Alexanderplatz, Kreuzberg, and new friends
The big adventure. Really today was a very big, unexpected adventure. Started off nice and easy just visiting with relatives, my great aunt and uncle, wonderful people, and lunch. The idea for the day was to head to the Alexanderplatz to see the Body World corpse museum. That's something else, mostly just the fact that people spent that much time dissecting and plastinating corpses, and then arranging them in different poses... all the displays, so on and so forth. Somehow it felt wrong to take pictures, so I didn't really Just the one that I'll add. The human body is fascinating and strange, but that museum is actually pretty unnerving.
The corpse museum was just the beginning, too. Next up I took a trip up to the top of the tv tower for the sake of taking pictures of the entire city from one of the tallest structures in the city. That was very touristy and also a whole lot of fun to do, and hey, seems that there are 15 year old edgelords all over the planet; had a good laugh watching some kid getting interrogated by the police as to why exactly he was carrying a karambit around with him. The view up there is spectacular though, and I couldn't have possible asked for a nicer day, almost cloudless and warm, but not overly hot.
I suppose the Alexanderplatz deserves a little more description, too. It's a huge city square in the middle of a lot of historical places. It's huge, with fountains and shopping malls all over, but was also very close to where the wall was built, not to mention the big courthouses and also the Spree river, oh and an old (old like... 1700's) church called St. Marien's.
St. Marien's is one of those places that anyone can enjoy regardless of demonination or beliefs. Just a beautifully painted, architectural wonder, serene and quiet for the most part with gorgeous engravings in the stone, paintings all along the ceilings and historical carvings, tablets, and scripts framed all over. Neatly organized and well... there are pictures to help that description. The real highlight of that church was that I got there just in time to hear the organ being played. Now, organs are likely the greatest musical feat of man. The sheer scale of an instrument that old and well cared for is humbling. For those that don't know, organs are wind instruments that have the capacity to incorporate the sounds of an entire orchestra in a single place, playable by a single person. Not that it used to be that way, but now there is a motorized component used to pump air through the instrument. Back in the days before electricity and machines and so on, it was pumped by man, two men that would stand in the organ itself and step on alternating bellows to provide the air pressure necessary to play. Exhausting work, I'm sure, and also a precision endeavor since too little pressure would mean that there would be no sound, and too much pressure would give the wrong tone. These two, without being able to see him/her, would have to be able to work in perfect sync with one another as well as the organist.
I really can't put into words how impressed I am with organs that large and old, really just... wow. The music that was being played was masterful as well, the sort that could only really come from a lifetime of practice and playing. Baroque, though I can't remember which composer she was playing. So after the music ended and I realized I was standing there on the first floor, staring up at the balcony where the organ was housed like an idiot, I found my way up to the balcony with the intent of congratulating the organist on her musical prowess and also to take a picture or several of that old iron monstrosity. I didn't see her, took one picture (that I'm totally gonna' post), and then promptly got kicked out of one of the oldest intact churches in Berlin.
Taking pictures of and being in the same space as that organ was strictly forbidden. That put a smile on my face, and I realize that's dumb, but I took great joy in that. It was time for the next chapter of that adventure anyways.
The next step was obviously to find myself some beer and some food. Through the advice of my relatives, I found my way out to a really neat little pedestrian neighborhood called Nikolaiviertel ( Nikolai Quarter), I don't really know the origins of that name, but I suspect it has to do with a saint, and a particularly old and famous church that resides in the center of this neighborhood, aptly named Nikolaikirche. They wanted money from me to go in there and that was silly to me, so I just took what pictures I could and moved on, exploring those delightful cobblestone streets and staring into the silly tourist shops, and eventually finding the not-so-silly beergardens. Specifically a place called Reinhard's, and also a placecalled Otello's. Otello's had old accordions hung up on the ceiling all over, there's a picture, and Reinhard's was that sort of place that made you feel like it was centuries old (might've been) with a grand old wooden bar, and smoke darkened walls with wax candles in holders dotted around its entirety.
Seemed like a really nice place to eat, so I did the only obvious thing and forsaked the beautiful, old interior for the sake of sitting under a tree outside to people watch and drink a beer. I also had a wienerschnitzel that was a little bit lackluster, but god damnit I'm gonna' make amends for that next week in Vienna. Beer was delicious, for those of you that were worried. Plotting out where my next step would take me was the hard part of that lunch, but I settled on Checkpoint Charlie (I guess a pretty major checkpoint and security hub along the Berlin Wall) and set out to find that... and promptly got extremely lost. This is the age of technology, and I have a smart phone, but that's no fun and I actually kind of like being lost.
I never made it to Checkpoint Charlie, but I did get out to another ancient old bar called Henne. Famous for their chicken with crispy skin and juicy meat, as well as krautsalat and kartoffelsalat. That was my mother's recommendation, being a place that she'd spent a great deal of time at as a youth in Berlin. Thank you, by the way, mom. That place was amazing. Sadly no pictures, which doesn't usually prevent me from taking pictures, but the bartender was a rather grouchy looking old lady and I didn't want to cause problems. After all, she was the one serving me full litres of Klostershwarzbier, and if that doesn't demand respect then I don't know what does.
So, though I was content to sit by myself and enjoy my beers and the sights, sometimes things don't stay that way and in Germany it is such that if you have open space at your table/bench/whatever, you will usually be joined by someone or other. I was joined by an English couple named Alex and Shems, and they were an absolute riot. They'd just gotten into Berlin two hours previously, and were a little lost as to what to do/drink/eat, so I helped them out as best I could in ordering. One thing led to another, and now I have two more friends. Wandered around Kreuzberg with them until the wee hours of the night, stopping at interesting looking bars, and having drinks all over town. Two in the morning and I managed to find an uber back home, made it safe, didn't get robbed, all is well. What a night.
That's the adventure, the big one, and the beginning of another international friendship the likes of which can really only be forged with beer and late nights out on a town you don't know. Really, even the most anti-social people can get out and make friends anywhere in the world, and that's a beautiful thing to me.
