Perburuan: Berlin

Berlin.

I accidentally arrived in Berlin on a very auspicious day, 3rd October - the German Reunification Day - expecting a cold modern city with the usual boring museum with plundered treasures from other nations and sausages sausages sausages. How ignorant and stupid I've been. Berlin is by far the best city in Europe that I've been to. Apart from the plunders from their amazingly well curated and interesting museums, almost all of my preconceptions have been wrong. It was definitely not boring or cold and sausages were no where to be seen (instead I found Thai restaurant on almost every station).

The new Reichstag dome - symbol of the transparency of the government. I thought you can see the debating chamber from there but it was just like a tourist trap, well a beautiful one at that at least.

Berlin is comparable only to London - the energy, artistic power, culture, cosmopolitanism, outward-looking, progessive - it was all that I love about cities. Perhaps what London can boast to its German counterpart, is its unsurpassed multiculturalism. But while Berliners don't speak 100 languages, it is definitely tenfuckingthousandtimes cooler than London.

Berlin has all the usual culture of a major European metropolis - thriving arts and museums etc etc - but what makes it uber cool is the (celebrated) alternative urban culture. I'm not talking about goths dressed in black. Street art for example are of the highest quality and the best ones I saw was on the old Berlin Wall. You can find walking tours for things like these. I thought Usman would've liked it because he's into all these Banksy shit (Oh yea apparently he did something here too!). The art gallery(or whatever-it-was-as-well) called Studio 54 was one of the highlight of my visit. Lawrence had recommended me the place and told me about how it's like before, but nothing can describe the experience of seeing it for myself - the place stank of piss, broken beer bottles everywhere, floor-to-wall-to-roof grafitti. You can definitely feel the artistic energy when you're in the building. In its four floors (or more) there is a theatre, cinema, bar, club and artists' studios. I visited some of the studios (seemed like it was organised along nationalities) where you can buy some their works. It definitely was inspiring for me - call me a geek but really wanted to start a drawing of my own when I saw these.

The Museum Island was amazing. There are several museums located in the island on the River Spree, most famous being the Pergamon Museum. I wasn't expecting much of it to be honest but I was definitely awed by the collections. The Pergamon Museum is probably quite similar to the British Museum - you know showing all the treasures (plundered from other people!) but what I like about Pergamon Museum is that they reconstructed the huge monuments so that you can actually experience the scale of the ancient buildings. It is definitely well-curated and have a clear structure for you to follow. The best pieces were definitely in the Pergamon temple itself and the Islamic art collection (probably the best in Europe!).

The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

But despite all this you can never escape the dark history of this place. This is after all where a lot of major historical events in Europe happened - ethnic-cleansing, the Berlin Wall, the Allied bombing and occupation. The history of its Jewish citizens was incredibly painful to learn about. The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe was a great justice to the memory of those massacred by the Nazis. I never liked Peter Eisenman's works but here it was great architecture. In the underground museum, you can't help but to be moved by the suffering the Jewish Germans had to endure. People were crying inside. Not a lot of monuments can do that.

But the same can't be said about the Jewish Museum. Here David Libeskind had made the place for honouring the history of German Jews into an egomaniacal self-congratulatory monument to himself. Everywhere you go, there'll be something the superhero architect wants to say about his building. Not until I force myself to ignore the building that I can finally learn something about the history of the European Jews. Particularly good were the Judeo-Christian-Islamic section and the history of mediaeval German Jews.