Gutten Tag

First let me say, anything i type in here will probably be severly incorrect in terms of the spelling. German is a difficult language to learn, but i am sure even more difficult to spell.

This morning we met early at the Reichstag, or Parliament house. We had to meet early so that we could get in before the crowds and to meet our tourguides of the day. The tour was done by a company found on guiding-architects.net that will give you an in depth tour of particluar european cities through the eyes of its designers. Anyway, we were given an introduction then headed inside the building to climb up the dome. Its quite a spectacular building that they have rebuilt. The dome is now made of glass with a double helix ramp to climb to the top and to give the structure extra support. In the middle of the floor of the dome you can see straight into the parliament room. Because of the distrust in the government in the past, the citizens now can sit above their government and watch what happens. The government is trying hard to be as transparent as possible and thez even sit in a room of glass, though it is bullet proof and 6 cm thick, you can still see what is happening. The area that we spent the day has all been constructed in the past 15 years and its amazing, even today the large number of cranes standing in the citys skyline.

One of my favorite parts of the tour was the conversation about the swiss embassy. Apparently, the swiss embassy is the oldest standing structure in the german government area. It still stands because the custodian who worked there during the wat refused to take cover and would spend the night standing guard and putting out any fires that started in the building. Germany was not happy that switzerland had that building, and that land, so they tried to buy it. They tried protests, but switz. would not give in. Today, the embassy stands, tall proud, old and swiss.

We walked along the former path of the berlin wall and passed by some neat new buildings. One of them was really quite fantastic. If you looked inside, you saw that the floor was sunken in and quite shiny. If you backed up from the windows you would start to see the reflection of the river in the glass. You would then realise that the building was designed to look as though there were a swimming pool inside that the employees were walking across.

We went back to the Pariser Platz and went inside the Frank Gehry building. It was pretty neat I suppose, but the structure inside looked like a giant whale. Though I do hear its óne of the most famous buildings in germany. We also went in the art academy building and got to climb to the top and look over the plaza. As we were there, many police cars came by and helped people out of a limo. We learned later that it was infact members of the Finnish Parliament or something who were going to stay at the same hotel from which Michael Jackson hung out his baby. Anyway, it was really neat seeing the drastic changes in the space of such a short period of time.

We went to lunch at a mexican place called cancun. Mary and I shared a quesadilla and as a table we split nachos. I was glad to find that the nachos actually had cheese on them this time. It was good food, and less than 4 euro after the split.

We met up at Checkpoint Charlie. Some of us took a curcuituous path to get there and ended up walking by an outdoor museum of the wall. We then headed to the Jewish Museum and I spent the rest of the afternoon getting basically depressed from the experience, but what else would you expect. There was one room in particular that moved me. It had a steel floor that was covered entirely in 2 inch thick steel faces. The designer made it so that when you walked across it, it was as though you heard chains moving, people falling. It was completely experiential and hard to make one understand when they havent been there.

We then went back to our area of town and got pizza at the place next to our hostel. Its good food and cheap, at 2.50 for a personal pizza. Tomorrow, we will go to Potsdam and spend the day in the southern area of Berlin.