Nicole schreibt...

Berlin 2008

I've never been a fan of Germany's old and new capital, but since a new musical beckoned, I made the slog East with my friend on the first weekend of December. Also a welcome opportunity to check out Berlin's christmas markets. The photos were all taken spontaneously with my cellphone camera, so please forgive the crappy quality.

Here we are in the old West-Berlin, where the christmas market was set up around the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, the church that was bombed to a ruin in WWII and has remained in this state since as a memorial. The christmas market was the same stuff as usual, though I admit I loved the huge christmas pyramid from the Erzgebirge (normally you have much smaller versions which people put on the table as christmas decoration).

Above is West-Berlin's main shopping drag, the Kurfürstendamm in all its pre-christmas kitsch glory and the entrance to luxury department store KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens - even 20 years after reunification it still calls itself Department Store of the West) which was swamped with shoppers. Recession? What recession?

	The whole "west" thing was an obsession in West-Berlin, so not surprisingly this theatre is called Theater des Westens too. We saw the stage version of one of Germany's most successful film comedies ever, Der Schuh des Manitu, a spoof on old westerns movies. The show was excellent and even better was the surprise that afterwards there was actually a buffet waiting for us - quite a rarity with Stage Entertainment's press nights and very much enjoyed.

But the evening was still young and so we went to this charming "Old Berlin Beer Salon" around the corner of our hotel, where they had live music and I could finally order a Berliner Weiße mit Schuss without losing face. It's lager beer with raspberry syrup in the above version; there's also a green version with Waldmeister syrup. No one outside Berlin dreams of drinking this stuff, but it's actually pretty good!

Next morning we headed to Mitte, which had been lost in East-Germany behind the wall for so long and is now once more Berlin's actual City Center. Coming in from the west, you drive along the Straße des 17.Juni and I was quite horrifed to be assaulted by this huge ugly Coca-Cola advertising first thing. Behind that we reached the Siegessäule, which commemorates the Prussian victory against the Austrians in 19th century and further on, the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's no.1 sight (in December complete with christmas tree!)
I had been interested in seeing the GDR museum, a "hands-on" exhibiton on daily life in communist Eastern Germany. Here's the legendary Trabi, the only car that was produced over there (and hard to come by), a typical living room (complete with 70's GDR television shows) and some goodies produced over there.

And here's a catalogue for the fashionable communist of the 70's, complete with "young pioneer"-uniforms for the kids :)

That huge thing on the left is Berlin's newly refurbished cathedral and to add confusion, the thing in the middle is the German cathedral which faces the French cathedral on the lovely Gendarmenmarkt, in my opinion the most beautiful square in Berlin. We stopped at the christmas market there as well for a snack and a hot drink - and obviously for buying a funky new hat, before heading home to Cologne. And I have to admit that this was the first time I truly had a great time in Berlin - could it be that after 20 years of loathing the place, I'm finally beginning to fall in love or has Berlin finally shaped up its act? Who knows? I know I'll be back some time...