Tuesday 11 March 2008

where theres a will theres a whalebone

hooray! I borrowed a SD card reader from one of the nice australians so I can show you guys some ace pictures of berlin!heres a picture of me all on my own in the airport at approximately 3am it was completely abandoned and creepy i just sat around alot and read some really bad book that I bought from an english bookshop in paris full of french authors work translated badly into English so I didn´t really get it all and in the end just went through adding full stops and apostrophes with my pen.

heres is the Brandenburg gate with our mosher tour guide haha he was seriously really good though and I learnt a load about the history of Berlin that I didn´t have a clue about before. We went around most major landmarks and at one point we were standing above the point of Hitlers bunker, theres absolutely no trace or memorial to prevent any glorification of hitler and as the guide put it ´the communists turned this land into a parking lot where the residents take their dogs to shit´

this is that weird deathstar-esque TV tower thing in Alexanderplatz it has a rotating restaurant at the top and is the second largest structure in Europe. Its funny because the Germans started to build it after the war to show the world they still had advanced technology and engineering skills but half way through they realised that the tower was sinking because they were building on a swamp and had to smuggle in some swedish engineers to help them finish it off! some journalists found out about it and it was in the papers and everyone laughed.

this is a part of the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of berlin wall which in 1990 was turned into a open air art gallery , theres some really good work there but unfortunately even though it was restored in 2000 so many tourists have decided to leave their own ´tag´ that the whole thing is covered in permanent marker saying like "STEVE WAS ERE"

I took this in the park in Kreuzburg district , often called the Little Istanbul of Berlin it has streets and streets of doner shops , turkish delicassens and shisha bars, its a really nice area and not too busy either.

the awesome thing about berlin is the amount of street art, it is everywhere, there isn´t a street in the entire city that doesn't have a work of art on the wall, that does mean there are a lot of horrible talentless tags everywhere but it evens out by all the funny, beautiful and though provoking work you see round every corner.
seriously I could post pictures all day of nothing but amazing street art and my memory card would be full if I hadn't been resisting photographing it all.
Last night I went here on the S-Bahn to see Band Of Horses play, it was a wild show and the support band 'cave singers' and 'tyler ramsey(?) also made awesome music unfortunately I couldn't have anything to drink because even a glass of water was 3euros! so I survived until I got out again then caught another S-Bahn back to near the hostel arriving back at about 12.50 the german public transport system is weird, theres are no gates or ticket guys they just trust your honesty to buy a ticket but all the machines for tickets don't work or theres a big queue so I couldnt get a ticket anyway!

today I think im going to go down to Potsdamm Platz and see some architecture and eat some schnitzel

see you guys later!

2 comments:

David Golden said...

Good to see some pics again Sam. Just got your postcard from Paris today.Berlin sounds interesting.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Sam for the amazing travelogue and superb photos. love you. grandma