Berlin Beginnings

The program officially started this afternoon, but I arrived in Berlin on Friday morning. My flight was at 7 PM on Thursday night from NY and it was pretty uneventful. I was lucky that I had Sara on my flight and a familiar face since a bunch of the NYers all met last Saturday night at Adam's apartment on the UWS. Once Sara and I got to the hotel, we had a note from Eryn who I had known was also coming early. Sara, Eryn and I all wanted to immediately explore Berlin. We ran into Deborah and Rivky, who we also met last Saturday night. They were going to get kosher food for Shabbat. Sara, Eryn and I went to try to find some fashion week events, since it happens to be Berlin Fashion Week July 17 - 20. We also made it to the Brandenburg Gate, which there was no access to while the Berlin Wall was up. We saw a bunch of embassies - American, French and British, which all have a prime location because they were built soon after the wall fell. They all had first dibs. We then found our way into some public gallery space which had really cool pop art. We saw some cool fashion week stuff in a gallery - stands with designer-like clothing. The fun part of it all was the adventure of public transportation. We bought an all-day pass for a group and used buses and trains, although you do not need to punch it in on the train. It's on an honor system and well, the next day Eryn and I just used our pass from the day before... Anyway, eventually after my guidebook got us lost, we made it to Kreuzberg, which is in East Berlin. We got to the Turkish market, which was awesome. All the Turkish men yelling prices out at you and fresh fruit stand after fresh fruit stand. Everyone offering you to try samples. Random people picking a grape or a cherry to taste. The prices were also very good. It was a fun experience to be in a hectic, pushy at times, atmosphere where the men at the stands didn't speak English and we didn't speak German or Turkish. I ate a cool thing that was a hot square of filo dough that had spinach and cheese in it. The next day was today - Saturday - Sara, Rivky and Deborah did Shabbat stuff. Eryn and I took off the Picasso Museum - Museum Bergruen, which was cool because it had Picassos from his various stages in life. I really liked the portraits the best. He also had some Henri Matise. Paul Klee and one other artist. We checked Schloss Charlottenberg, which is a castle of a German Queen, whose husband built it for her as a retreat. I was a little disappointed by the castle because it was said to be done in the style of Versailles but the building grounds didn't seem to be kept up so well. After that we went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which highlights people who escaped the Berlin Wall (were able to sneak through). It was cool, but very disorganized. It was a lot of pictures and words all at once. After, Eryn and I found an outfoor area right next to the path of the wall, which basically told the story going back to the Potsdam Conference. We should have read it before we went in! Nonetheless, it was very cool to refresh my knowledge of that history and to stand where the wall once stood. We travelled back to the hotel because the program was actually about to begin.