Ich bin ein Berliner! (To quote JFK.) - L

After a brief flight we arrived in Berlin late Sunday afternoon. Our hostel in Berlin was right near the center of things just a few blocks east of where the Berlin wall once stood. We didn’t do a terribly large amount of things that evening, we wondered around the city for a bit and saw some sights before heading to an excellent (and relatively cheap) Vietnamese restaurant for supper. I’m stupid and couldn’t remember if tip was included in the total and therefore accidentally left our waitress a very, very generous tip. I’m sure she appreciated it, but we could have used that money to get ourselves some Doner Kebaps. Which are cheap Turkish delights, containing seasoned lamb shavings and vegetables in a flat bread, and absolutely delicious. Later that night we went to my first club! The place was called Weekend and though it was fun , I think if we could have afforded some alcohol (and some serious hair product to fit in better) it definitely would have changed the experience. Oh! And I forgot to mention, Berlin has a very, very, very active prostitution business. I’m not sure if it’s actually legal, but as aggressively as these girls made their propositions (and let me tell you, dressed the part) they sure weren’t hiding what they were about. We ran into our first two on our way to the club and on our way back to the hostel later there seemed to be two on every block, working as a team. Let me tell you, it was ridiculously difficult to convince them that we weren't interested. It's sad really.


Anyway the next day we hoped over to the Brandenburg Gate for a free (well, the guides work for tips only) walking tour around Berlin. Our guide Katie was from Australia and she did an excellent job of providing us with the history of Berlin and the significance of several places around the city center.

Right away she pointed out to us Hotel Adlon where the recently departed Michael Jackson dangled Prince Michael II over the balcony (RIP MJ, you may have given two of your sons the same name, but Thriller is a killer song.) Next we saw the Reichstag, visited the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, the location where Hitler’s bunker is now demolished and buried, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie (the most famous access point between East and West Berlin), the sight of the socialist book burning and it’s present day memorial, the opera house, Museum Island, and the Berlin Dom, among other things. It was a pretty great tour and our hope our guide made some good money!



Later we attempted to get into the Stadtsoper to see Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, but as no seats seemed to be available we opted instead to race over to the Deutsches Oper just barely in time to get into Puccini’s Turandot. Just as the stated to dim the lights and raise the current we caught a glimpse of someone we thought we recognized as a fellow Ole Choir member, but we decided it couldn’t be and the show began! Overall it was an okay production, unfortunately it was sung in Italian and super titled in German so much of the story line was lost on us, but the singers were quite excellent (though as seems to be the trend in opera, not very good actors). I also don’t much like European staging and the constant need to contemporize a productions, but it was fun and I think worth the time. By the time the opera was over we had indeed confirmed that John Andert (another first tenor in choir) was indeed sitting across the audience from us. He was staying with St. Olaf professor, Dan Dressen’s former voice professor and his wife who were chorus members in the opera and they treated the three of us and another singer/audience member to wine after the show. I think it’s easy to feel isolated from the “natives.” It was really nice to run into somebody we knew, and to sit down and talk with people for a change.


Our last day in Berlin we met John for lunch and headed back over to der Museuminseln to go into the Pergamum Museum. Inside it they had large scale antiquities such as the enormous partially reconstructed from remants of the ruins Pergamon Altar, Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, an amazing marketplace gate, and hundreds of Greek and Roman sculptures and artifacts.

The last thing Eric and I did in Berlin was to visit the Reichstag and to climb into it’s giant glass dome. We barely got in before closing but we were able to see the Berlin skyline and night and gaze down into the parliamentary chamber of the German government. It was a pretty neat way to finish our time in Germany. Whew. This was a lot to cram into one post, sorry!