A very fun day to be sure, one that I am glad I did, in spite of being doubtful about it first. To start, I heard Nate and Asia leave and before they did they gave me their email addresses, and I returned the favour. I then took a shower, and went to eat breakfast with of course Kiatsu (I think that is how you spell his name) the Japanese guy, coming and eating with me, we actually ate at the same table as Nate and Asia, and then they had to catch their train back to Poland. At the table a girl came and offered a free walking tour of the city, which I was really more considering going to Charlottenberg Palace, because I had already done most of the stuff the day before. I thought, though, why not, I really had no other bigger and better plans anyway, so I may as well go and understand Berlin from a more academic and interesting level, but the thing that really convinced me to go oddly enough, was Hitler’s Bunker. I don’t know why this appealed to me so much, but it did, plus I knew that if I went that Kiatsu would not tag along, and not that I don’t like the poor fellow, but he is just a bit annoying to me, and I think he has rather taken to me as his friend, but he is so bloody difficult to understand and the conversations we have seem rather difficult as well.
So, I went off to get myself ready for the tour, and when I got back down to the floor, I found I had missed it, but I kept walking a bit quickly and saw this group of kids, and some girls in the back most notably with some balloons tied to them, and I thought that it must be it. I was right, but the balloons really seemed unnecessary, and I have no idea why they were wearing them. I went and talked to the girl who had offered the tour, and we were then before I knew it riding the U-Bahn. On the U-Bahn, I learned she was a nice English girl from Devon, and she was studying German, as well as more or less being a linguist. We talked a lot about shop, or linguistic things, and then we got off on the proper U-Bahn for the Brandenburg Gate. There we accumulated ourselves and then we broke off into two groups because the party was too big for one. Our guide was a chap from London named Jasoni, which I guess he just added the ‘I’ at the end to distinguish himself from the copious amounts of other Jasons in the world. Anyway he was very entertaining, and I learned a lot from him, including the history of the city, and such like that. The sights we covered were the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Potsdamer Platz, the Berlin Wall of course, Hitler’s Bunker, the Luftwaffe headquarters, Checkpoint Charlie, the SS Headquarters, Museum Island, The Staatsoper, Humboldt University, and the Library and the Square by it (which is where the big bonfire in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade happens), and some Cathedrals, and the best part of all the Volkspalase, which was a rather hideous East German relic.
All of these things moved me differently, or made me think, and I learned a good deal about them all, but the ones that stood out to me most, were Hitler’s Bunker, and Humboldt University. Hitler’s Bunker, because I had seen the movie Downfall many months ago, but it occurred at this place in real life, and it was just astonishing to actually be standing where the once most powerful man in the world fell and where he sat while his mighty empire was coming to an end. I don’t know why this was particularly moving, but it was I suppose because now all it is, is a car park (parking lot), with a road on it, and some of the nicer old Soviet apartments too. Then there was the place where the Great Book Burning of 1933 happened, and I felt this was also very strange, because it was so horrible to people that such academics would do this, destroy knowledge because it was made by what they must have felt was inferior authors. To me, I really did not know what to feel about it, but they had an interesting little monument there, where you could stand on or near a piece of glass on the ground which looked into a room that had enough bookshelves for 20,000 books (the number burned by the Nazis), it was a neat sentiment. I guess there actually was one more thing that made me think a lot and that of course was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This made me a bit cross to be most honest with you, because for one thing, it was designed by an American and opened about 5 months ago, which was insulting to me, because I highly doubt he went through the holocaust himself. Plus it was a very modern art sort of thing that cost 25 million Euros and it was right by the most prime real estate in the city. But the thing that bothered me most about this was the name, the idea of calling it the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe just makes me wonder why the Jews feel they are so special as to be the only ones who deserve their own memorial, even though they were only about half of the victims of the holocaust, and I know I am not the only one to wonder about this.
Well anyway after the tour, I came back to the hostel ready to settle down for a while, and after having taken a nap, I went downstairs to get dinner, and I found out that they were serving Cordon Bleu, so dinner was actually rather excellent. For this, Kiatsu again joined me, which was okay and I understand his loneliness, but I wanted just to figure out the rest of my night in peace. I ended up going back upstairs to try and figure some things out, and then Kiatsu came up and was pointing to a flyer for a pub crawl, and he really wanted to go, but I was rather reluctant not wanting to have a hangover the next day as I had to leave back to London. So saying nah, that’s alright, he said something kind of forceful like “Le’s Go!” and it reminded me so much of Lost in Translation, when the Japanese prostitute says to Bill Murray, ‘Lip my stocking’ and then tries to be assertive by saying “Heyy, lip my stocking!” But I thought about it, and considered he did have a point, so I went downstairs and joined up with the pub crawl tour, and it was led by another English girl, who seemed rather nice, and was pouring free vodka, but heavily watered down or mixed with juice, thank God. Anyway, she and I talked a while on the U-Bahn going where we needed to, and there was this really annoying and I am sure fairly drunk bloke from Germany named Emanuel or something like that, who kept really pestering our guide, and I actually felt much pity for her, but there was not much I could do. I also met some very nice Austrian girls on the crawl as well, and we hung out actually most of the night. We met up with our crowd, at Silber Fisch, or Silver Fish if you like, and we drank there, and we met another guy, named Colin, from Australia (yes another one) and he was a nice chap and seemed a bit older, but it was fun all the same.
At the first Kneipe or bar I did not order anything, but it was rather amusing sitting and talking with these Austrian girls and we were in each bar for 40 minutes, we went to four bars in all, and one club although it was suppose to be two. They were all quite interesting really, but had no place I would go on my own. I was fairly tipsy by the end of the night, but still had control of both my memory and my faculties. We ordered a taxi to get home at the end of the night, the girls and I, I mean, and it only cost me 2.00 Euros so I was rather pleased with that, I then just went up to my room with the girls, we were both on the same floor. When I got in, I went to sleep rather quickly and that was about the gist of the day.