The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
So, we left Berlin by some long and convoluted method that involved me not having breakfast and ultimately paying 25 euros to the train conductor because we bought the wrong ticket. It was a bit of a blur because, as I said before, I'd had no breakfast, and I was pretty hungover.
I had no clear idea of what was going on until I sort of came to on the train, and demanded food.
Gill and Nic, being nice people, hauled me off to the food car, where I ate some kind of local sausage and drank enough water to drown a small horse. We finally arrived in Dresden, and I have to say, it looked less than impressive from the train (and also from the point of view of my less-than-alert brain).
Thankfully, a tram ride into the city solved that problem. Dresden, despite the utter pounding it took it WWII, is really really pretty. In fact, Gill and I spent a big chunk of the day being really obnoxious and commenting on how nicely it had recovered, unlike Coventry, which according to Gill is a blight on the face of the British Isles. But anyway.
We went off to Nic's apartment, cleaned ourselves up, and then started exploring. The older part of Dresden is split up into the Old City and the New City (yes, yes, clever naming scheme they have here. Straight to the point, those Dresdners) , more or less split by the river Elbe. The Old City has all the large and magnificent buildings that they managed to pull out of the wreckage, and the Neustadt has all the poky streets and neat little shops. My theory is that when they were rebuilding the city, the poky streets and buildings of the Old City just didn't get precendence when faced with the destruction of buildings like the Zwinger, the Semper Opera House, the Royal Palace, the Cathedral, the Bruhl Terrace, etc, etc... This theory is borne out by the fact that the street plan of the Old City made almost no sense (and lacked streets, mostly), and the only place we could find for a latte and a strudel was along a street made entirely of new buildings.
So, Gill and I made our way around, battling the elements, indigestion (hearty Russian food + too much alcohol + sausages = complete digestive devastation), and mud to ooh and aah over Dresden's impressive array of pretty buildings. The Frauenkirche Church was in the process of reconstruction, and was essentially floating in a sea of mud, but was really pretty nonetheless. It took something like an hour to get around to the other side, but it was totally worth it, because that's where the nice bits of the city are. Nonsensical street plan notwithstanding, the Old City is fun for someone who has no idea what to expect or what to look for. You just keep coming upon really amazing things almost at random. Some buildings that are still in the process of restoration are just facades in some parts, and rebuilt in others, which is pretty cool. Nothing I like better than a crumbling stone wall.
We ended up on the Terrace, desperate for somewhere to relax over a latte. The Bruhl Terrace runs along the river Elbe and is probably quite pretty when the sun's out and the strudel is readily available. Unfortunately, the weather was utter crap, so we quickly decamped to aforementioned street (and I'm not kidding about the random street plan. This street looked like someone had just stuck it at random in the middle of the city. There were no streets around it.) and got soup and strudel. After lunch, we took off for the Zwinger, which houses four art collections, of which the Old Masters' collection is the biggest and most exciting... hence the only one we went to.
Do you remember the painting of two cherubs, one with its head on its hand, the other pointing up at the sky? Trust me: you've probably seen this thing about a million times on everything from coasters to towels. Well, it's in Dresden, in the Zwinger. It's also known as Raphael's Sistine Madonna. The infamous cherubs occupy about a quarter of the bottom tenth of the picture, the rest of the painting being taken with less cutesy things like the madonna, some saints, and, you know, Jesus. My theory on this: The painting was obviously meant to be seen from far away. If you got closer, though, there was nothing to look at because all the action was higher up. So the cherubs are there to remind you to look up. Clever, huh? Well, look where your stupid tricks got you, Raphael. Cherub-printed aprons, and no one even looks up anymore.
Anyway, it's a pretty amazing museum. Old Masters up the wazoo.
We headed back up to the Neustadt at this point. Nic is not only some kind of mad biochemist, but she also plays the cello, and was playing with her chamber orchestra that night. The concert was in a church whose name escapes me, but was clearly completely rebuilt in the recent past. The altar was not only huge, but no restoration had been done on it, whereas the rest of the church interior was more or less completely modern. So in the midst of this pristine white interior stood the enormous, half-crumbling altar. It was pretty cool.
The music was pretty cool as well. The middle one was fun and it had a harpsichord solo. I don't really remember much about the rest. So, after it was done, Nic, Gill, and I went out to eat Czech food with a big group of Nic's friends. These guys were all physicists and from a variety of European countries, so it was like sitting in the middle of a really smart Benetton ad. ME-OW!
Excellent. Aside from the Czech food.
Anyway, the next day, we got up, ate, I went back to Berlin, ate more sausage, and flew back to The Hague.
I arrived in Berlin sometime around 9pm, only to realise that I had nothing on me that would help me find my way around the city. I was in Tegel airport, which is the smallest of Berlin's three airports and the furthest away from the city centre.
So... I walked around in a panic for a while, which grew exponentially as I realised that I didn't even have the hostel's address. Somewhere in Mitte was the closest I could come up with.
Then I found an internet terminal, and all was well. So for those of you who are going to Berlin and need a hostel, go to the Circus. Decent prices, awesome staff, and very helpful website. I was there within the hour, checked in, and ready to see something of Berlin.
On the other hand, it being 11pm at this point, and there being almost nothing of interest in the immediate vicinity of my hostel, I went to sleep.
Berlin Day 2:
I woke up early intending to take the walking tour of Berlin that met in the hostel lobby.
Actually, this is a complete lie. I had intended to go on this tour, but didn't make it out of bed in time. I basically grabbed a map, did some internet research and took off. (Having slept so early, I should have been fine to get up in time, but the night before, my roommates in the room turned out to be a group of party-hearty Australians who left around midnight, after spending ten minutes explaining to me that the music they were playing was Velvet Underground, and that it was the quietest music they had. They were trying to be considerate, I guess, by not playing something from the vast selection of electroclash they had on hand. Thanks, kids. They got in at various times throughout the night, the last one finally trickling in at 5am. This one was the most considerate. He turned on all the lights in the room for a good half hour, and then stopped to put on a little music, explain to his girlfriend that he hadn't done any drugs ("Just some coke."), and proceed to pass out and snore for the rest of the day. But anyway.)
So, I basically made a map with some important points and set off. First stop was Alexanderplatz. Which was less than impressive, especially considering I was about to die a cold, frozen death, and there was nothing to see. Except for a great big department store, a great big train station and a great big square. So, I wandered over the Museum Island. I intended to go to museums, but ended up too confused on how to actually enter to go to any of the museums. But the whole area is really pretty, with a whole bunch of buildings (yes... museums... hence the name) in a pseudo-Roman style. So I wandered around and then wandered off down the Unter der Linten towards the Brandenburg Gate.
The Brandenburg Gate is big and impressive. I admired it for about three minutes and then remembered I hadn't eaten anything yet and it was past noon. So I walked back towards a cafe I'd spotted before, grabbed a Tribune off the wall and settled in for a latte and a club sandwich, which yeah, it's not so quintessentially German, but three different diners ended up pointing to my sandwich and ordering the same thing, so I must be cool. And it was delicious.
I left there a while later, and walked down Friedrichstrasse, which for those of you who know their history of Berlin, is the location of the infamous Checkpoint Charlie.
For those of you who are history buffs, and have a great imagination, then go check it out. For the rest of us, Checkpoint Charlie is a replica hut in the middle of the street. I stood there staring at it for about two minutes, then starting jumping back and forth between East and West Berlin ("Communist," "Capitalist," "Communist," "Capitalist") which was fun for another ten minutes, and then I went into the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. There was a line-up of something like 20 people to get in, and I pretty much got the idea about it from the display on the outside (West side good, East side bad -- like Biggie and Tupac), so I took off to the Topography of Terror exhibit, which features the only remaining section of the wall and a whole bunch of displays about the German secret police. In German.
So, yeah, that was interesting.
Then I went to H&M.
After a small amount of shopping, I took off for Potzdammerplatz and looked at some fabulous modern architecture. It's big and shiny. With stuff.
So... it was like 5pm by this point and I was dead tired, so I headed back to the hostel. I intended to take a nap at this point, but was rudely interrupted by the entrance of new roommates.
Gill, Nic, and Evan all slowly trickled in at some point, hauled my ass out of bed, and took me to eat hearty Russian food. Nic is some kind of biochemist who lives in Dresden, and Gill was visiting her. Evan was a random stray like me, and after eating some seriously filling food, we went for a drink. After a long trek looking for a bar, we ended up at the bar under the hostel, drinking large, cheap drinks. At some point, I agreed to go to Dresden the next day and then we went to bed.
Berlin Day 3:
So, imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning and ended up in Dresden.
