Wow! Seriously, what a day. I don't think I've walked this much...pretty much ever, actually. There are so many great and historic things to see in this city, and there could not be enough time to do it all!
We started out the day with a fantastic breakfast at our hostel before heading out for what we believed to be a three hour tour of the city. It was cold and rainy and trying to snow, so it was fortunate that the tour only ended up being two hours! We headed out for the historic tour of Berlin, which, interestingly enough, is very recently rennovated. Over 40% of Berlin was leveled in WWII, so most buildings have been rebuilt in the years since. You can hardly tell, as architects have done well to maintain the original ambiance and facade of the old city.
The tour began with the Brandenburg Gate, the only (mostly) original gate into the city from the times when the old monarchy separated the city from the countryside. The area was home to a no-man's-land during the war, and now houses the embassies of the major world powers - the English embassy is awesome and colorful! This square also features the hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby over the rail.
We went on to the Holocaust memorial, which was a sobering, but interestesting experience. The exhibit was comissioned in 2008 and features stone blocks of varying heights on a ground that changes levels every other step or so. From the front, the stones look to be within a small height range of each other, but they range from 2-12 feet. The exhibit is interesting because the stones don't really...mean anything relevant, for lack of a better term. The site has nothing to do with anything related to the Holocaust, and the number of stones doesn't correlate to the number of people lost in any way. It is a beautiful sight, nonetheless.
A great highlight of the trip was our visit to Museum Island, where a ton of museums hang together all in one place! We will be visiting this place again later this week, which I'm pretty excited for. The best part of this area, though, is the HUGE, GORGEOUS church that shares the space. I have never seen such a beautiful building, and hope to attend a service there on Sunday to see the inside...which was rennovated within the last 20 years. The church was decimated in the war, then gutted by a firebomb and left without a roof for three years. The original wooden interior of the church was also ripped apart by people in town after the war, as was the case with anything wood at that time. The so-called "zero hour" after the war left people without electricity, water, food, and fuel and anything that could be used was essentially looted.
The night culminated with a trip to the Konzerthaus, which lies between two grand cathedrals in a square used for filming in the newer version of Around The World In 80 Days - random trivia. We saw the Bennewitz String Quartet on the upper level in a small, ornately decorated recital hall...it's crazy to think that these places were once lit by real candles in the chandeliers. They played very exciting, modern, and strange music. Unfortunately I was not as tuned in to the first half as I would have liked - so tired from the tour! But the second half was very exciting! We had no idea what to expect from the piece, because we couldn't find any information online to support it. Turns out, it was the world premier - and the composer was in attendance! The piece used the string instruments in every way you could imagine...bowing, plucking, playing the violin like a ukulele, blowing through the F-holes, and more. The piece was dedicated to and modeled after the music of the country of Eritrea, Africa who lost many in a shipwreck over the summer. They described the piece as a musical documentary about the incident, and the culture. They performed an encore of the Korean tune Arirang, arranged by the same composer, with a violin prepared to sound like an authentic instrument from that culture...whose name I do not know!
Long day today - sleep time!
No comments:
Post a Comment