Berlin 2

Here are some pictures from our first days, with commentary.

The outside of a shopping mall (yes, that's snow):

We went to the Hamburger Bahnhof, a vast contemporary art museum created out of an old train station

Some things I saw:

Part of a retrospective by the artist Martin Honert, whose work centers on meticulously crafted versions of his childhood memories.
A dormitory bed:

A realization of the book by Erich Kastner, "The Flying Classroom:

I saw this from the museum window;  is it art or industrial detritus?

Outsider art by George Widener:

A very long gallery, with very clear signage:

The roof of the new Berlin main station:

The new Potsdamer Platz:

I don't know what the purple pipes are for...
Edit:  Now I do.  They are used to drain the water from construction sites, as Berlin is built on a swamp, and this is the most cost-effective way to do it.   And why not pink?

The Sony Center at the new Potsdamer Platz

A bit of an old facade, entombed:

But nearby, there are old buildings still to be restored...

Berlin!

We are now in Berlin, where it is still winter.   There is snow on the ground.   Dinner:  roast pork, cabbage, potatoes, beer.   We are not in Paris any more.

We last visited Berlin in 1997, in the summer time.  It is different in the winter; the openness and plentiful trees are not significant in the winter.  I am struck by how spread out Berlin is; even with all the construction since we were last here, there are plenty of seemingly abandoned lots and empty spaces.   It can take a long time, via walking or Ubahn, to get from one place to another.  Berlin is more like New York in some ways; a mosaic of a city, with pockets of old (and reconstructed) buildings in between blocks of dreary postwar constructions.  It's not a city for strolling in the same way Paris is.
But there is an extraordinary amount to see here, both of cultural and historic interest.  I remember our first visit, a few years after the Wall fell, when we took a bus that went from the west, through the Brandenburg Gate and the site of the Wall and into the older Eastern section, when all the images of history were suddenly real.  Seeing the empty space where Potsdamer Platz was, situated between the two Berlin's was a reminder of all the Berlin had been through;  now it is all rebuilt; and the empty space is mostly gone.  So I don't feel that same weight of history that I once felt.   But we have plenty to see; new museums, memorials, and even a brand new train station.