Berlin

A Bit About Berlin

So, last week I took my first flight from Southend Airport to Berlin. People had built it up so much for me that I couldn’t help but go there with high hopes and it really did not disappoint one bit. Although the week tired me out a lot from the amount we did, I would choose a city holiday over a clubbing one any day. I really don’t understand why people get so excited and see it as the highlight of their year to get drunk every night, having the potential to sleep with random people and spend most of the day light hours hung over when instead they could actually explore a place. They could learn something about culture, see things that they will actually remember and might even inspire them, rather than the countless faces they’re bound to forget in the morning. I went on one once and in my opinion it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be.

Anyway, Berlin was pretty much exactly as I’d imagined it to be. They had the art, the music, the style, the history and the nightlife. It is genuinely a huge place with so many different parts spread out in opposite directions. There is a lot more to be discovered than just the typical tourist attractions that lure people in, although of course they are major parts of what shapes Berlin. However, note-to-self; never trust a tourist guide book for nightlife! One of the top clubs was hidden round a corner where the bouncer ordered you to whisper in the outdoor smoking area, whilst the inside capacity was nowhere near full on a Friday night.

My housemate Scott and I were there for six days and even this wasn’t enough time to access all areas. Regrettably, we were unaware that whilst we were over it was music week and a big Berlin music festival was taking place with two of my favourite artists performing; Bastille and Ellie Goulding. Gutted was an understatement of how I felt when we saw the posters spread over Friedrichschain’s graffiti covered walls.

Graffiti is pretty regular in Germany. This was something I learnt from visiting Munich and living in Dusseldorf. You’ll be sitting on a train, passing through built up areas with sprayed artwork scattered over various buildings and even smothering the trains. It pretty much covers the entire city of Berlin. Yes, some of it is insanely creative, however there are other parts of it that really are just plain pointless. I can see the two attitudes that formed towards graffiti. There are some people who think it ruins Berlin and the others that think it makes it. I wish I could have spent a day just searching for huge pieces of this forbidden artwork, although it doesn’t take much looking out for - they’re quite hard to miss. I have no idea which bits of it are allowed and which bits have been achieved through sneaking around late at night. Either way it’s all fascinating to me. I mean you have the posh and proper neighbourhoods but then you have the rough and ready areas – they’re the areas that do it for me. They withhold potential for the alternative scene that lingers around Berlin. The fashion is what I love. It's retro, vintage and alternative. I  observed some of the people I saw in the streets with their unique dress sense. I was a bit disappointed that we couldn't find more second hand shops/vintage shops. It’s also hipster heaven. I don’t have opinions on hipsters; the stereotype is as generic as any other. I never really understand it anyway – too many stereotypes in the world. At the end of the day they are just a way for strangers to label one another.

I think Berlin is full of secrets, special places that wait to be discovered and this is why through researching I’ve found that the ‘places to be’ have altered over the years and will continue to. It’s such a huge, spread-out place that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the best area. It’s incredible to visit and see in flesh, the places which in the 20^th century were some of the most vital parts of both WWI and WWII. It really puts it all into perspective and makes you realise how haunting it is when you think of what happened and to the extent it was. I remember looking at a section of the WWII exhibition on Auschwitz concentration camp and just feeling my heart drop to my stomach; just realising how many innocent people’s lives were taken from them and how many people forced into doing something they didn’t believe it to help save their own life. It really isn’t a topic for the faint hearted. When you look around the city, standing in front of the Reichstag or walking through the blocks which form the Holocaust memorial it really is hard to imagine that not even a hundred years it was being destroyed by two horrific outbursts of war. Now there are all nationalities that roam the streets; there’s no one guarding the streets ordering people to walk in a specific direction and no one separating the public for their beliefs – there’s freedom. Of course in some areas there still linger those who devote their lives to Nazism but never as many as were involved in a world war.  The world has developed so much in the past hundred years that it makes me wonder what it will be like in another hundred years’ time.

The end to our holiday was a little stressful to say the least. We thought it’d be okay to leave a little later than to arrive two hours before our flight because the airport looked small. This wasn’t a great decision. We checked in our luggage forty minutes before our flight was departing and 10 minutes before the gate was supposed to close. The queues for the Easyjet check-ins were mad. This meant we had to literally chuck our stuff through the security check and run through the airport to get to the gate in time, only to find that they weren’t even boarding the plane yet. With this, we still managed somehow to arrive at Southend ten minutes ahead of schedule. See, all that stressing for nothing…genuinely was under the impression we were going to miss our flight, have to stay another night and pay for another flight – when in Berlin.

I definitely want to go back in the near future. I didn’t get to experience nearly enough of what I want to experience but within the time I was there I did manage to see a lot. I think maybe I will visit again next year for their music week or for my 21^st. I still want to move out to Germany and I really hope that one day it can happen.