BERLIN DAY 4

We travelled back to the West, this time to the plush environs of Charlottenburg. After a bum note of being reprimanded for our lawless ticketless metro actions, we headed with a bruised ego to Schloss Charlottenburg.









We walked around the gardens and indulged in fantasy, imagining what it would be like to wake up in this palace and stroll around this garden before breakfast. Then we were off the Museum Berggreun for Picasso, Matisse and Klee.





Museum Berggreun is a small gallery spread out over three floors with a claean layout and an exxcellent selection of art. The audio guide was both soothing and informative. I took a crazy amount of photos, so I present to you a mini tour....



I loved that it began with African sculptures as reminder of its important to Surrealism.





Henri Matisse- Sauteuse de corde (1952)


Geroges Braque- Nature morte au verre et au journal (1913)


Picasso- Le chevelure (1951)


Picasso- Buste de femme d’apès Cranach le Jeune (II) (1958)


Picasso- Le dormeur (1942)


I love this you can just feel her energy just bounce of the walls.
Picasso-Dora Maar aux ongles verts (1936)


Picasso-Portrait Madame Patri (1918)


Paul Klee- Betrachtung beim Frühstück (1925)- this takes the chicken and the egg debate to whole other level.

We then hopped across the road to what like the Museum Berggreun’s double, the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg (AS student we got to go to both Galleries for 4 euros-incredible). Its equally as good, therefore heres another mini tour....


How many instruments can you spot?




Redon- Le promeneur


Redon- la sphère


The world in the era of the Surrealists


This had us laughing for days after and is now an in joke- I forgot what the importance of this piece is, sorry. Henri Rousseau- La belle and la bête.Hans Belllmer- La poupée(1936-1938).


René Magritte-Gaspard de la nuit.

We walked around Charlottenburg a bit more and spotted the Funkturn, then headed off to the Olympic stadium.



We really wanted to see the place were Hitler tried to show off the physical prowess of the Aryan race but instead got smacked down by Jesse Owens. When we arrived however, we realised that this dark history had been replaced by a naturally mundane reality. As the person at the info desk said when we asked where we could learn more about the 1936 games, ‘the stadium has modernised abit since then’. To describe it as more surburban would have apt judging by the number of mums picking up their kids from football practice.





To cheer ourselves up for the wasted journey we howled over Christian Bales freak out, ‘WHAT DON’T YOU FUCKIN UNDERSTAND?!’ 'YOU AND ME ARE OVER...PROFESSIONALLY!'- Our cheeks and bellies ached all the way to Kreuzberg. First we went to the German technology museum. It was really interactive and a change from wandering around art galleries.





In this museum in Berlin, I played peaking tom in various people‘s windows ....










I love good travel photography. Here is Helmut Schilke’s Faces of India project.






In writing this now, i have only just realised the irony of my camera breaking down while walking around an exhibition on the technology of cameras. So onwards with camera phone pictures/friend's snaps...

BERLIN DAY 3

The Berlin Wall

There was a school tour guide taking place, so we eavesdropped in. A sombre anecdote was the effects the divide had on graves and how families on the West could not see their family members who were buried in the East. Some even watched their relatives' graves dug up to make room for the wall. It's the little stories like this that I missed when being taught about the divide at school which always focused on the political/material and never on the emotional. The Documentation centre across the road also brought the effects of the Berlin wall home with a room which screened a strangely hypnotic video of the wall across the whole of the city from the vantage point of a helicopter.
We stayed in Nordbanhof after this for a light hearted visit to the German Natural History Museum
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I love the Acience Museum in South Ken; how can you not love a place where a large T-Rex (and its baby arms) greats you? So I was keen to see how the German one fared. Although it is a lot smaller, it means you could digest a lot more. The museum is evidently caterted towards German tourists. Ecept for the Charles Darwin room which was in Englishthere were hardly any translations.









I watched this for a good 10mis, really hypnotic this creature, shame I don’t know what the hell it is...









This is the specimen of Archaeopteryx and is ‘considered the most complete and beautiful specimen in existance’











We then went to Stassermarkt- to check out the market. If you’re a little lost tourist come to this market and go to the information centre. There is the sweetest women ever here who originates from Versailles but has been living in Berlin for 5 years. She was beyond helpful- giving us directions to everything, recommendations and helping us decide which opera we want to see by playing pieces to us. It felt super cosy to be listening to this in the warm while it started snowing outside.



We finally braved going outside and got the beloved bratwurst then headed to Kollwitzplatz, the Jewish quarter. This and there area surrounding it would where I’d love to live if I was a resident of Berlin. It felt really homely, maybe the snow was clouding my judgement but it was nice to walk around this area. Tip, the Jewish school and Synagogue are not open to the public. And the German Design museum does not exist/has shut down.











At night we headed to the West after a quick nap to recharge our batteries. The club for the night was 2be and Berliners and internet reviews alike had promised that this was the best Hip hop club in town. After a long train journey there and being accosted by 3 drunk German women who plied us with alcohol (thanks for the grapefruit beer whoever you were...) and gave us sound directions. This was valuable as the club looked like it was an abandoned warehouse; inside it was still minimal but the purple lights and leather sofas dotted around gave it a warm touch. This club has been frequented by the likes of Snoop dog(the real one, and not our German friend) and if you go you will see why. I wouldn’t call myself a clubber but I have never had such a good time a club. The music rang from classic such as ‘move bitch get out the way’ to remixes, including ‘New York, New York’. Everyone was there, punks, German old men, hip hop video dancers, rude girls- or baby Beyonces, good dancers, bad dancers,-it didn’t even matter the vibe of the club was eclectic and not in the sense that everyone was hooking up with each other but dancing. Even when the stereotypical hip hop fight broke and the GERMAN DJ was yelling in English, ‘security, security’, this was quickly resolved and people went back to dancing.
In the end to leave, me and my friend kept saying, ‘after the next song’, we did this 4 times, finally after the club went crazy for Jay-Z’s ‘New York, New York’ we left. On our way back home we encountered something sobering/creepy in the subway.....

A BEAR ARMY!