Berlin Overview

I have already been in Berlin for almost two weeks, but it has felt like barely a weekend. Every day Brandon and I have gone straight from class into the city, and we rarely get home before 10:30. There is always something new to see, and it’s possible to fill several days without ever having looked at a guidebook, simply drifting down the hip, densely-packed rows of fashionable shops and adorable cafes. The consumer paradise is punctuated often–more often in the former east Berlin–by crumbling buildings and makeshift wooden structures blanketed in several layers of colorful graffiti and event flyers. Sometimes these are artists communes, sometimes playgrounds. Across the street from the most famous of these, Tacheles, is a block of upscale restaurants; down the street is Berlin’s little sister business district, Friedrichstraße.

Even the kids are punks in Berlin's anarchist playgrounds

The real business district is Potsdamer Platz, which is notable for little besides its close proximity to the Brandenburger Tor on one side and the city’s cultural complex Kulturforum on the other. Kulturforum is set up somewhat like a suburban American strip mall. Here is the Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Mies van der Rohe. Across the street, past the church and four parking lots, you’ll find the Gemäldegalerie. Across a few more parking lots, find the Berliner Symphoniker. One more and you’re at the Museum of Musical Instruments, which has a working Wurlitzer Organ!

Any given surface in Tacheles

The analog between a mall and an arts complex works here on more than one level. Berlin consumes art like Los Gatos teenagers consume jeans from American Eagle. The gallery scene here is out of control, especially considering the relative wealth of the city. It’s poor. Berlin is the poorest state in Germany, and also the cheapest. Despite its monetary concerns, Berlin remains the only state whose universities are completely free. Its priorities are clearly in order. So how does a city so poor have enough wealthy citizens to buy up the slews of over 5,000 € pieces of fine art that are on display for free in its hundreds of vibrant, cutting-edge galleries? I can’t answer that question, but I’m glad that someone’s buying them. Those mysterious patrons make possible events like regular mass opening parties on Heidestraße, where the wine is free, the mixed drinks are freer, and galleries stay open catering to the culturally intoxicated hundreds well into the night. Even better, young parents bring their kids.

The German attitude toward children and art is admirable, if a little bit dangerous. Parents are pleased to expose their kids to art, no matter how impenetrable, at a very young age. The good news about impenetrable art is that it’s often also the pretty fun. A group of young girls explored the presence of a James Ireland minimalist sculpture consisting of iron frames and colored glass while their parents caught up with friends at Haunch of Venison Berlin last Friday. Realizing that one of the frames was empty, they mimed touching glass inside it. The miming continued throughout the gallery, until an amused father shushed them and handed out glasses of water. This afternoon, a mother brought her two small children into Galerie Oko to look at the ostentatious motorcycle sculptures of Ushio Shinohara. Seeing them come in, the Italian gallery manager shook his head and said under his breath, „Sometimes Germans don’t care about anything.“ before walking out to make sure nothing got broken.

It’s true, Berliners do allow destructive forces to get very close to art, but that is not nearly so troubling as what they let into their food. This place is teeming with bees. Every display bakery display case is full of them, crawling on the iced black & white cookies, sucking sugar off the cinnamon buns, doing horrible disgusting dancing loops around apple strudel. As soon as food is in my hand, a bee will show up to also be on my hand. And, as you may have guessed, this entire post has just been a clumsy ramble toward this for all things pretty mediocre photo of a bee inside a sugar dispenser.

I'm sorry it has to be this way.