East Berlin, Germany: August 1, 2013 to August 4, 2013

10/15/2020
Travel

August 1, 2013
Bloody hell what a day. A three hour trip across the border from the Czech Republic to East Berlin took nine freakin’ hours. Why? Because we received 30 sets of different and contradictory directions, Czech cultural differences do not translate to American, and my travel partner ignored me several times as I was trying to navigate. We learned that when Czechs say “stay straight” they use the term loosely to mean either left or right and found this out by following their directions “to go straight” only to have another Czech say “why’d you do that, take a right.” Happened repeatedly. The funniest incident was when a sign told us to go right (so we did) only to look back behind us a we passed the sign to see another sign to go the other way (i.e., one sign said right the other said straight). The running joke of the day was, “when the Czechs switched all their signs so the Nazis couldn’t get to the radio station transmitting a call to fight (historical fact), they forgot to switch the signs back! (our immediate truth). Once you enter the Czech Republic you never leave!” All that bullshit aside, it was really neat to see the Czech countryside; beautiful, open, green-mountain town. None of these mountain towns had inhabitants that spoke English or German, only Czech.

Crossing over to Germany, East Berlin, was especially fun. Like the Czech countryside, everything was green and lush, but in more abundance and endured. The Germans’ love and appreciation for nature was clear. Everything was preserved and pristine. They really were “living next to” rather than “on” nature. Their houses were larger. Interestingly, both countries rolled hay barrels in tubes rather than rectangular barrels like they do in the states. Because we were entering East Berlin, we noticed that most of the people we encountered spoke German and/or Russian, no English. Makes sense since they were occupied by both. While on the autobahn, we noticed a major change-imposed speed limits ranging from 80km-130km. This blew my trael partner away. To his credit (this being the only man both my Mom and I know to have ever gotten a ticket on the autobahn) he did not speed and was almost a law-abiding citizen. I say almost because he did not bring his license with him on the trip so the car was under my name. AND, I cannot drive stick sooo he had to drive. As it turns out, (two days later) he found his license and was surprised he “had it all along.” This is typical of him. Good grief.

Finally, we get to our hotel in East Berlin around 7pm. Being hungry, tired, and cranky, my first impression of East Berlin was not one of fondness. Rather on the contrary. Actually, the city was lackluster and kind of disappointing. That, and no matter where we were in relation to our hotel, which by the way was small and overly priced, it smelled like feet. Not sure if I acclimated to the smell, if I was influenced by the bad mood I was in, or if this was a constant in poor air quality control, but the city smelled like feet! Granted this part of the city as a whole has come a long way from being occupied and oppressed, but even so. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day. A Euro is worth $0.75 to the USD.

August 2, 2013
Much better day today minus it being blistering hot. Today we went on an alternative tour to see street art around Berlin and to learn about the history of the art, its creators, and the meaning behind some of the art. In this culture, and by culture I mean the street art scene not Berlin as a microcosm, a “tag” is simply the artists name. A “throw up” is a bigger more colorful rendition of the artist’s name that uses four or more colors. A “post up” is a poster-like design that is glued on surfaces. As our guide was telling us about the first graffiti artist that started the movement, he stated that the guy’s name was African American and he nick-named himself Corn Bread. Then he went on talking about the guy and romanticized the movement, paying no attention to the racial implications of the nick name the guy chose for himself, either as a means to bring attention to the racial tension or by putting the limelight on how he perceived others perceiving himself. Anyway, I digress.

Put these captions under their respective pictures:

Animal Sketch. This was done by Roa (row-a). He would research the native animals that were displaced by people in an area and draw them dead.
Po is a post up artist. Her symbol is a butt with varying levels of hairiness because as she found out, “po” is a slang term for bum when talking to a child.
1-Up got their name from the “1-up” extra life in Mario Bros game and it also stands for having one up on The Man. They do collaborative work as a group unit.
This is one of my to favorite pieces. The entire “person” symbolizes fascism where everyone is made to look the same in order to make the machine, but rather than uniformity, there is chaos within the machine and a dystopia within itself.
This is another symbol of fascism. The worker is shackled by his own wealth and greed, which is symbolized by the status symbol of the watches and time. Those who control time have power. Time binds him to an unfulfilling routine. Kind of reminds me of Sisyphus.
This is my second favorite. It symbolizes East and West Berlin (one holding a “W” and the other holding an “E”) coming together to unify. Both regions seem upside down to the other, however, they are both joining by de-masking each other; each helping the other see.

After the tour, we went to a cool abandoned warehouse to make our own street art. Outside there was graffiti and inside there was vivid street art pieces, many of which were designed by the various tour guides who actively mark in the city. During the tour, the guide went over some of the codes of conduct/ethics of street artists. The biggest one being respect each other's space and do not tag over one another's work, and in small print, unless the other person is new or young or their stuff r-e-a-l-l-y sucks.

Throughout the tour, my travel partner and I were talking to our guide Rob (an Aussie) about the fusion of different art forms. We told him if he's looking to integrate technology to help him reach the most people, he should get a team together to film him creating his street art, then post it on Youtube. He liked that idea. The second idea was a collaborative effort between me, travel partner and Rob. Rob started the ball rolling making this analogy, “When downloading movies illegally, bits and pieces are taken from many different sources until the whole movie's complete.” He wants to find a way of slipping his art into these movies vis a vis this process. I suggested pairing up with a hacker/programmer to help him bridge this gap and do it. My travel partner's contribution was saying it would be fusion of these two disciplines. Rob loved our ideas

Whatever space one can use to put their art on and actually leaving space of one’' own. This also explicitly addresses the functionality of graffiti/street art in East Berlin versus the U.S. In Berlin, it is a form of expression, self-advertisement, and is a means to publicly announce political view points. In the U.S., graffiti (limited street art) is simply used to identify territory, primarily by gangs.

It was in fact challenging to find a wall or surface that was not written on. I think this is a function of four things:1) virtually an unlimited amount of space/canvass, 2) the need for expression, 3) tagging is not a crime, it is considered littering (a 15 Euro fine) not defacing or the destruction of property, and 4) Berlin is in crazy debt (per Rob). I suspect more so because of numbers three and four, but when Berlin does get out of debt, I suspect that the graffiti will not only be cleaned up, but will transition into a crime. It is possible that as East Berlin continues to build and unify, this type of art will become a relic of the past.

This struggle for East and West Berlin to fully fuse was emphasized by another guide. She stated that West Berlin was/is still very individualistic whereas East Berlin is more collectivist. She said that on this front, East and West have not fused well and that this is mainly seen with the older generation (her parents), but not so much with the youth. The potential exists that simply by chance; I witnessed a small part of East Berlin’s subculture during its hay-day where in the future, this may just be reduced to the phrase “Remember when…?”

August 3, 2013
Today I got a bit more intimate with the public transportation system, taking the train everywhere and the underground, occasionally to get back and forth to our destinations. Fairly simple actually. I saw some pretty cool and historical things today, but before I get into that, I digress. As we were walking to the Berlin Wall Museum (they took what was left of the wall and invited artists to paint murals on it), there was a counterculture/underground hard-techno club advertising and permitting admittance during the day across the street from the wall. My travel partner tried to get a picture and one of the guys yelled at him and stopped him from doing so. I told him I would get the picture and he said, “Are you really going to get into a fight over this?” I said, “No, there are ways around everything. Besides, if he did not want people looking and was scared of getting caught, he would not be sitting out in the open advertising this club.” Case in point, I went to the safety of the other side of the street where the wall was, used my camera’s fantastic zoom, and bam! Got my picture. I win!

Now, to the sightseeing. First, I saw the original Berlin wall and its considerably newly acquired murals commemorating its fall and the unification of East and West. Admittedly, I kind of pulled a Homer and said to myself, “Now I’m in the East, now the West, now the East, now the West.” On the back side of the wall were enlarged paintings of photographs of what the wall/scene looked like prior to the Wall’s destruction. There were also enlarged paintings of other walls across the world. After this we went to West Berlin for the day and saw the Brandeburg Gate, the Government Building, and the Original Reichstag building. The Reichstag building was so grandiose it was bordering on absurd. As far as the government building was concerned, It probably could have been nuked and would still come out unscathed; that thing was solid.

East and West Berlin are so different. East looks dirty in comparison to the West, grungier, and the people look almost grey or hollow. In the West, the people look happier. One point I will add now post hoc, mainly because I did not think of this until we left East Berlin at 6:30am on Sunday, August,4, 2013, is how the sun rises in East Berlin and sets in West Berlin.

August 4, 2013
Today my travel partner I drove from Berlin back to the Czech Republic. Not only did we learn that navigating in Germany is hard because the streets are confusing, we also learned that once on the autobahn, all is right in the world. It only took us four hours to get back this time. Once we were settled in, we went on the tour of the underground of Town Hall. The tour showed us that the Czech city we see today is actually about 25 feet higher than it was in the past. The bowels were what we were exploring. The city was raised to not only protect it from flooding, but also from waste and pestilence. After this tour, I went to the Kafka Museum. I have to say, for a museum dedicated to a writer, this was one of the best museums I have seen. It is not common to see a museum dedicated to writers, let alone a single writer. It was thorough and seemed to create a very strong conceptual and historical picture of Kafka. The one thing that did seem to be a bit off was how they seemed to almost paint Kafka as “crazier” than he really was almost to the point where I got the impression that they were inferring that his tuberculosis was a self-manifestation. I have heard of somatization, however, I am pretty sure it is impossible to manifest an actual disease without even exposure, biological susceptibility, etc. Overall, well done.

Cultural Differences of East Berlin, Germany

Grunge/punk never went away and is going strong
A lot of women have half their heads shaved with the other side of their head having long hair.
A lot of people seem to have a tattoo behind one of their ears, but I’ve noticed it mainly behind the right ear.
Graffiti/street art is accepted/glorified/romanticized, is everywhere, and not penalized. Some artists are even actively sought after to design murals that are both commemorative and politicized.
Very directive, though not rude. They will tell you what you can and cannot do.