Today started with glorious sunshine and then just as we ventured outside heavens opened, not for rain but for snow, huge chunks of thick snow.
It didn’t put us off however, we were intent on going on the free walking tour I went on last I was in Berlin. Even if you know a lot about history both recent and early, it is still worth going on this tour. Both times I have been, the tour guides are like well rehearsed actors, enthralling and fascinating with new facts for the full 4 hours of tour.
The journey takes you through the Brandenburg gates, past the Jewish memorial and up to the location of Hitlars bunker (not over the peace bears like we expected, but instead under a carpark and a set of ugly flats). Going past the Nazi Luftwaffer buildings we learnt the ‘colourful’ history of the building also includes the Russian KGB headquarters and more recently the German Tax office
Once the tour was over, finishing up by the site of the old palace, our minds were swimming with new facts. The only thing left to do was to have them all drained out by the pub crawl organised by the same company.
The pub crawl was a lot of fun, we managed 4 of the 5 pubs before giving in. Berlin is full of some fantastic grunge punk bars, fancy cocktail bars and eclectic clubs, I only wish we had mode time to spend exploring them. It is an excuse to go back again.
Simon and I love going to zoos together when we travel, you may think that every zoo is the same and it isn’t worth going to especially when you travel, you would be wrong :) Zoos are lots of fun and every zoo has a different variety of animals, some of which are rare to have in zoos (Such as Giant Pandas). Its a great day out and even when it it is wet and cold like it was today.
Berlin zoo is amazing, it has over 14,000 animals (1500 different species) spread across 35 hectares. During the war the zoo was very unfortunately bombed and only 91 of 3175 animals survived. Today they have increased the numbers and species dramatically and all the animals look happy and the environments are large, leafy and have ornate shelter buildings.
One of the many highlights we found is the nocturnal house, whereas in most zoos this means just bats and maybe the odd mouse; here they had a wide variety of strange looking animals, including a scruffy rabbit with a long tail and Jaguarundi (which are very small cat like creatures, they had 2 and a small baby one). We spent quite some time watching as they bounced and chased each other around the enclosure.
Knut is the current superstar of the zoo, we couldn’t go to Berlin zoo and not see Knut. He is a baby polar bear born in the zoo, but his parents rejected him and his brother (who unfortunately didn’t make it). He was the size of a small Guinna pig when the zoo keepers fished him out of the enclosure with a long fishing net. As an adorable white fluffy thing Germans became understandably enthralled, the reaction however was a little odd. Many videos of Knut playing and rolling and eating along with photos, were set to custom music and posted on youtube. For Example …
Knut now is not so small and white or so fluffy. In fact he resembles a fully grown Polar Bear, even though he is under a year old!
Berlin zoo, from the amount of baby animals alone, definitely appears to be a breeding zoo. The pandas recently gave birth too, though apparently the sheer traffic of visitors coming to see Knut meant that the baby panda didn’t survive, which is really tragic.
Pandas are really very sweet, they seamed happy enough despite the loss of their child, pictured here munching on the nutrition-less bamboo:
One of the things Simon nd I enjoy about zoos, aside laughing at Bantams and other amusing creatures—is doing impressions of the animals. This is Simon being a panda:
You can get a combination ticket when you go into the zoo in order to also go into the aquarium. It is not the same big aquarium with the lift inside a fish tank as advertised on various pamphlets in our hotel—though we didnt know that at the time.
It was still fun, there were lots of lizards, walking fish, and a very good selection of jellyfish, including baby jellyfish that you could see under magnifying glass! This green snake apparently, has the very original name of ‘Green snake’:
As Simon had been otherwise engaged so far this week it was now time to show him round the bits of Berlin I had visited already this trip. Back to Potsdamer platz for more indulging of Glühwein, and this time a go on the snow-sledge! Then as the peace bears had been taken away we moved swiftly to the Reichstag (not up it this time) and the Brandenburg gate which today had been blocked up for the king of Saudi Arabia to visit the French embassy—we saw him briefly through the gate pillars.
Following the wall line back down through Potsdamer platz—the wall is still marked in brick on the road—we found the old Stasi buildings and statues which had been deliberately left un-restored as a reminder of events and a warning of consequences. For similar reasons a 200 meter stretch of the wall remains up as part of an outdoor museum display. There was a really interesting selection of billboard information near to Checkpoint Charlie with some old photos, including one of what the Brandenburg gate looked like in 1940, almost entirely unrecognizable today.
Dinner was in an Austrian restaurant with our happy band of seven, before a couple cocktails in a tiki bar with sand on the floor! much fun.
A comparatively short day,starting earlier than was pleasant considering the night before. Simon and I hurried to the conference center in order for him to give an enthusiastic talk about Javascript libraries.
After watching Mark Boultan give an interesting talk about typography 2.0, Jeremy Jessica and myself left Simon to finish an essay and we headed to KaDeWe food hall for much eating of interesting things, a nice coffee and stocking up on Christmas cookies and cheese.
Dinner that night was a smaller affair—13 interesting people. A great evening with fantastic French food and an amusing waiter was followed up by a couple pints in a typography themed pub called the Zwiebelfisch (meaning a mixture of typefaces)
A lazy morning was definitely appreciated this morning. Leaving Simon to work on an essay, Jessica and I headed into the centre of Berlin for a day of being tourists.
First stop was Potsdamer Platz, and while the area itself is full of banks, chain restaurants and cinemas, it’s a good place to start any Berlin adventure. As ex-German residents (Jessica more so than I) we were delighted to find a mini Christmas market by the station! Winterwelt, it turns out, had a decent amount of Christmas and food related stalls, a real snow sledging track and of course the obligatory Glühwein. Mmmmm!
From there we visited the peace bear sculpture garden, which we reasoned might well be the location of “that bunker” which people occasionally look for in this area. The piece bears are really fun, each decorated by a representative of a different country with the skill and technique varying wildly. Artistically some of my favourites include the Thai bear, Spanish bear and the Cuban bear.
By contrast the Holocaust memorial, understandably, has a completely different feel. Large imposing grey blocks of varying heights, from above it looks like they are all the same height because it is not immediately visible how deep the ground within dips.
Once inside, the feeling is one of claustrophobia and suppression. It’s really quite easy to feel lost even if you aren’t. Jessica was telling me that the manufacturer (Degussa) of the graffiti resistant coating on the pillars caused some controversy being involved in the memorial because a subsidiary of which were the manufacturers of the lethal gasses (Zyklon B) used in the concentration camps.
The Reichstag area was our next destination. The buildings by the river are very majestic. If you are interested in such things the German laws are inscribed on a wall of glass nearby.
We were very fortunate as we passed by the front of the Reichstag building to find that the queue to get in to the domed roof was very short. Twenty minutes later we had been filtered like sheep through security and were in the spiral dome.
Quite amazing autumnal colours and a 360 degree view can be seen from the top, including this amazingly high glockenspiel - apparently the fourth highest in Europe, though I don’t know where the other three are.
There is a café at the top—no really there is—the lunch buffet looked really fancy though we didn’t stop. Heading from west to east through the amazing 18th century Brandenburg Gate we enjoyed a Dunkin’ Donut in the beautiful piazza on the east side, which is only slightly marred by the hefty road-works but is still pretty.
Heading toward the pedestrian area of museum island, we bumped into an army and police brigade protecting a Luxembourg delegate, an interesting diversion
Our target was the Pergamon museum, well worth a visit! if only for the large roman sacrificial alter and amazing Babylonian glazed blue Ishtar gate
Later on, evening events took 15 hungry geeks to a restaurant nearby for a good meal and a happy end to an exhausting day!
As with usual Day 1 of our holiday / conference trip primarily consisted of travelling to our destination. It had been an unusually frantic yet fun week the week before what with one thing and another, though we knew the transition to Berlin would be tricky for Simon what with talk, tutorial and various other deadlines, as dutiful girlfriend I was on hand with help and assistance. After two hours sleep in a faceless chain hotel but armed with Uncle Nuri’s tasty Turkish canapé’s as breakfast, we set off for an early flight to Berlin.
We observed of the prettiest sights I have seen when flying, there were so many wind turbines on the flat plains approaching Berlin, the low fog was being interrupted and altered like ripples of rocks under a wave.
Arriving in the airport we picked up a fellow Web2expo-goer and headed forthwith in a taxi so Simon could finish his slides in a corner in the conference centre somewhere.
Our first crisis occurred when we couldn’t find the entrance to get into the conference centre! Now this wouldn’t have been an issue if we had come from the S-bahn, but having come from the road we could see the main entrance to indoors with the very fancy enormous web2expo signage but we couldn’t get in. We bumped into a girl who had been all the way round one side and back to where we were, everywhere was shut and the guard wouldn’t let us through the one entrance we did find! it might have been frustration, persuasion or an example of group-think but the four of us decided our only option was to jump the fence, fall down the 2 meter drop to the steep incline of the muddy shrubbery below.
Narrowly avoiding the guard who had told us to get lost, and fortunately away from the industrious gardeners nearby (having landed on it now appeared a freshly planted steep shrubbery) we were down. Running conspicuously and into the main entrance hall and leaving slightly muddy footprints, I can only imagine the impression we four must have given!
The nice web2expo people gave me a pass to watch Simon speak (for moral support, I had seen the same presentation at 2am that morning!) though misreading my passport my name is now ‘Natalie Citizen Downe’ apparently.
In the speakers lounge setting Simon up to make last minute touches to the slides; we discovered after some investigation that the power cords all around the room didn’t actually plug into anywhere, nor did there appear to be any plugs in the room. Today was a day of workshops, the actual talks didn’t start till the next day so construction of the venue was still going on.
Some searching led to the fire closet where there was one solitary plug. Some dangerous daisy-chaining later 4 power hungry geeks were satiated, if there was still no wifi there was at least some power now.
A little while later power was no longer enough - 5 of us went on a little wifi hunting mission which culminated in a small room behind the keynotes centre with cardboard boxes as a table, where a woman had a laptop plugged into ethernet. It looked promising … though investigation proved the exceedingly long ethernet cable didn’t actually provide internet. Never mind.
Slides done but too late for me to hunt a printing press for handouts - Simon commenced a very fine 3 hour tutorial
Talks done our happy band of fellows trudged back to the ‘Hotel California’ to change for dinner. We ended up having dinner in a lovely - 30 years back in time - traditional German restaurant, with fantastic foods if slightly odd coloured traditional Berlin beer!
This morning thanks to Caz, I noticed that google.co.uk appeared to be supporting England in the Rugby with the altered - high days and holidays - Google logo:
Great I thought! Go England! Google will be there in spirit later tonight as we support our boys on the field.
And then …
I thought maybe they are also supporting the other side, it would be surely be a bit of an uproar in South Africa if they knew Google supported england! So I checked google.co.za - and sure enough they are equally biased!
You can also see from some of the other local Google sites that associated have rugby teams, for example google.fr that they are spreading their support across the board.
Though I am sure you will be glad to know google.com are also supporting us!
I entirely agree with this chap when he talks about being in someone’s company because you want to be, not for what advantages it can get you in life.
I have been in situations at conferences where you think you are having a nice chat with someone and then they get starstruck and leave suddenly - even mid-sentence on occasion - to talk to the object of their admiration.
John Scalzi’s article makes for a far more articulate rant:
The most successful networkers don’t ‘network.’ It’s an odious term. The most successful networkers ignore the grasping patheticness of the term altogether. Rather, they talk. They laugh. They share the moment, and enjoy other people’s company; are generous with other people and help them celebrate their successes, rather than asking to scrape up against that success so some of it might crumble off on them. It works the same online and off.
