4:30am...again.

What is it? Wednesday now? No...Thursday, I guess.

Tuesday R and I explored what is called 'Unter den Linden', Berlin's main boulevard, which was originally a path between the Berlin Staatschloss (City Castle) and the Tiergarten (Tiere is German for animal), now a giant park that was originally the royal hunting grounds. Under Friedrich Wilhelm in the 17th c. the Linden (Lime) trees were planted and over the next few centuries a foray of classical buildings completed the street. ("How do lime trees survive here?" we wonder.)

Initially, I was going in search of a library. I have this great idea that I am going to be able to spend a lot of time at the library; reading children's books to help me learn German, copying recipes from German cookbooks, and generally browsing unfamiliar materials. But, I had to figure out where this library was. Looking over a city map I found two Staatsbiblioteks. The first on Unter den Linden, a nice walk from our apartment over 'Museum Island', a literal island between two arms of the river Spree. The museums sit on the tip of the island's penisula with the Berliner Dom, or cathedral. The main bridge going to the island was lines with one of the many Weihnachtmarkts (Christmas Markets) which have started poping up all over the city. They all have the same faux-log cabin facades and house a seemingly interchangable chain of handmade products for sale; from roasted peanuts and cotton candy to precisely cut wood ornaments and wool gloves. Once at the library I located an informational pamplet which explained that non-EU citizens had to have at least a 3 month permit to gain a library card...but it was all worth a trip through its neo-classical courtyard.

We stepped across the street to check out the Jeff Wall exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim (sponsored by our bank!) but discovered that it was free on Mondays and decided to come back then.

Now, with time on our hands, we decided to keep walking towards Potsdamer Platz where the other branch of the library and other cultural buildings were located.


There was a small motivation to see if the either one of these buildings was the one seen in the great German movie, Wings of Desire, but that turned out to not be the case.

We did hang out a bit in the Neue Nationalgalerie designed by Mies van der Rohe, which is a gigantic open glass cube with most of the exhibiting space underground. We then returned to Potsdamer Platz for Weihnachtmarkts sweets and coffee. One of the huge attractions at the this location, besides the blarring pop Christmas music (mostly English language soft rock and dance remixes) was a fake hill people could pay to sled down, complete with real snow! Luckily, some friction pads and an attendant is at the bottom to catch them.

I really should be taking more pictures...

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Well, I am glad to finally have this blog up and running. R and I are sitting back at St. Oberholz after a day of gallery going with SS. My fav today was the Peter K. Koch show at Kuckei+Kuckei. Strangely, this was the same artist who was showing in this space 2 years ago when we were here. It was one of my favorites then too. I like this new show, but I don't think the work would have been as interesting if I didn't know about the paintings we saw there in the past.


gallery view, Koch at Kuckei+Kuckei