Berlin on the cheap and with Sarah, which aren't necessarily related but I put them together in the title anyway

Like Paris in the 1920s, New York in the 1980s, and Prague in the 1990s, Berlin is undergoing a significant cultural shift. And it’s awesome. Food is cheap, graffiti is everywhere, and the creativity that comes with the raw, bohemian counter culture is palpable. Bullet-scared alleys in the East that were squatters’ homes only 15 years ago are now laboratories for trendy bars, restaurants, and design studios. Communist-era apartment buildings are coming down and modern, flashy complexes are rising from their ashes. Berlin, especially the East side, is a home for artists, students, and young entrepreneurs. And, like I said, it’s awesome.

Kate and I went to the EU’s second largest city and Germany’s capital this weekend (Thursday – Saturday) to visit our friend Sarah Ashton, who was in town for a week for a work convention. Jet lag and incontestably boring presenters made it easy for Sarah to skip Friday’s presentation and hang out with us instead, traveling through the city in the way the locals do – by foot. And with hot chocolate.

But let me start at the beginning. We arrived around 5 p.m. on Thursday in a leafy residential area of the former West Berlin called Wedding (pronounced VEY-dink). Although we didn’t know it at the time, this sleepy area within walking distance of the hustle and bustle of downtown was actually the area my Oma was from. A neat coincidence, to be sure, although I’m sure the Turkish döner kebap stands weren’t around in the early 1920s. We met Sarah there at 6 p.m. and began a hardy jaunt around the city that ended up keeping us out of our place until after midnight. The first thing we wanted to do was head east…so we hopped on the jaundiced-looking metro line and, pop, we were there. Something completely unimaginable only two decades ago.

Sarah served as a commendable guide for Thursday night, dutifully showing us the sights she’d been able to find and appreciate during her week in the city. Most of the sights are actually on the East side – from the Brandenburg Gate to the museums (153 of them in total) to the famous Unter den Linden strasse, a grand boulevard not unlike the Champs Elysees.

Here's a snap of a bunch of sites from the East. It's no wonder this part is becoming the city's center of gravity for tourists and locals.

The East is made even more attractive to investors because, in addition to the derelict and forsaken properties that went unfrequented for the 28 years the Berlin Wall divided the city in half, the socialist regime put in a “death strip” of up to 30 yards in front of the wall, making potentially attractive property into vacant lots. (It was were called the “death strip” by the way because the armed guards who were ostensibly there to “protect” the “free” socialist brothers of East Berlin from the evil capitalists from West Berlin were ironically instructed to shoot any socialist brother attempting to visit the other side. Nice, huh?).

Anyway, although it’s been almost two decades since the wall came down and those vacant yards were ripe for bidding, construction cranes still seem to sully just about every picture tourists like me want to take. Luckily, I'm shallow enough to take pictures of myself.

See?

Or this sorta stuff.

After our walk around the East, we ate a popularly-priced Indian meal where the food was good (but Kate’s milk-flavored beer was bad) and called it a night.

The next morning we met up with Sarah again for another walking tour of the city, this one provided by a reputable company that actually charges for their services. Again, we headed east on the metro and spent five effortless hours ambling around the former Communist sector. Here's Kate not paying attention.

It was on this tour that we learned a lot about the city and its history. We also realized that the Soviets actually got a better deal than the other members of World War II’s Allies in terms of real estate, because they were partitioned with the central and historic parts of the city, which just “happened” to be on the east side of the city. It’s not like the Soviets did anything with the remarkable property they had….just neglect it. But it’s all open and available now.

We heard a couple good stories about the city’s architecture, its transition during and after the war, and about the tough times faced by inhabitants of the East during the Cold War. We even heard about a couple successful escape attempts and saw Checkpoint Charlie, a famous American crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.



Or, perhaps more importantly, we saw this building, where Michael Jackson held his son, Blanket, over the railing.


And this large giraffe.
And this apparently incredibly boring recreation of a traffic control tower in the once bustling Potsdamer Platz where the police guard used to sit to control the first-in-Europe traffic lights.

OK, those last two things weren't on our tour. But they were fun anyway. Seriously. And here's another thing that wasn't on our tour - the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was destroyed during a British RAF bombing raid in 1943. This is, actually, one of the most impressive sites...if you ask me.

We followed that up with a couple drinks in a fun but scruffy neighborhood that had cheap booze, good food, and prostitutes. I started the night off with a “turbo radler” – a mélange of beer and red bull – that seemed to intoxicate my brain very nicely.

After checking out on Saturday, we hit up the very thorough and well organized German history museum (leave it to the Germans to be thorough and well organized) to learn about the history of Germanic people starting from the year 1000 B.C.

We then walked to Berlin’s version of Central Park called the Tiergarten (animal garden) because it used to serve as hunting grounds for the Kaiser and his volk. Today, it’s a delightfully green forest filled with a network of well trod paths and a surprising bunch of little tikes like this couple who were running in what seemed like a breast cancer awareness race sponsored by Avon. Can you sponsor cuteness like this?
And then, it was time to leave – embarking on the six-hour trek back to Wiesbaden and, more importantly, back to Pecos, who we missed very, very much.