Day 5 East Berlin

On Tuesday our last full day in Berlin we set out to tour the Eastern part of Berlin. It's been almost 20 years since reunification and I wanted to get a feel for what it might have been like for the unfortunate ones stuck on the Eastern side. Berlin is a massive city I am told 3 times the size of Paris and a population of over 5 million. It is not a grid city like Toronto but a ring city. We dedicded to basically start from our hostel and then walk one of these rings all the way around the Eastern side of Berlin. For about three hours we walked along Karl Marx Allee. The Allee was originally called Frankfurt Tor but in the 1950´s the Soviet Communist Party wanted to give a present to their dear leader so the street was renamed Stalin Allee and renovations were adding grand ornate street lamps and widening the street. It stretches for several kilometers and you can look off into the horizon and see no end of the street. It is massive and clearly designed to make one feel insignificant. This would have been the street they would march troops and drive tanks down during May Day parades. Literally overnight in 1961 as part of East German De-Stalinization the street signs were taken down and the street was renamed Karl Marx Allee. I noticed the simplicity of many of the apartment buildings, clearly built in the post war era. Unlike the Western part of Berlin where you have 200 plus year old buildings still standing, these aprtments were modestly built probably in the 1960's. There were plaques about every hundred metres or so and one of them made mention of extensive renovations done to these buildings in the 90's. Many had fallen into horrible disrepair due to years of neglect. Now there are limited shops some small discotheques, some cafes like the Mockba Cafe but not much else. There are these massive islands in the middle of the allee and all of the grass is about knee high, either a deliberate attempt to discourage jaywalking or city workers are just too lazy to do so.

After following the street to it's end we headed south west crossed over a bridge and headed towards the river Spree. Over the bridge we walked past the relatively new O2 arena which is pretty impressive. Down by the river there is a large stretch of wall which has not been torn down which artists from all over the world have painted murals around the theme of the wall. Some are quite moving, some are just strange. I think the one I found the most moving was the curriculum vitae, in which an artist painted the year and then marked the people murdered trying to cross over with a pink rose.

While this was all very moving, I was realizing that there wasn't much commerce in the area as most merchants closed up shop leaving a sort of commercial ghost town. I had to find a bathroom so we walked as fast as we could to the East Train station. I tried to go into McDonald's but they didn't even have washrooms available to their customers without a pass code. I had smacked my head on the door on my way in and had I smacked it any harder I might have split my eyebrow open. No bruising but it did sort of take my mind off the dilamma for awhile. Finally we found the public pay toilet and it is a bit ridiculous, public toilets run anywhere from for .5 € to .8 € you drop the change in and go through the eingang or entrance. The problem is the eingang is also the ausgang so if there is a huge lineup of people there needs to be some sort of cooperation between people entering and exiting. I had a problem with this in the Hamburg train station where my change came flying out of the machine and as I went to pick up the change on the floor a guy exited meaning I had to put more money in luckily the attendant saw what happened or at least saw how frustrated I was and let me in through the service door, but I am getting ahead of myself here.
  We were now very hungry and tired so we wanted something familiar so we thought perhaps of going back to the Irish pub to see some Canadian IIHF hockey on tv. We stopped in and ordered a burger and fries and were not very impressed when we got the food and the burgers were these tiny little patties on these supercheap grocery store buns with crinklecut fries. I realize that yes it's an Irish pub in Germany tring to make American food, but I'm certain I could do better than that myself. The main reason ex Pat types go to places like this is it's nice not having to pay to go the washroom and it is comforting to speak your native language. The place is no doubt packed during soccer and rugby matches.

The pub had been playing the Germany vs. Slovakia IIHF game but did not get the Canada vs. Czech game being played at the same time. I went back to the hostel hoping to perhaps watch some of the game through the TSN streaming feed but all the machines were in use, 2 kids were watching the German hockey game. I asked them for the Canada score and the kid was like "Canada eh!" and gave me the thumbs up. I wasn't sure whether he was mocking me or not. Later he came over and started asking me what's wrong with Canada, I couldn't really tell him as I hadn't seen any games while I had been there. He was actually very cool and he wasn't mocking me I think, he just wanted to practice his English a bit. He said there are a lot of Brits who pass through but they all speak a lot of slang and speak very fast so it's very difficult to understand them. I could only nod my head and agree. I had been somewhat conscious that people were going to figure out very quickly I wasn't British and just assume I was American which I don't really have a problem with per se. The only Americans we have run into our entire trip have been 2 guys travelling on their own who were both soft spoken and not at all obnoxious and a 30 something year old University professor from San Francisco travelling to a job interview. In fact the most obnoxious people I have encountered the entire trip were two privilged Canadian girls, who seemed to have just finished 1st year University and were backpacking around Europe. They made no effort to be friendly with anyone else staying in the hostel and were very rude to the hostel employees, made no attempt whatsoever to use any simple German courtesies. They sat at their table all night gossiping about girls they hated in highschool, they each had a bag of beer they had brought in which yes may have been a little cheaper than buying from the hostel but was kind of obnoxious and I'm sure very warm. We are also pretty sure they were running some kind of scam to steal potato chips, the kind of thing drunk bored people do because they think it makes them badasses.

The hostel saved us a lot of money vs. staying in a hotel. It had it's drawbacks namely the noise. Although we are much older than most of the people staying there it reminded me a little bit of dormitory life- the good and the bad side. Leighann and I spent the rest of the evening relaxing knowing we would be catching a 12 PM train the next day to Hamburg.