The Jetpacker

Like many European cities, Berlin is largely devoid of tall buildings.  Most city streets are lined by four- or five-story structures, creating a very clean and even look.  So it’s easy to see the TV Tower from just about anywhere in the city.

Or should we say, it’s easy for the TV Tower to see you.

Sure, the Fernsehturm resembles a small, silver golf ball on an over-sized tee, but there’s something undeniably creepy about it.  It feels like the tower is a giant eyeball, always watching your every move.

It’s not unusual that a structure in former East Berlin would evoke that feeling.  After all, the DDR was infamous for installing hidden cameras throughout the city and planting Stasi agents to spy on citizens.

As soon as we left the hotel this morning, the tower was there, staring at us like HAL in “2001″.

When we stepped off the train at Alexanderplatz, the Death-Star-On-A-Stick became even more imposing.

While waiting in line inside the lobby of the Fernsehturm, looking at diagrams of other TV Towers from around the world, I couldn’t help think that the most expensive attraction on our trip (€10 with Berlin Welcome Card discount) was also the most unsightly.

But from the observation deck 669-feet above ground, the view of Berlin is spectacular.

I always like doing stuff like this early in a trip.  You get familiar with the lay of the land, and you get to see places you’ll be visiting before you get there.  This is great if you get off public transportation and aren’t sure which way to go; all you do is pinpoint a familiar landmark near your destination and you’re on your way.

One thing I noticed from the observation deck that I hadn’t read about beforehand was the ruins of a 13th century Franciscan Church that was bombed by the Allies.

As soon as we left the tower, I had to check it out.  Part of the fun of travel is going on a detour.  On the short walk to the ruins, I passed a Communist-era relic next to a mall, saw two Berlin Buddy Bears (individually painted life-size fiberglass bears strewn about the city), and escaped death by dodging cars speeding across a 10-lane road.

I wish I had a chance to walk around the ruins, but it was closed (as most stuff was today… more on that later).  The Franciscan Church now serves as an open-air venue for rotating sculpture exhibits.

In Alexanderplatz, we checked the time in L.A. at the World Time Clock, a rotating 24-hour clock that shows time around the world…

…admired the frozen-over Fountain of Friendship…

…wandered in an open-air gallery celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall…

…and sucked down a fresh baked waffle covered with warm, gooey Nutella in the Christmas market.

From there we took the subway one stop to a popular shopping “mall” called Hackeschen Höfe.  This mall is really a web of eight buildings linked by courtyards containing boutiques and cafes.

All of ‘em were closed.  But had they been open, they would have been the type of over-priced places we wouldn’t shop at anyway.

Right down the street from the Höfe — you don’t hassle the Höfe — there was a long alley covered wall to wall in colorful graffiti.  At the end of the alley, there were two mechanical creatures with instructions to donate a euro and watch them come to life.

We got robbed of a euro.  But I later read that this alley housed the original Dead Chickens artist studio and at one point the creatures worked.  The people behind Dead Chickens make fanciful mechanical creatures that move and make noise, and apparently their exhibits are really popular in Europe.  The studio moved to somewhere else in Berlin, but we were never able to find out where.

Our journey continued to tumble downhill when we took a lengthy train ride to the outskirts of Berlin to visit the Plötzensee Prison.  This is where almost 3,000 resistance fighters and political dissidents were executed during Hitler’s reign.

Today, the prison is a site of remembrance, and the actual execution chamber is a memorial to its victims.  Inside, there are pictures and stories about those who died there.

We never got to see any of it . . . it was closed.  This was especially frustrating because the walk from the train station to the front gate took forever.

By this point we didn’t know what was open so we went back to the hotel.  When I asked the lady at the front why everything was closed, she said this particular Sunday was a “weird day.”

See, Monday is the day when most shops and museums are closed in Berlin.  And December 24 – 26 (which this year is Thursday through Saturday) is a national holiday in Germany, so most things are closed.  Well, there’s no point in opening on Sunday the 27th if places are just going to close again on Monday the 28th.

So even though most websites and guidebooks said things would be open today, apparently more places than normal decided to take the day off without notice.

Makes sense, but sucks for us.

I asked the lady if anything on my itinerary was still open, and after a few phone calls, we found something.  Of course, so did all the other tourists.

It was the Berlin Wall Memorial and Documentation Center.

An outdoor gallery documents the sad story of the Church of Reconciliation.  When the wall was built, the church became stuck in the “no man’s land” between East and West Germany and had to be demolished.

The gallery also focuses on some of the successful and unsuccessful escape attempts as well as a brief history of the wall.  The most eye-opening fact was that the city was literally divided overnight by barbed-wire to the shock of both East and West Germans.

The real highlight of the memorial, however, was the reconstructed stretch of no man’s land, guard tower and all.  Visitors peer through thin slats in the concrete to get a sense of how difficult it was for people to escape from East Germany – two walls, barbed wire, land mines, guard dogs, heavily-armed patrol guards, etc.

The Documentation Center was too small to accommodate so many people, so we weren’t able to watch any of the films or sift through pictures and documents about the wall.  We probably could have spent hours there if it wasn’t so busy.

From there we took a short tram ride to the one thing I was looking forward to the most on this trip: a handball match.  This fast-paced, high-scoring game might be the coolest sport you never heard of until now.  Read about what it was like at the game here.

After the game, we went looking for dinner near our hotel and wound up chatting with a friendly American couple on their first trip to Europe.

That’s one of the great things about travel: when you hear someone speaking your language in a foreign country, you feel inclined to talk to them.  Had we crossed paths at a grocery store back home, we never would have said hello.

We recommended they try an Italian restaurant across the street which we had eaten at earlier in the week and really enjoyed, while Jackie and I ended up at an Indo-Chinese place called Minchi.  We had seen the restaurant from our hotel room and it was always packed.

After eating our mediocre dinner, I came up with a theory: since German food is notoriously bland, anything foreign is considered good.  It could be a fried shoe with Asian seasonings, as long as it’s foreign, it’s good.

Another theory: Germans had to become master brewers to drown out the taste of their food.

At the end of the day, the handball game and the view from the TV Tower made up for what could have been a disappointing day.