Berlin Bears
DDR Museum
On one of the previous weekends I hung around Berlin, I dropped into the DDR museum. It’s literally around the corner from where I stay and holds a lot of the memorabilia from the East Berlin side when the wall divided the city.
They had plenty of artefacts, everything from cars, school articles, clothing and newspapers and create a stiflingly close atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re transported in time. Perhaps it was also its popularity with people and the fact that the rain brought even more people than usual inside.
I didn’t get the audio guide, but there with plenty of signs to see, and things to interact with, there was enough in the two large sections to keep me busy for a couple of hours.
The DDR museum is found on Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 1 right on the river Spree and directly opposite the Berlin Cathedral.
Quick Visit to Chicago
On my way to a conference in Salt Lake City, I was fortunate enough to stop over in Chicago where I had a bit of a hurried catch up with several people before making my onward journey to the conference. It just so happened that the weekend I stayed in Chicago also happened to be the weekend on of their largest musical festivals, Lollapalooza was playing. Featuring three days of plenty of amazing bands, I was a little disappointed I didn’t get a ticket. Until I found out a couple of other friends that Ajit had visiting also happened to be going, and one of them happened to be one of the festival’s stage producers. What this meant was a free pass that I was able to use on the last day of the festival.
Lollapalooza draws plenty of crowds, one of the big reasons is that it takes up the city’s amazing Grant Park – a wide open space that runs alongside almost of the down town area, and where you can see the great skyline from all parts of the festival.
Not only did I get a pass to the festival, the pass that I was given also happened to grant access to the “Artist’s Lounge”, a backstage area right behind the largest main stages. I arrived there quite late, with only three or four other acts left to play. I can’t say that the “Artists’ Lounge” had any of the other acts – looking like it was also filled with people who knew people. Benefits of this were tremendous however, with a private bar, easily accessed and a side entrance to the main stage.
For the most part, the weekend seemed to be pretty nice given the time of year however heavy storms had been forecast for this weekend. It came down almost as soon as I made my way into the Artists Lounge, and also happened to cut into half of the one hour set of the Arctic Monkeys. We tried sheltering under one of the large umbrellas towering over the table making some new friends and great conversation. The result didn’t really work with the “windy city” having its way and me almost entirely drenched. Fortunately I had brought some shorts and a fairly thin shirt that dried out rather quickly.
As you can imagine with torrential rains and a festival like atmosphere, a rather predictable and terribly muddy result ruled.
Fields of mud pretty much everywhere. I ended up walking around mostly barefoot given that flip flops only served to really throw up even more of a mess into the air and I didn’t really want to be covered from head to toe in mud, just as some people obviously had been.
The Arctic Monkey’s admirably finished their half hour set, joking about the weather and being back home putting on a great show in the short time.
With evening starting to set, we headed out to another stage to catch Explosions in the Sky whose dreamy music and fairly chilled out set served to prepare the crowd for the two big headliners of the night, Deadmau5 heading up the cavernous tented, though just as muddy Perry stage, and the Foo Fighters who I really wanted to see live.
As soon as the other set finished, we darted, just like everyone else, towards the main stage. Using our Artists Lounge pass, we went around the back and popped up with almost a perfect side-view vantage point of the band playing.
The heavens opened up once again, this time with hugely torrential rain. Kudos to the band, who became just as drenched as we were and didn’t miss a beat, simply swearing at the crowd about how, “At least all you *** dirty people got a shower now.”
An amazing two hour set that simply flew by, they whipped the crowd into a frenzy with many of their classic songs and a few different ones. A completely serendipitous weekend that turned out to be one of the most fun in quite some time.
Friedrichshain Volkspark
I like to think that London has a many more green spaces when compared to New York City. Although I agree that Central Park is an impressive area, it’s not really designed to be accessible by all people and really only most beneficial for those rich enough to afford park side residences.
London has many more areas, though Berlin still puts London to shame. It’s not really a fair comparison though because Berlin doesn’t have the lack of space problem.
One of the parks I visited recently was Friedrichshain’s Volkspark (or the Folk’s Park). Friedrichshain Volkspark is a pretty awesome place. Different to Tiergarten, this one seems really built up for utility rather than just the green space around it. I saw everything from tennis courts, beach volleyball courts and a fountained area near a cafe where everyone can lounge around in.
It’s even got one of the hilliest points in the city that I’ve seen so far, with good vantage points of the surrounding area.
Located not far from Mitte, another great green alternative to the rest of the city.
Mastering Mount Mitte
Inspired by our ventures in the UK to do a high ropes course, Michael managed to find one located right in the heart of the city that we could take part in immediately after work called, “Mount Mitte“. Being centrally located, the chances of tree top adventures wasn’t very high – instead a three stories man made tower of diabolical courses that meant more flexibility and proved much more interesting because you could choose any path you would like.
They had special harnesses and a really cool safety mechanism that made sure you would always be attached as some point. They had two floating cars you could sit in suspended by wires, and even one of classic German “Standkörb” (canopied wicker chairs) to sit in above all the beach volleyball courts that surround the location.
It was great value and an awesome evening for it too.
Spring in Berlin
Although it’s a little bit cold and rainy in Berlin at the moment, when I left it several weeks ago, Spring had definitely sprung. Everyone was out in full force, enjoying the warm weather with many table side cafes and the wonderful biergartens (no translations necessary) where the British have something to learn from the efficiency of German people serving beer. There is simply no mucking about!
Above is a picture of one of the streets I pass regularly on the way to work. Quite a distinct contrast from its leafless, sombre brown branches I barely saw in the dark back in January.
And one of the aforementioned biergartens, this one fairly well known, called Prater Garten.
New Gadget: GPS Watch Garmin Forerunner 305
In the latest of my gadgets this year, I have to admit, the Garmin Forerunner is doing quite well. Since last year, I’ve been determined to keep up my training (at least where possible) since it’s the sort of exercise you can do regardless of where you are. Essential stuff i you’re going to battle consultant-health-unfriendly-eating-out-at-restaurants like me.
I’ve been averaging approximately 2-3 times a week running distances between 10k-16k. I’m thinking about running a half marathon later this year if I can keep it up. During winter, I found a pretty standard course in Berlin, however I’ve struggled to proper measure how far I’ve run through Tiergarden as the weather warms up.
No more with this GPS, heart-monitor watch.
First looks, you’ll balk at the size of the thing. Yes. I know. However, this is where running with a G-Shock watch already acclimatised me to the bulk. It’s not much bigger, and definitely lighter than my existing running watch. The more modern Garmin watches are definitely more stylish and they’ve done well to reduce the size of them. I bought this after talking to some folks at Runner’s Need and finding this older model available on Amazon for a bargain £120 (what you’d pay for a very beginner’s model).
The box is outfitted with everyone, and despite the huge Amazon box is pretty small.
It contains all the essentials, including the watch and it’s charging stand (that uses USB). Awesome stuff Garmin as I can reuse the USB chargers I carry around for my phone, or simply plug it into my laptop for charging.
Even better is the small charger they gave, accompanied by, get this, an EU adapter – perfect for when I’m travelling to the continent (which has been a lot this year and will be for another couple of months).
They even throw in a watch strap extender and screwdriver if you want to change the strap (for those with chunkier arms). Fortunately the standard strap worked fine for me.
On to the watch… Unlike Apple products, you have to charge the watch first. It took a good hour to actually do, but by then it worked quite well. In that time, I had other stuff to do, including downing their software and hooking it up. I don’t bother with their Mac software much, however I used the latest software off their website (the included CD a little bit outdated now) so that I could use this free software (highly recommended) called TrailRunner.
I’ve tried it for a couple of runs now. The watch took a little bit of time the first time to pick up a satellite, as it did when I started off with my run in Madrid, however once that goes, it keeps up the pace very well. You can customise the watch to show different layouts – far too many options for me to care about, but the default display is perfect – distance, time and pace.
It comes with an accompanying heart rate monitor as well that the device connects to, so when you download your runs, you can monitor time, heart rate, and elevation. This is exactly what I need right now. I flipped through the manual, but everything is pretty intuitive.
Of course, the improvements are probably the size of the watch (I kind of like the massive display so I can quickly glance to see stats while running) and the included software for Mac is a bit naff, but the free one works like a charm.
Tension in Berlin
Working and living in Berlin, you notice a lot of tension between the locals and the concern about the rate of gentrification the city undergoes. The fact that there is plenty of interesting things to do, plenty of interesting people to meet and the fact that it’s one of Europe’s cheapest capitals are all obvious drawing points that mean people with reasonable amounts of cash can come in and enjoy themselves much better than they could in other places. This, of course, only serves to accelerate the rate of gentrification with more money flowing and the environment working to match the needs of the more affluent people.
Here’s an interesting video worth watching to get a flavour of just the tension that exists in Berlin today.
Offending the Clientele from Retsina Film on Vimeo.
I came across it from this original post, and this original English article.