We drove four hours today, an uneventful ride to Berlin. We are staying for 3 nights at Mercure at Checkpoint Charlie - definitely recommended!
The mezzanine between the 1st and 2nd floor of our hotel room
We used the U-bahn (subway) to get around from the hotel, to lunch, to Alexanderplatz, to the Memorial of the Berlin Wall, and lastly the East Side Gallery. Since there are no turnstiles, you buy a ticket and use it on the honor system.
Berlin - Riding on the metro-o-o
Lunch at Curry 36 - touted Berlin's best currywurst
The World Clock in Alexanderplatz is on the cover of Kate's German book
Starting at the World Clock at the Alexanderplatz, we took a self-guided Graffiti Art tour. It opens your eyes to graffiti - to see it as an expression of uniqueness and creativity instead of offensive vandalism. Although graffiti is illegal here too, Berlin is one of the top street art destinations in the world. We learned about terms like "tag", "throw-up", and being "buffed". Our walking tour detoured to the Memorial of the Berlin Wall and its Documentation Center (museum) - where there is a surviving double-walled section of the Wall and watch tower still standing.
There's a lot of street art to see along the tracks on Dirckenstrasse, particularly SOBR's dancing girls
The hidden courtyard of Haus Schwarzenberg fosters a creative space for alternative street art
Very cool street art
Memorial of the Berlin Wall - the steel posts mark where the wall stood
A subway ride took us to the next segment of our street art tour - over by the East Side Gallery.
A trip to Berlin wouldn't be complete without seeing the longest (1.3 km) remaining section of the Berlin Wall called the East Side Gallery. With the Fall of the Berlin Wall, in the spring of 1990, artists were invited from all over the world to paint 105 murals of freedom. The most famous mural is a reproduction of the famous kiss between the head of the Soviet Union and the leader of the GDR.
Street art is valued by the quality of the art, by its size and also by how well it uses the space it has. It also increases in status if the space is hard to get to. High up "heaven" art, like this mural by ROA, are the most respected.
Blu painted this man - looking closely you will see it consists of many small figures
East Berlin Gallery
Dmitri Vrubel's famous kiss, captioned with, "God, help me survive this deadly love."
Another popular mural - 'Berlyn' was painted by Gerhard Lahr
For dinner we ate yummy cheeseburgers at nearby Burgermeister, an old converted public restroom.
Burgermeister, serving hamburgers from a converted bathroom, just might be the most interesting burger joint we've encountered
