i've finally succumbed to being a tourist

so, i hate to say it, but i am going to pander a bit and for the next week or so, this blog is going to look more like vacation slides than my dorky everyday updates. this is a long one, so make yourself comfortable.

met up with Owen and it is so nice to hang out with a old friend. we had beers at the Prater Garden in my neighborhood and yes all your comments about the temperature are true. it is already summer in berlin.

i couldn't resist coercing Owen's buddy, John, into letting me have a photo-op with his wurst (we have left the land of the Pølse and now it's just WURST!) on the condition that he got to be in the photo. and i did have a few nibbles of this delicious german brat. it's a totally different beast than that the danish dogs. and if i had to choose to only eat one for the rest of my life, i think i would choose a german bratwurst. they are hard to beat.

yesterday we headed out to the Staatliche Museum für Kunst which is housed in the former Hauptbahnhof and has turned out to be an excellent, spacious exhibition space where extremely large works like Richard Long's "Berlin Circle" can be shown and in a proper way.

there were even works by Owen's former proferssor, Thomas Ruff

and an enormous exhibit showing what is probably only a fraction of Wolfgang Tillman's many works. i like this one for it's simplicity.

then we made our way to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which was pretty thrilling for me to see in person because I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this piece while it was still in the planning phase and have not yet experienced it myself. the space is incredible and effective despite the tawdry row of tourist shops that have cropped up on one side. there is very little specificity in it's form. the gray steles, though varying in height, spread out like a piece of dark cloth, disappearing into swells and fashioned in such precise order that if it weren't for the different heights creating unexpected plays of light and shadow on the quadratic surfaces, it would seem like they go on forever in perfect symmetry. the memorial doesn't tell you what to think, and it seemed, by wandering ourselves and watching others, that those who visited were having physical interactions with the site that made them curious and want to know more. i didn't go into the information center below ground because i am still a bit saturated with Holocaust information so i can't say anything about that part. to say the least, i was impressed.

then, Potsdamer Platz
where I was sorely disappointed. I have read, heard and seen so much hype about Atelier Dreiseitl's design for the site and it was really nothing special. the waterways were loaded with algae bloom, it was dark and dull and the context of Potsdamer Platz is pretty miserable. the details of the site that i had seen in photos looked so lack-lustre and tired in person and the ponds had a typical stench of water that is not taken care of. i took one picture and then wondered if i had come to the wrong place by accident. honestly, it left me feeling a bit duped about Dreiseitl and everyone who has been praising that project. Maybe when it was first built it was really lovely and worked well but it doesn't now, and i think i will be much less likely to use precedents that i haven't visited myself.

the disappointment of Potsdamer Platz passed quickly when we came upon just one of so many amazing public spaces in Berlin. this one is right on the River Spree and you can see the Parliament buildings in the background. lovely.