To The German People

Get prepared to get serious and political today. All I can say is that I hope you like "history" because this is pretty much just me quoting Wikipedia and pretending that I still know all of this from school. The things I do for this blog...

The German Reichstag has been such an important landmark in Berlin since the first time I visited that I somehow instinctively felt it has always been the meeting house of the parliament.

Turns out, however, it has only been re-used as such since 1999(!). I guess it makes sense, if you think about it (and leaned it in school in German history class but somehow never realised this is all recent and actually happening). 

When Germany was divided the German Democratic Republic started meeting in the Palast der Republik (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R0821-400%2C_Berlin%2C_Palast_der_Republik.jpg (in this picture you can actually recognise the Reichstag in the background (it is in the upper left side))) and the Federal Republic of Germany would just ignore Berlin altogether and meet 600 km away in Bonn (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F010479-0006%2C_Bonn%2C_Bundeshaus_mit_Fahnen.jpg).

After the reunification in 1990 they decided to return to this building which had not only been abandoned for 45 years but also severely damaged in a fire in 1933. So clearly they needed to clean up a couple of things here and there which apparently took them 9 years. The result is really cool, though:

The Reichstag has now a glass cupola on top instead of the old roof one and the idea behind this is that people can walk all the way up and look down on the politicians meeting up (look down in the best and most symbolic sense of the word, not in a "spit on them from above"-sense). You can see the blue seats from the parliament in the picture above.

You can climb all the way up to the top of the cupola along the white path in the picture above. I also really like the mirrors in the middle. I mean, this is Germany, not Morocco, they are going to need every photon that makes it through the clouds.

As straight as a die

Here's an ode to German precision

BBaP (Berlin Bits and Pieces)

These are just a couple of pictures of details or pretty things that I took around Berlin. Without further ado here are a couple of images that I had no separate category for.

The picture above shows the Berlin victory column a monument in the middle of one of the main roundabouts. Curiously enough the bronze (yeah, apparently it is bronze, not gold - fools!) angel statue was added later to commemorate further victories of the prussian empire which raises the question of who put the guy in charge that thought a plain grey column would be a good thing to stand by itself in the middle of a roundabout).

The horses on top of the Brandenburger Tor, who has not seen these? (On a side note, the horses are also bronze like the angel in the one before, so if you ask me it is pretty clear what statues get the special treatment in this city…)

Those are some helmets decorating the facade of a building which I particularly enjoyed.

Just like these horses (/frogs/sarah jessica parker mermaids?) that are holding the triton on the railing of a bridge. They are so cute though!

So majestic! This kind of style clearly clashes with this very typical German one:

I found the clock very funny, it reminded me of a swimming pool clock for some reason… Very eighties/nineties (because I was so aware of what was going on then, let me tell you).

Very interesting city, so these won't be the last Berliner bits you'll see from me.

Hands off the wall

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about Berlin is usually the wall. Most of it has been removed, but there are some short bits that were left standing and can be visited today. 

As it is only a ~3 m grey concrete wall it would not be much of an interesting tourist attraction if it wasn't for the graffitis that cover every inch of this 

Some of them are really famous, like the one in the picture above (artist: Birgit Kinder) or this one from Thierry Noir:

I think it is a pity that most of them get overwritten by ugly signatures or comments. If at least they put in some effort, but just covering this historic heritage with some cheap tags is a real waste.

These historic heritages tend to be a bit psychedelic by the way and often display political messages:

Probably the most famous one (by Dimitrij Vrubel) is this:

I was a bit disappointed to find out that this is just a copy of an actual image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breznev-Honecker_1979.jpg). Who on earth would have thought that is how the politicians greet each other? (for more about this Google "social fraternal kiss" and go from there).

Some more creepy nazi-kid graffitis...

And last but not least a view of both sides (if I am not mistaken the right one should be the west and the left the east). Don't get fooled by the amazing sun. It was super windy and for some reason that wall was no wind protection whatsoever. Thanks a lot, wall.

Detour

Today I am very busy but I will take the chance to quickly introduce the city that I will be showing you these following days. I went there for a winter school a couple of weeks ago (for the third time in my life) and I loved it as much as ever.

Can you guess which one it is?

Here is another (more obvious) tip:

That's right! Prepare to be BERLINed!

TEDxIC

This weekend Imperial College hosted the annual Imperial College TEDx conference. I don't know how many of you know the TED talks, but they are quite famous and really, really interesting.

For those of you who are new to this concept: TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is a series of conferences with the slogan "ideas worth spreading". Even though it has gained a lot of fame over the last years, probably due to the easy propagation over the internet (through Youtube and their web-site), TED has been around for a while (the first conference being held in 1984 in California featuring a demonstration of the first macintosh computer). And as it usually is, these events are impossible to get access to. To be part of the audience you have to be INVITED by TED and then pay a ticket that usually costs around 6000 USD. This is where TEDx comes in handy for the rest of us mortals (for those of you who had forgotten about the little x at the beginning and were wondering how the hell I got in). TEDx are independently organised events from TED, which basically means that any institution that gets a licence from them can host them. And Imperial happens to have one. 

One of the main characteristics of TED/TEDx speakers is their excellence in giving a talk and this was the case at TEDx Imperial College, too. Despite the fact that we did not get to see the worlds macintosh premiere, the speakers were really good and covered a variety of topics ranging from bottom-up social change to emotional artificial intelligence. 

I recommend that you check out some other talks from this series, as they are quite educative and also mostly very interesting!