I was particularly captivated by the stall that sold nothing but duct tape.

I really wanted to buy my dad some authentic Communist items, but I imagine they are all long gone by now, and what's left is just the everyday crap that nobody really wants. A. was very taken with a number of audio visual devices that were remnants of the DDR, but I was more interested in the avant-garde fashion options.

After a complete circuit through the market, and a stop to watch the kite flyers and a local band in the freezing wind, we had to leave to go catch the movie, and then go over to Svanur's house for dinner (he cooked a delicious risotto!). It was really fun to hang out with him in Berlin, and we totally enjoyed the dinner!

Monday was our last day so we decided to hit both the Soviet memorial and the bit Stasi museum (we went through the little one in the center of town during our Cold War walk). The smaller Soviet memorial near the Brandenburg Gate is impressive, but it's nothing compared to this one in Treptower Park. We trekked out to the park way on the Eastern side of the city in the pouring rain. It really is sort of in the middle of nowhere and we walked through the park for quite a while before finding the entrance to the memorial. And we arrived right along with a bus full of Russian tourists, who were racing to have their pictures taken with the statue. The memorial consists of several parts, but the most imposing are the entrance (built with the red marble of Hitler's Reichschancellery) with the statues of the two soldiers bent down on one knee, and then the statue of the Soviet soldier holding a German baby that he rescued while stomping on a swastika with his massive foot. This thing is massively huge! I wish that I could have shown this to my students last summer who didn't really believe me when I said that the Soviets (and many others!) believed they had saved the world from the Nazis. It was very impressive!

So you can see the scale of this thing... check out the Russian tourist on the steps!

After standing in the freezing rain for a while, and nearly falling to our deaths on the slippery wet marble, we moved on to the Stasi museum. The museum is located in the former Stasi headquarters in Friedrichshain in the Eastern part of the city. I followed the directions on the brochure but we were having a lot of trouble finding it. We saw a sign on a wall with the words "Stasi Museum" and an arrow, and then walked through a huge office park without seeing any sign of the museum. We walked around the outside and encountered two other couples having the same difficulty, until someone finally realized that the office park was in fact the Stasi complex. The museum is in building number 1 (pictured here)

The archive is in the building next to it, where Germans can go check out their own Stasi files, and the rest of the space seems to have been rented out as regular offices. I think that's part of what makes it so creepy - the sheer banality of it. The Stasi prison is a few blocks away, but you have to have pre-arranged, guided tours to visit and we weren't able to set that up in time. Someday I would like to see it though.

The museum was actually put in Building #1 because that was essentially the headquarters of the Stasi. On the first floor is the entryway and a model of the complex. The second floor consists of several themed rooms with lots of interesting artifacts, like the various secret camera/recording/killing devices.

Ah the old briefcase machine gun!

And the old watch tape recorder!

That can't be the button camera... but indeed it is!

And of course the log thingy!

And finally... the tie cam.

There is also a room dedicated to the Stasi sports teams, the Eisbärs! (or Polar bears in English - no wonder Knut is such a celebrity!). As a lover of spy novels and all things espionage, I was very excited to see all the bizarre gadgets, although I couldn't really understand any of the museum text as it was all in German (we had a guidebook with summaries in English, but it clearly left a lot of stuff out). But the really interesting part of the museum was actually the third floor - the offices. We walked through all the offices of the Stasi heads, and got a glimpse into DDR deco and design. 

All the offices had these enormous metal safes built into the walls, which was interesting. And amazing electronic devices like the Robotron 202 (it probably still as the Brother label on the back).

After seeing the main offices, we walked into a room that was once the Cafeteria (and still is!) so we could not resist the opportunity to have a Coca-Cola (a Socialist invention?) in the Stasi cafeteria. It was very bizarre, and also very cheap (I think my Coca was like a euro).

Then, of course, there are the scent bottles, which played an important role in The Lives of Others. During interrogation, the Stasi would make you sit on a special chair and hold your hands under your legs to gather your scent (which they kept in bottles like this) in case they have to come chasing after you with a big mean dog.

I could probably go on and on about the Stasi and the museum, but my guess is that you're already bored so I think I will just stop there and leave you with some more pictures of Knut!