May 5, 2010
Day 36 Berlin
Claudia ended up getting us a private tour of the Reichstag, the German government building, because one of her friends works for one of the MP's! We headed over to meet her, went through security and met up with her friend. He spoke English, thankfully, and took us on a tour of the government buildings. They were really cool. There was a ton of art in the buildings and I think we ended up going into three buildings because they are all connected underground and with pedways. The stuff looked really cool and one of the coolest, and more mysterious, pieces of art was an area that had a brown box for each MP that ever served in the German parliament with their name, the years they were MP and the party they represented. One of the boxes was black with no name or year or party and our tour guide said that you can interpret it as either Adolph Hitler's box or as all the government people at the time of WWII since there was no government per se (at least no MPs). Very crazy. There was also a piece of a tunnel which was said was the tunnel that someone went through when they burned down one of the buildings. It was really interesting. There were other crazy pieces of art like in one court yard that had water in it, there was a sidewalk that lead out to the middle and on the walls there were pairs of statues walking up the walls (they were horizontal), or in another courtyard was a garden that had soil brought there by each MP (I think when there was democracy in German again) from all parts of Germany and it was allowed to grow as is (no pruning or anything). I think it was to represent the coming together of Germany. We also went inside the Reichstag which has a cool funnel thing in the top of it. It was a very cool tour. At the end, Claudia went back to work while Trevor and I headed to another museum that would explain more about the Berlin Wall. When we got there, we read through a bunch of info which got me very up to date on Berlin Wall info. We took some pictures of the wall there and then headed to the East Side Gallery. This was cool. A whole bunch of artists painted a big chunk of wall (I think it's over 1 km long). They each got an area to decorate and they went nuts. There were some amazing pieces of art. It was awesome. We took a bunch of pictures. After a very enjoyable walk along the wall, we headed back to Claudia's to wait for her phone call. Around 20:00 we headed out and met her at her research lab and then walked over to the bar where she worked before. We walked by an area where there are apparently squatters and a bunch of artists living and they put out their art for everyone to see. It was interesting, though slightly intimidating. It was a pretty run down apartment building and you walk into the courtyard where there are a bunch of metal sculptures. The lighting was dim and eerie. We looked around then kept going to the bar. On the way, we saw a bunch of prostitutes all dressed the same (as if they had a uniform) and in warm jackets (it was cool out). Finally we made it to the bar. There were so many beers to choose from and we got a beer each as well as some traditional German food. We had a great time. After a fun dinner we headed back to Claudia's to say our good-byes because we wouldn't see her the next day. That's how the final night ended.
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