Berlin, Day 3

13 July 2008

Part I
For a mere 7.50 euros you can have three espressos, a bottle of water, and three hours of uninterrupted high-speed web access. I spend the morning at the internet cafe—by the time I’m done, I’ve answered all my relevant email, uploaded several photo galleries to Flickr, scanned The Times, and sent out an SOS to Jen to bring a replacement adaptor for my Blackberry.

Today’s museum day, part II. I plan to see the Potsdamer Platz, which was still largely empty when we were last here, and to visit the Neue Nationalgalerie, which I’m told has a stunning collection of contemporary art. I set out for my destination using a Fodor’s map and the keen sense of topography, direction, and inherent understanding of natural terrain that allowed me in my senior year of college to mistake North America (a geography class) for a course that actually would have provided my last core curriculum credit (geology). Back then, I graduated late. Today, I simply get lost.

Thankfully, not too lost. I retrace my steps from our walk last Friday; soon, I’m back on Unter den Linden dodging other pedestrians and heading back toward the Brandenburg Gate, the Tiergarten (pictured to the right), and soon, Potsdamer Platz.

An hour’s strident walk later, I see the familiar glass coronet of the Sony Center—strolling through the atrium with its cafe tables and Cinemax banners for Hancock, I find myself in the center of the Potsdamer Platz.

A number of the intersection’s corners have been filled in with buildings of glass and steel. Some, still under construction. Definitely much more built up and out since I’d seen it last. It’s an intersection filled with the rush and hum of a Times Square, and on a scale and in a style that’s distinctively German.

The Mies van der Rohe-designed Neue Nationalgalerie is just a new blocks away. I find it, queue up for a ticket, and get to the counter to find that the permanent collection … is closed. Drag. I pass on the special retrospective that they’re showing—I was here for the Miros. It’s a 45-minute walk in the drizzle back to the hotel, during which time I perfect my Teutonic scowl.

Part II
Dinner with friends about to relocate from Berlin to Santa Monica. They live in Friedrichshain, in the heart of what was once East Berlin. Our cab driver takes us through boulevards lined large buildings decorated like wedding cakes—the height of Russian design, says Honey P., from the glory days of the GDR.

Our friends’ neighborhood is, for lack of a better word, hot. One can imagine a time in which the densely packed streets of tall apartment buildings seemed both claustrophic and bereft, but no longer. Bars, restaurants, boutiques, and cafes now line the streets, and as the night goes on the entire neighborhood glows with neon and light spilling from large storefront windows and overhead signs. We dine at Gabriel, a new restaurant serving traditional German. I have the schnitzel (surprise, surprise) with the Alsatian potato salad and a half-liter of merlot, and we sit outside until we’re too tired and the night air has become too chill to continue.