Of Mice and Men

So on Saturday we finally made it to Berlin to visit the Biennale before it shut down as well as check out the city. The art show was very interesting, although the exploration of anxieties and universal fears might not be the best suited for four and two year old children.


The exhibit consisted of 12 venues all along Auguststrasse in central Berlin. We only managed to visit the two biggest: an art exhibit space and an old derelict school. The school setting was very powerful: formerly the School for Jewish Girls it was used as a DDR elementary school and appeared to have stood vacant since the fall of the Wall. It felt like a time capsule from a dark past filled with disturbing imagery. The art was as I remember the art scene in the old West Berlin quarter Kreuzberg - dark, gritty, intelectual, but also heavy and not necessarily beautiful.

After the exhibit we wandered into the pouring rain and found a shelter in a small cookie bakery/job counceling agency/cafe on Oranienburgstrasse. While Jonas slept in the stroller, Nicole and Sasha played dominos and I checked out the demonstration going on outside. The participants were from a wide gamut of leftist organizations ranging from the unions to the anarchists and they were all very pissed off about the eroding welfare, low minimal wage, health reform and pretty much anything else associated with the current right-of-center government. But despite the anger in the air and a light police presents they were all very well behaved with children in strollers sleeping through the slogans and shouting.



After the intermezzo we walked by the Neue Wache memorial along Unter den Linden to Brandenburg Tor. The memorial was very moving with light rain falling on the statue of a mother holding in her arms her dead son.



At the Brandenburg Tor Nicole got reaquainted with the long lost relative King Friedrich. She and Sasha previously saw him on travel TV but a live encounter was trully grand.

Finally we fullfilled Sasha's dream and took a velo taxi back to the train station. The train station opened just a week ago and it is more a shopping center and a glass palace of light with trains leaving into the four corners of the World.

It was a short trip and if it wasn't for the rain, we would have covered much more. Berlin gives out much more interesting first impression than Hamburg - it seems much edgier, more grungy and cosmopolitan, where as Hamburg at first sight recalls a Ralph Lauren commercial with beautiful people sailing in front of perfectly maintained homes. But that has a lot to do with the part of town we are staying.