Day of the Day: Giovedi - Thursday

Giovedi – Thursday

So the class is supposed to be ready to leave at 9 am after breakfast.  However, there’s always one straggler and our professor is too nice to leave them behind.  So we always end up leaving at 9:15 or 9:30 and everyone else just sits around the lobby waiting for people.  It’s quite aggravating.  So Thursday the highlights were seeing Mies Van der Rohe’s National Gallery and the Berlin Philharmonic Hall by Hans Scharoun.  We actually went inside each of those and the spaces were pretty impressive.  Mies was one of the original “less is more” types.  So his National Gallery does not have any columns on the interior and all his details look very simple.  Hans Scharoun is a bit more extravagant.  The interior spaces of the Berlin philharmonic hall were really dynamic.  There seemed to be a lot of movement and such inside. 

 

Mies Van der Rohe - There are 8 exterior columns that hold up the entire building.  There are two on each side and none of them in the corners.

 

Scharoun

Later on, one of Giovanni’s friends Thilo, who lives in Berlin, showed us around the city.  We ended up walking way more than what was necessary.  We actually walked off of our maps.  At one point we saw a sign that said Dresden with an arrow.  That's how you know we've walked too far.  And since we walked really far on one side of the Spree river, of course we had to walk until the next bridge, cross over, and walk all the way back on the other side.  What a waste.  Thursday was the day we saw the Bauhaus archives and all the embassies.  There is famous Dutch architect named Rem Koolhaas whom the guy who approves buildings in Berlin disliked.  I don’t really know what position this man was in, but he said Rem is not allowed to build a building in Berlin.  However, for the Dutch embassy, since it’s actually Holland, the Dutch commissioned Rem to build the embassy.  So that was kind of funny.  And, the Dutch don’t like it if you stand on their grass.  We got yelled at for walking on the grass.  One of the other strange things we saw, was a pool built into the river.  The river is too polluted to swim in, so instead of cleaning the river, the Germans have a pool in the river.  It’s kind of funny.

The light blue thing is the pool

 

This park was full of grass.  And that park bench in the right is about 8 feet tall.

Friday was the “touristy” part of Berlin.  We saw the Reichstag, which is the German parliament building.  Recently, Lord Norman Foster built a huge dome on top of the building that offers panoramic views to visitors.  We also saw the Brandenburg gate, which was hosting a concert.  There was a lot of people there for SPD (social democratic party) giving away balloons, bags, pins, and bottle openers.  The election was on Sunday and they were doing some last minute campaigning.  So I got a little bottle opener, a dumb pin, and a balloon that we sucked the helium out of.  That was fun.  The Brandenburg Gate actually is at the end of Pariser Platz and which starts the famous Unter den Linden boulevard.  The French and American embassies are in Pariser Platz as is Gehry’s silly bank he built.  The hotel Alden is also on Unter den Linden where Michael Jackson dangled a baby out of the window.  So that’s all kind of exciting.  We also saw the Hauptbahnhoff, which is the main train station, and the Jewish Memorial by Peter Eisenman.  We ended the day at Museum Island which has 4 or 5 prominent museums by Schinkel.  For lunch I ran away from the group and had a cheesy pretzel and an original Berliner bratwurst.  Both were pretty decent.  I sat on Unter den Linden (translates to under the lime trees) and watched people.  It was nice.  The Russian Embassy on Unter den Linden (was on the East side) was enormous.  I wasn’t crazy about it’s architectural features.  Although, I wasn’t really high on the American embassy either.  I thought Mexico’s and the Scandinavian countries were interesting.  In a strange move Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and maybe Denmark created all their embassies on the same plot of land.  It’s actually quite strange.

Jewish Memorial by Peter Eisenman

Saturday we went to the Olympic Stadium built in 1933.  What’s interesting about Berlin is that it is constantly dealing with the dilemma of how to deal with their history.  There is of course the Nazi’s and the East/West problem.  I feel really bad for the Germans.  I suppose its only been 60 years since the holocaust, but seemingly every German feels super guilty about everything that happened.  They are unable to be patriotic for fear of what it may lead to.  So the Olympic Stadium was built for Hitler and there was much debate as to what to do with it.  Some people wanted to rip it down and build a new one, others wanted to keep it, and others just wanted to modify it.  Eventually, they decided to add a cover to it for the Fifa World Cup that Berlin recently hosted.  I think it turned out pretty nice.  Although there are still some people who don’t like the Stadium’s history.  The rest of the day we went to Inter Bau projects.  Inter Bau was a design exposition from the 1950’s.  There were housing projects in the middle of Berlin by some of the most famous architects of the time:  Aalto, Gropius, Niemeyer, Corbusier etc.  These places feel like you are out in the suburbs even though you’re really in the middle of the city.  These apartment buildings were built in an old park so there are a bunch of trees that muffle the noise of traffic, its quite nice.  Berlin itself, seems like a bunch of different neighborhoods that were brought together later.  It’s still trying to negotiate an unifying identity between east and west. 

Sunday was pretty much without incident.  Easy Jet told me my carry on was too big so I had to check it.  That was kind of expensive.  So I’m thinking of buying a new carry on that’s the proper size.  Because if I have to check it each time (22 euros each time) I might as well just buy a proper carry on.  The people in Italy let me through, but the people in Germany were unforgiving.  They did not care if it was close or not, if it couldn’t fit all the way in that little crate thing, it was not going onto the plane.