Street Art & Fairytales: A Short Guide to Berlin and Baveria

Hallo aus Deutschland! I just got done with traveling for a week in Germany and it was incredible!! I’m definitely feeling my German roots.

My great-grandma Christa Elisabeth Adams (née Wolf) was born in 1924 in Penig, Germany. My own middle name, Elisabeth, is spelled with an “S” by the way because of her German spelling. Anyway, Christa spent part of World War II doing her mandatory “Duty Year” for the Reich where she worked on a farm. In 1943 she returned to Penig, where the town suffered air raids until 1945 when the town was occupied by the Americans after the war. Christa was a skilled linguist and worked as a translator between the American and Soviet border. Eventually, however, the Soviets pushed further into the west and Penig became occupied by Communists. So, seeking opportunities in West Germany before it was too late, she escaped Penig with friends in 1945 and didn’t return for 20 years — this time to bring my teenage grandma Beth to visit Christa’s parents before they died. By the way, Christa met and married an American soldier, Bill Adams, and eventually moved to the US after leaving Penig. What a Hollywood story! I wish I could’ve visited Penig while I was in Germany, but it still remains a very small town that would’ve been somewhat difficult to reach. I still definitely felt connected to her, though.

Berlin

But about Berlin. The history there is incredible, too! Berlin is a fabulous city for solo female travelers — it’s safe, cheap, and in my opinion the sights and history are best explored alone. I got to Berlin (from Copenhagen) on Monday, May 7th. Unlike Copenhagen, Berlin is very spread out, so I’d recommend getting a daily or weekly public transport card. You can always expect the public transport to be smooth and orderly in Germany.

So for first impressions: Berlin is ugly. Like, after being surrounded by beautiful old architecture (even cool, new, innovative Copenhagen architecture) in the rest of Europe, you come to Berlin and you’re like, BUT WHY!! Of course, pretty much all of Berlin was destroyed during World War II, so it was rebuilt with 1970s-80s soul-sucking Brutalist architecture. Parts of Berlin feel like you’re in Back to the Future Part II — it’s futuristic, but in a dated way, ya know? Like what the 80s thought the “future” would look like. Which, after you get over the initial grossness, is actually kind of funky and cool. Berlin got to start over to address the needs of a new nation.

And then the punks took over. I took an “Alternative Berlin” walking tour, where we walked all over the city to learn about Berlin’s history with graffiti and street art after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Graffiti is obviously illegal, but one thing missing from Berlin’s streets are security cameras. This is very different than in London. If you didn’t know, the UK is the most-surveilled nation in the world. There are millions of CCTV cameras, something like one camera for every 11 people, and if you’re in London you’ll be caught on camera at least 40 times per day. That’s 1984 shit right there. But in Berlin, a city with an obviously long history of depriving personal rights, the Germans take their privacy very seriously. This fact may not be that interesting to you, but CCTV was a terrifying topic to me while living in London, so I thought it was awesome that Berlin is very anti-surveillance. I’m sure this is how the graffiti culture thrives. Anyway, I would highly recommend taking an Alternative Berlin walking tour if you want a different side of Berlin. At the end of the tour, we ended up at YAAM, the Young African Art Market, which is an art gallery, food stall market, community center, and cabana beach bar. I sat in a beach chair (on actual sand) there for like two hours along the river. This is a really cool, unknown spot that’s a great place to grab a beer in the afternoon.

For some other art spots, one of the most famous is the East Side Gallery (very close to YAAM), where artists have left their mark in the decades after 1989. I’ve always heard that the west side of the wall is blank, but that’s actually not true. Other graffiti artists have painted there since, too (but not to the level of the murals on the east side). The wall is probably a mile or so long, but definitely take the time to walk the whole thing. It’s totally worth it. Finally, a more hidden art spot is the Haus Scheunenvietel, a courtyard art gallery, bar, art studio, and art house cinema. The street art here has survived the last couple decades because the buildings here were actually legally rented, unlike most of the post-1989 buildings that were squatted in. For this reason, the art was saved from being painted over by the government or later owners. If you’re looking for something to do besides going to Berlin’s famous raves, check out the movies here at the independent Kino Central Cinema. I saw Call Me By Your Name (FINALLY — movie tickets were too expensive in London), which was so sweet. 

But now back to the history, because it’s inescapable in Berlin. There are many WWII museums, but the one I did was the Topography of Terror museum. It sits on the former site of the Nazi Gestapo, a place of much hatred, torture, and murder. The museum is small and free, but very reading-intensive, so I’d set aside an hour or two to read through all its history about how exactly the National Socialist party rose to power starting in 1933. Then, you can wander around outside the museum, where plaques explain what building used to exist where you’re standing.

Not far from the Topography of Terror museum is Checkpoint Charlie, the famous American checkpoint between American West Berlin and Soviet East Berlin. There’s also an open-air museum there with pieces of the Berlin wall and plaques that explain post-war conditions.

I then walked over to the Memorial for Murdered Jews. This haunting spot is probably best wandered through in the morning or before sunset when the crowds are thin and nothing but the wind whistles between the stone coffin-like monuments.

Near there is the famous Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic separation between East and West Germany, where many pictures can be taken and Currywurst can be eaten (several times). And finally, on the West Side of the Brandenburg Gate is the Reichstag, or German Parliament, where (with a pre-booked time slot) you can walk to the top of its glass dome and look out over the city.

Several more Berlin things I enjoyed — Museum Island is a network of five museums that house some of the most famous antiquities and art in the world. I saw the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon museum, which is a magnificent Babylonian city gate reconstructed brick-by-brick. I also fulfilled a childhood dream and saw Nefertiti’s bust at the Neues museum, which is the statue in near-perfect condition of the famous, heretic Egyptian Queen. If you don’t know, I wanted to be an Egyptian archaeologist as a kid. This museum is a gold mine of Egyptian artifacts.

Finally, the Tiergarten is the massive park on the West side of the Brandenburg Gate, where you can stroll through (and accidentally come across the naked sun-bathing park). At the other end of the Tiergarten is the famous Berlin Zoo, which I wandered around for several hours, especially enjoying the pandas! The one thing that would make the Cincinnati Zoo better is pandas.

Also in the Tiergarten is the Café am Neuen See, a beautiful beer garden strung up with lights and overlooking a small lake. Rows and rows of picnic tables, pints, and soft pretzels line the garden and you could spend all afternoon here. I’d highly recommend coming here after a heavy day of museum-ing.

Overall, despite its somewhat drab facade, Berlin is an incredibly rich, vibrant city that I absolutely loved exploring. On to Munich!

Munich   

On Thursday I met Sam and her mom in Munich, which is much prettier than Berlin — but don’t be fooled!! 90% of Munich was also destroyed in WWII. Instead of replacing the buildings with gray blocks like Berlin did, however, Munich reconstructed all the buildings from their original blueprints so that it looks pretty much the same. The only difference is that much of the decorative architectural elements, like columns or rococo window decorations, are actually painted on.

We took a free walking tour of Munich on Friday morning. I’ve taken free walking tours in most cities I’ve been to, because they’re a fantastic way to get your bearings in a city, learn about its history, and get recommendations for later from the local guide. The Munich tour was great! That’s how I learned about the Munich architectural stuff I just talked about. I also learned, which I didn’t know, that the National Socialist party started in Munich. It was the strangest feeling to stand in Odeonsplatz, the square where Hitler staged a coup in 1923 and was shortly after arrested. Today, a Pride flag waves there in honor of LGBTQ pride month in June.

We stopped in the original Hofbrauhaus, which made me feel like I was back in Cincinnati, but it was still awesome. A live band played and waitresses wore dirndles and were selling soft pretzels bigger than my head. We later ended the day by spending a few hours in Englischer Garten, one of the world’s largest urban parks. The Chinesischer Turm beer garden is incredibly fun and a great place to have a pint liter of Helle or Weissbier.

Bavaria

If you’re interested in checking out the tiny towns in Bavaria, I’d recommend buying a Bavaria ticket through Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national rail service. It’s basically a 27 euro day pass (and only 5 euros extra for each additional person in your party) for any DB train in all of the state of Bavaria. What would have cost me, Sam, and her mom around 150 euros in individual tickets to and from the city of Fussen ended up costing us only 37 euros total.

We went to the town of Fussen on the Austrian border, then took a short bus to Hohenschwangau at the bottom of Neuschwanstein Castle. This is the “Cinderella Castle” castle that inspired Walt Disney’s Disneyworld designs. The castle and the surrounding Austrian Alps are absolutely breathtaking. Although the castle looks thousands of years old, it was actually built in 1869 by Bavarian King Ludwig II. He was actually kinda crazy and mysteriously died before it was finished, so it went the state and has never actually been lived in. The third of the interior that was finished is tourable, and wow is it incredible. Everything is intricate and the windows open up to stunning views of the countryside on one side and the cliff face on the other. I wish the area wasn’t so packed with selfie stick-touting tourists, but the area and castle is incredible nonetheless and well-worth the visit.

OKAY, that was a lot. I’ve been in Austria for two days now, but I’ll save that for another post. Maybe a double-post this week, since I have infinite free time on my train ride to Switzerland tomorrow. Only 9 more days til I say Auf Wiedersehen to Europe! 🙁