June 3rd
After almost a week in Hamburg, we were looking forward to new sights in Berlin. Lucky for us we were finally successful with finding a ride through carpooling online, and met some interesting characters along the way…
For the first day in Berlin we decided to make good use of our “Let’s Go Europe” book. We started at the DDR museum that depicted the history and life of Communist Germany in the East when the wall divided the two regions. I very much appreciated the interactive and creative displays, and finally understood this bit of history in a way that my grade 10 history books could never really depict. We later went to the wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse, which was a 1.4 kilometre stretch of an outdoor museum. It described the history and politics of the wall, and commemorated stories of people who died while trying to escape its system.
Next we ventured out to find a bombed out department store. Behind crumbling graffiti walls was an art exhibition of works made out of old recyled debris. There was a haunting and beautiful quality to the whole thing that’s hard to describe. Much like Berlin today, the contrast of the city’s destruction and rebirth after the wall came down is a juxtaposition in itself. I kept thinking of the quote from Red Hot
Chilli Peppers, “Destruction is a very rough road but it also breads creation”.
That evening we took full advantage of the 1 euro “happy hour” beers at the hostel which, to everyone’s delight, seemed to extend well past the hour. We met some various travellers from America, Scotland and Ireland. Many of them were also like us planning to travel to Prague next, but are considering re-routing due to the extreme floods in the East. We all went out to Matrix club, and stayed up dancing well into the morning.
Daphodill 