I am a cold and sick jam donut

As my hands gradually return to their natural colour and start to regain feeling (after about five minutes in gloves), I must say Berlin Hauptbahnhof in winter is without doubt one of the coldest places on Earth. That said I just saw the sweetest reunion happen when a young woman got off the train. You know that bit at the beginning of Love Actually where Hugh Grant’s character is talking about reunions at Heathrow- well none of them have anything on this one.  An older man (one assumes the young woman’s father) was walking down the platform with a yappy terrier and I was like what is that terrier barking about. When they reached the girl, the dog went nuts and started jumping all over her. Clearly it was her dog, who had been being dog-sat while she was away, and his barks were him saying “Get out of my way people! I can smell my mistress in this crowd and I have to see her as soon as possible! MOVE!” It was very cute.

So why am I a jam donut? Shame on you if you don’t know! JFK once gave a famous speech in Berlin which he ended with “Ich bin eine Berliner” and it had been mocked ever since. The people of Berlin do call themselves “Berliners” when speaking English but when you are speaking German, the word “berliner” translates as jam or jelly donut. JFK had therefore declared to the world that he was a jam donut.  I couldn’t find an actually berliner in Berlin (friends recently found them in Zürich) but I did make sure to eat a jam donut from Dunkin’ Donuts in honour of JFK’s infamous German gaff.

Berlin, for me, was largely marred by illness. I came down with a cold on my first evening there and, in the subzero weather, have struggled with it ever since.  This didn’t stop me for seeing some of the city but it did limit my ability to just wander and explore, and being limited in this way, my time looks very Third Reich centred which it would not have been had I had more chance to explore.

Vader roams the streets of Berlin- I have no clue why.

After a snow less time in Cork, Zürich and Amsterdam, I knew my luck was soon to run out. It has been bucketing down in Berlin (still is as I leave the city) with the snow probably thicker and more continuous than it was in Scotland (I can’t say for certain as the German are much better at clearing the stuff up). After struggling to the hostel in my sneakers, I was super happy that friends in Scotland had insisted that I take a pair of old hiking boots with me. The fun thing that came along with the snow was the temperature that did not pass the 0 mark during my stay in Berlin (I think the highest it got was -2 or -3) and trust me when I say jeans are OK in the cold to point but when it drops below zero you start to lose all feeling in your legs (but I mean who needs legs). The hostel much to my horror was overrun by European school children. As anyone who has gone on the traditional Sydney region years 5 and 6 camps to Canberra and Bathurst knows, schools often use staying in youth hostels as a means to cut the budget on these trips. This is the case with all European high school camps by the looks of things and, at risk of offending UK teachers I know (trust I’m not including the UK at present), let me say that European teachers completely SUCK at the idea of discipline and so every time I see high school kids at a hostel, a chill runs down my spine (especially after a previously trip in the UK when French school kids at one hostel triggered the fire alarm in the early hours of the morning twice and at another kicked the locks off all the toilet and shower doors). Well these ones didn’t do either of these (thankfully), but the room allocation at the Berlin Youth Hostel was such that my dorm was, on the first two nights, completely surrounded by the dorms of a few high school groups and these kids ran up and down the corridor making tonnes of noise until about 11.30 or 12pm and then started again at 6am (not fun if you are sick or when, thanks to being old (i.e. over 27), you have had to pay 5 euro extra per night for your room).  The last night was the possibly the worst as though there were less high school kids (it was a Saturday night), they made more noise (they were in the room right next door) later into the night (until around 1am). This was bad enough for me but in the room on the other side of mine was a couple with a baby, which of course wasn’t going to sleep. I almost morphed into a grumpy old lady and went downstairs to complain (mainly on the couple’s behalf). Every night, I kept waiting for the teacher to appear and tell them off but it never happened. That said, aside from their clear inability to sort their room allocations well and their charging extra for people over 27, Berlin Youth Hostel isn’t bad- internet is comparatively cheap (8 euros for 3 days- third cheapest thus far), breakfast is included, the bar is very cheap and the all you can eat dinner buffet (which is pretty good quality) is only 6 euros. On my first night there, I impressed one of the staff when asked him about a TV shows that was on and he was trying to explain that it was a “best of” from this year’s German competition to pick their Eurovision finalist. He was struggling to translate “Eurovision” into English and was shocked when I jumped in and said “I love Eurovision. The German girl who won this year wasn’t bad”.  Unfortunately I had Lena’s winning song (“Satellite of Love”) stuck in my head after that evening much as I had after watching the finals this year. On my last morning, I discovered another cool thing about the hostel- one of the German employees listens to Triple J (I asked him about it and he said he loves it). Soon enough Triple J will conquer the globe and no-one will have to listen to bad music at hostels again (also don’t forget it’s Hottest 100 voting time, people, I’ve voted have you?).

Memorial to the victims of War and Tyrrany

 First morning in Berlin and I foolishly made the decision to go on a 4 hour guided walking tour. Foolish not because the tour was bad, believe you me it was very good and if you are ever in Berlin you should check out the walking and cycling tours (available in English, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew) run by Insider Tours, I just did the really tourist-y one but there are themed ones and a nightlife one as well (they also do one out the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (which I would have done if I was in the city longer and was feeling better) and, in the summer, out to Potsdam). The guide, a fellow Aussie, was very good and, if she is anything to go by, the rest should be also. The tour had good amount of history pitched at the middle of the knowledge range (it was clear from early on that I was at the high end of the knowledge range (thanks to a lot of German/Soviet studies in my history degree) but, as an example of how little some people on the tour have known, the tour guide told us she had once been asked when Hitler built the Berlin Wall (‘cause it was only built 16 years after he killed himself and all)). The foolishness of my taking the tour was my health. After a few stops, I standing on Bebelplatz shaking (I’m sure quite visibly) and thought I was about to collapse. Needless to say, I powered on and thankfully the coffee and soup at the midway stop warmed and powered me up for the rest of the walk. The tour finished just near the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (sadly closed to visitors because of a recent security scare) and so after another coffee and my JFK honouring jam donut, I walked just down the road to the museum at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. A very stark memorial with no clear signage, the museum was built under it to ensure that people knew what it was all about. The memorial was rendered even starker by the thick coat of snow, however between the stones children were playing “hide and seek” which, while a little lacking in respect, was a great sign of hope amidst the stark landscape. The museum, which is free, was worth the visit especially if you, like me, don’t have the time to visit a camp, or, like many, don’t have the stomach to visit one. It is very touching testament to the Jews from across Europe killed in the Holocaust. There is one room with photographs and stories from several families and in each of the large photos it is identified which of the family members died in the Holocaust and where. It is very moving.

The next morning, after the activity of the day before and the loudness of the high school kids, I was feeling worse and my German which had been getting better seemed to fade as the cold clearly hit the language part of my brain. I went to the post office to post something to a friend and met the most unpleasant man I’ve most in a long time. He made me feel like I was an idiot who had no right to breathe his airspace- more on him in a later post.

To calm myself down after meeting this bloke, I did what I often do when I’m sick back home. I went to the movies. Unless seeing it in German made me miss something is there a reason Depp and Jolie are nominated for Globes for The Tourist? It is mildly entertaining but not award material to my mind. After that I went to the Topology of Terror. Behind the last remaining selection of the Wall (that hasn’t been removed and replanted), it is on the site of old SS and SA Berlin headquarters. The reason the Wall here wasn’t knocked down was that there were evacuations of the SS torture chambers under it going on at the time of re-unification. It is very interesting museum and unlike other museums that focus on the holocaust and the role of the SS and SA, it talks just the other victims of the Holocaust (the political objectors, the Romani, the gay community, the elderly and disabled, and the POWs) in as much length as the Jews. I recommend people visit it.

To cheer myself up after this, I stopped at the Weihnachtmarkt (Christmas market) at Potsdamer Platz for a gluhwein (mulled wine) and some tasty fried mushrooms served with an awesome cream sauce on my way back to hostel.

Potsdamer Platz Weihnachtmarkt

Berlin is an interesting city and a very new city for the most part. Germany as a country is only a couple of hundred years old in its united form. The buildings in Berlin itself are often only 20 years old at most. Nazi and pre war building were mostly bombed out of existence at the end of WW2, those Nazi building that survived the bombing in part were later torn down by the Soviets (architectural a good move- they were hideous- but then again Soviet building are pretty ugly too) and many of the old Soviet building have been torn down and replaced since reunification. Yet for somewhere that is relatively so young, it has so much history to deal with. I bought this great postcard there which has an old photo of two soldiers looking over the Wall, under their position someone has graffitied “God loves you” and I thought it beautifully summed up the history (both Soviet and Nazi) and the way Berlin will be grappling with it for at least another 20 years as it remains in living memory and then probably for many years afterwards as it gradually passes from living memory.