Day 2 in Berlin

We set out for a full day of touring Berlin. A tiny bakery provided an incredibly cheap breakfast, and we were off to Alexanderplatz (Alexander Square). As far as we could tell, this was just a city square with shopping, street vendors, and street performers.

You just don't see this kind of innovation in America

Alexanderplatz lies at the base of the Berlin TV tower. We opted not to go up because of the huge line, wait, and cost. 

TV tower

The street performers here are really world class. We've seen tons of them, and every group is truly impressive. I'm going to place them a half step above the average street performer in New York.

He claims it was an accident

Crossing the Spree River, we arrived on Museum Island. It has at least five gigantic museums whose facades alone were worth a walk around. They also had one of the most profound series of sculpture I've ever seen.

I call this one "Naked Man on a Horse Killing a Lion Killing his Horse"

I call this one "Naked Woman on a Horse Killing a Jaguar Killing Her Horse"

I call this one "Naked Woman Tickling a Horse with Wings Under the Chin"

We stumbled on a flea market, resisted buying anything, and continued on to the German Historical Museum. So far, this museum has been one of the highlights of the trip. It had all sorts of awesome stuff like suits of armor, old (read "wrong") maps, and WWII pariphenalia. The German treatment of WWII was interesting almost because it was unremarkable. Andy and I agreed that it wasn't much different than what you would find in, say, the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. I was curious to see how they would cast it, but I found no glaring omissions or sugarcoating.

First depiction of the World as a globe. North and South America are omitted.

From the Historical Museum, we took the subway to Checkpoint Charlie. We found it hugely underwhelming. All that remains is a small shack in the middle of the street, a sign denoting the border, and a huge number of shops and street vendors trying to profit off of tourists. A man dressed in period military garb held an American flag and wore a sign suggesting that he would pose for pictures for 2 Euro. I couldn't tell if he smoked his cigarette as part of his act or out of boredom. He didn't fool me. He wasn't a real American soldier.

Didn't fool me

Unable to find anything else worth seeing at Checkpoint Charlie, we took the subway to the Berlin Wall Memorial. The memorial (one of several in the city) consisted of a mile long stretch of the original wall in place. On the east-facing side, artists had painted elaborate murals. As we walked along the wall, we discussed how surreal the idea of separating a city with a 12ft wall is. But the wall stood just over 20 years ago. We wondered what our children will look back on in 20 years and find completely incomprehensible.

Hoya Saxa

We returned to the hostel, regrouped, and launched on an odyssey of a night. Any hope of understanding the night requires the knowledge that Germany won their first Euro 2012 soccer game about an hour after we left the hostel. Our original mission was to buy our train ticket for the next day and then find a bar to watch the second half of the game. However, in the main station, we were waylaid by an enthusiastic fan as we ate our doner kebap on a bench. He staggered up to our bench and politely shook both of our hands before swaying a bit and offering us each a generous helping of Jim Beam in plastic cups he had procured for the occassion. Despite the soothing familiarity of Kentucky Bourbon, we refrained from joining his gulping enjoyment. He didn't speak a word of english, and the only word of his that I understood was "Polish". As it happened, we had been silently sharing the bench with a fellow American until our partially concious, German soccer apparel-clad Polish friend (we'll call him Jim Beam) arrived. As he slurred a request for a cigarette lighter to every police officer in the station, we got to know the American lady and ended up talking to her for 45 minutes until the first wave of German revelers reached our station from downtown. In one last act of generosity, Jim Beam gifted us with the rest of his Jim Beam and stumbled off to get a good night's sleep.


As we had seen the day before, a gigantic party had been set up at the Brandenburg Gate. We hopped on the subway to go check out the scene. Thanks to a conspicuous lack of open container laws, Andy and I had consumed one or two German beers. When we arrived at the gate, we realized how woefully far behind we had fallen. 

Jumbotron erected in front of the gate

I would call the scene we encountered "aftermath", but the party seemed to just be getting started. Thousands of people remained even an hour after the victory. Cups littered the ground such that we couldn't walk without crushing them. This was a celebration of a German win in the OPENING GAME OF THE TOURNAMENT.

Andy conducting relations with the locals

Having witnessed the German soccer enthusiasm (insanity) firsthand, we returned to the hostel and went to bed.