original little hellraisers

berlin is this mix of staggering history juxtaposed with an incredible art culture and scene.  it seems like a young city — skaters are everywhere, graffiti murals dot the sides of the buildings and bands are always coming through town.  it is a city that i definitely want to come back to — with kara — so we can soak a bit more of it up and discover the hidden parts of berlin that i’m sure we’d love.

my luggage was late.  i had to go into a german shopping mall and buy new clothes for the meetings the next day in the event my luggage never made it into germany.  it’s pretty intimidating to shop in a mall where the average dude is about 6 foot 3 inches and buff.  i hate malls no matter the country mind you.  i had to call kara and find out what size pants i wear — totally rediculous, yes, but i haven’t shopped for myself in about 12 years. clearly expressed by my fashion forward attire.  237 euros later i had a pair of pants, two shirts, socks, unmentionables and shoes.  i don’t know how the kids do it, clothes are damn expensive.

note: i was a terrible traveller and didn’t take photos when i was there.  all of these are stolen from various sources on flickr.

the company i was visiting was about 300 meters from the berlin wall.  it was a pretty profound moment — i looked over at a graffiti covered wall that looks like any other graffiti covered wall in any other urban city when the guy i was with nudged me and said, pointing, ‘the wall.’  here i was, almost 20 years after the wall came down, visiting a part of the world that would have otherwise been impossible for me to visit.  (thanks lulu, for letting me crib your flickr stream).

that night at dinner with the developer (the founders were all born in east berlin) we started talking about the games that we loved as kids — h.e.r.o., skate or die, bard’s tale, wing commander, syndicate — all classics. as the evening was winding down he made a point to pull me aside and mention that he thought it was pretty profound that we could grow up under two completely different government systems, have access to completely different resources and somehow have a similar history.  i hadn’t thought about it until he mentioned it — it is profound, and incredibly cool.

he mentioned that they were not supposed to watch west berlin television or listen to west berlin radio stations even though they came through crystal clear.  governments are weird.  all of them.

the final night there, we had dinner at the reichstag — their version of parliment — which has a restaurant on the top of it that overlooks most of berlin.  at about midnight, cops came into the restaurant to kick us out of the place — they literally escorted us out of the restaurant, into the elevator, through the metal detectors that we came in through and out the front door.  i guess they don’t want miscreants like us in the building after midnight, given it is the place they write, debate and sign laws.  the dome on top is fully accessible to the public — if you’re ever there, go check it out.  it offers some killer views of the city.

as a city with a very specific recent history, there is little they do to forget.  there is a humbling jewish memorial composed out of what i think are grey granite blocks, representing tombstones all of different shapes and sizes.  it looks like a giant wave of grey stone in the center of a plaza.

after dinner we went to a place called white trash fast food — it is this bar in east berlin that hosts a bunch of local punk bands.  on the inside, think of a victorian house mixed with chinatown and it comes close.

the following morning we awoke to travel to munich, site of the oktoberfest.