Planes, trains and automobiles!
On Monday our classes have gone back to the earlier hours for this week, which is great because it gives us more time to do things before our excursions. I also told my group our meeting was going to be at 8pm, so I had a lot of free time.
I went to the Berlinischer Gallerie, which is a big arty building full of blank walls for artistic talent of the abstract and modern type. I found some parts interesting, some parts downright weird, and some boring parts. There was a video showing insects walking around on a TV screen, stuffed one-piece pilot suits from the war, and sculptures of objects fused with other objects to make a point. My favourite section was a variety of posters from post-war Germany that were meant to be sarcastic and mocking of parliament and policy, and highlighting environmental and economic problems. All the text was in German but it was obvious to tell and fun to guess before reading the printed sheet in English. Some of them include: Art is a betrayal of secrets; Imagine you have to take refuge and everywhere it reads: Foreigners out! And Citizens of Berlin – the bankrupts come to soak you.
On Tuesday after class Alison and I went to the Deutsch Technikmuseum in Kreuzberg. On one side of the entrance is a huge aircraft hanger, with five levels of boats and planes. Each level focused on a different area. The bottom was about the theory of ships. The new hangar had everything in German and only some parts in English, so I also got to practice my German reading the plaques. The display showed a life size boat and right next to it just the insides of the mechanics of the boat. They had an old ruin of a shipwrecked boat, preserved in stones, and hundreds of model boats from every century. They had a wind machine to show how sails worked, and the German side of how compasses came about – which parallels some of the information in the Royal Observatory in London. They spoke about deep-sea shipping from cargo boats to cruise liners.
The next two levels were devoted to aviation before 1918 and aviation and space flight since 1919. There was an impressive collection of photographs and models. They had hot air balloons, gas balloons, zeppelins, original hang gliders and some of the first airplanes. They kept the outer shell off so you can see the mechanics. They told the story of Lufthansa, which is the first original airliner to go commercial, even though it later merged with another company and was then shut down during the war. They also had a section on female pilots, most of who had to stop during the war, except for a few really good pilots who were signed up.
Back through the main entrance and into the two engine sheds, just like a life-size Thomas the Tank Engine with turn-table outside. They had huge trains and small trains, fancy dining carriages and old wooden benches. It showed the importance and history of train travel in Germany and continental Europe during the 1800s until today.
In the Civil Servants House they had exhibitions on photo and film technology, from the very first moving picture flip-books and spinners, to early movie cameras and small video cameras; as well as still cameras, Polaroids and digital cameras. Back in the entrance building was a section on machine tools and textile technology – the old weaving machines, and hand-punchers for flowers. They showed the Zuse computer and early time TVs and telecommunications. And we still didn’t see everything.
We had to get going for our afternoon excursion, which was a bit of a joke but we made the best out of a bad situation. We were taken to the Mercedes show room in Tiergarten, the largest showroom for Mercedes in the world. It was three-storeys high and snaked around in ramps so you could drive a car out if you really wanted to. It wasn’t complete without an indoor water feature, climbing wall and café. Lutz gave us a talk about why it’s one of the most important industries along with a few figures about how many cars they produce and then we just got let loose in the showroom. Everyone was just standing there looking at all these shiny cars – only in black, grey and burgundy, as per the clientele – standing around saying, well what do we do now? So what do I do but jump into the first car I see! And how at home I felt (apart from the steering wheel being on the wrong side) and how quickly the others followed suit. So we spent an hour walking up and down hopping into cars and taking photos until we were bored.
We took the train to Bar25, a riverside venue with swings, photobooth, campfire pits, restaurants, BBQ, pizzas, cushions inside the hut bar, and crazy pieces of art/things everywhere. Supposedly the circus opens up on the weekend so we may be checking that out tomorrow.
Wednesday I tried to be productive while doing some work at home, although in a moment of weakness I went with the girls to Mehringdamm where they were getting kebabs and I got Currywurst with Pommes mmmm. Still, I rode my bike so I kind of worked some of it off. In the afternoon we had an excursion to a big Russian monument in Treptower Park. It is there to commemorate the Red Army in the late 40s. It stands on the grave of 5,000 Soviet soldiers killed in the battle for Berlin in 1945. The actual figure is an 11ft high sculpture of a soldier rescuing a child and resting his sword on a smashed swastika. After the boys had a race to the top of the stairs, and the film team did their walk-bys and panning shots, we headed over to another part of the park for a game of football. At first it was girls versus boys, which was way too unfair so we swapped to lights and darks, four on each side. We played for ages in the hot sun and had a well-deserved cold drink on the side of the river afterwards.
Yesterday we just had our progress meetings to go through what we’ve done and who’s doing what where next. Everyone handed in at least one article, which was great, so we’re on our way to beginning layout. Before those, and after class, Jay and I went to this great little hot spot café that Elizabeth suggested close to Gorlitzer Park, and then biked over to Anhalter Bahnhof, the old ruins once Berlin’s largest and Europe’s second largest railway station. It was designed and made to impress in 1880, and trains could travel to Athens, Dresden, Vienna and Rome. It was destroyed in 1943 from Allied bombing and a plaque shows how many people were shipped out to concentration camps, very few people who got on this train survived. There were about 10,000 people in all, shipped in lots of 50 or 100 in the last three cattle carriages of regular trains that were being used by others to travel.
A filling week, I enjoy the early mornings because we can fit a lot more in during the day. Last night is the first time I’ve sat down for dinner outside of home since our first weekend, and yet again the service was Berlin-style, we had Vietnamese and waited an hour for our food. But I had a pork noodle soup (Pho Lan) which turned out to be very nice indeed! It was only a tram ride home, so we had a nice meal out and turned in for the night.
Tags: Travel
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