Final Blog of Randomness

Here are some random shots of Berlin/Germany.







Cheech and Chong



the very delicious "doner kebap"

getting ready for the world cup

I will miss you Berlin... until we meet again.

The Ghosts of Berlin

For the history portion of the program, we were asked to read The Ghosts of Berlin by Brian Ladd and make comparisons between the book and memorials we saw during the trip. The book goes through Germany's history examining the conflicts that they are faced with to whether they should or should not keep the memorials that exist.
The one that I found the most interesting was the Berlin Wall. The Wall was in existence between August of 1961 and November of 1989 separating West Berlin from East Berlin. Although a major part of Berlin's history, the people wanted no remembrance of it, and so they began tearing it down piece by piece. Soon the Wall became a commodity as people were selling off pieces to make money, but eventually the demand would run out. Berlin struggled with the decision whether or not to tear the rest of the Wall down fully for years. I believe that they did a pretty good job of memorializing it by keeping a few sections of the Wall intact, opening the Checkpoint Charlie museum, and of coarse the Berlin Wall Memorial which consists of an outdoor exhibition in the former border strip, a documentation center, and Chapel of Reconciliation where daily prayer services for the victims of the Wall are held. Even though "the overwhelming desire was to be rid of the hated obstruction", I feel they made the right decision in memorializing it to show people that "in Berlin, Germany's wounds still lie open everywhere."
The second memorial that I found interesting was the Soviet War Memorial at Treptow Park. This memorial symbolizes five thousand of the eighty thousand soldiers of the Red Army who fell in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. The Soviets defeated the Nazi regime and occupied East Berlin for many years under the name the German Democratic Republic (GDR). All of the GDR's monuments "were in the minds of Berliners not just a political statement but also a neighborhood icon, a repository of memories, or a vital piece of urban architecture." Postwar West Germany had "buried and denied its Nazi past", a mistake that would be repeated if all of the GDR's monuments were wiped away. So I felt that it was wise for them to keep the Soviet War Memorial. Here, visitors pass through an expansive landscape of granite memorial sculptures until they reach a 38 foot tall statue of a soldier holding a sword in one hand, a child in the other, and stepping on a swastika, "a grand expression of heroism and triumph." It is regarded as the best and main Soviet memorial in existence in Germany.

Throughout the book, we learn that Germany struggles with the decisions whether to keep and build these memorials of their hated past. Most citizens would much rather tear them all down and sweep everything under the rug. I was glad to see they decided to keep these memorials because, good or bad, it is part of their past and identity.

The Wall Jumper

The Wall Jumper is a complicated story about a West Berliner's trip to the East to visit some old friends. The book takes place during the period of the Berlin Wall. Throughout the book, short stories are told about people's attempts to jump the wall from one side to the other. However, most of these stories seem to be false and are in fact just myths as the author begins to explain how unlikely it was to just jump the wall back and forth. At the Checkpoint Charlie Museum I read about a boy who attempted to climb the wall and was shot in the middle of "no man's land" and was dragged back to the side he came from. In real life very few people made it to the other side without a Visa. In one of the earlier stories, we learn about a man, Kabe, who jumped the wall fifteen times because he was bored with nothing to do. Doctors said that it was just a "pathological desire to overcome the wall", and this is what the book was basically about. The people of Berlin had a desire to see what life was like on the other side; it was curiosity. During my stay here in Berlin, I have began to notice that the separation that the wall once maintained still feels in existence today. West Berlin is very lively and full of capitalism as it once was, but the East on the other hand was very quiet and had an "old" fell to it. However, the people seem happy about the fact that they can move freely between the two sides now. Even though the fragmentation of the stories made it difficult to read, the book gave me a better understanding of the way Berlin is today.

Nice From A Far But Far From Nice

De-constructivism is a development of the post modernist movement that started in late 1980's. It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, manipulating surfaces and skins, and a distortion of shapes. It has an unpredictable quality, yet it is controlled chaos.
(Frank Gehry's DG Bank)


From far away, these buildings look cool and take on interesting forms. However, once you get close to it, one begins to see a number of problems with the building. The most common problem I have with these buildings is the joint work at some of the corners. It looks very sloppy to say the least.


(Coop Himmelbau's UFA Cinema)

Within Coop's Cinema, it felt as if there was a lot of wasted space and also felt cramped in the lobby area. It was very non-photogenic to say the least, but that's just my opinion.











(Zaha Hadid's Vitra Fire Station)
Here at Zaha's Fire Station, most of the doors and windows don't meet the surface evenly causing air to get through the small gaps. They had to install heaters within the floors and walls because it got so cold in the winter. The fire station was only in use for two years. Now the Vitra campus uses it for parties and social gatherings.