Berlin

We went to Berlin a couple days ago. It took us about four hours to get there, then another two hours to get to the hotel. Jamal has a car with a navigation system, but either it doesn’t work or he doesn’t know how to work it, because we’ve never ended up anywhere but lost by following its directions. It did give us a chance to see the city, though, which was nice because we drove past several miles of the Berlin Wall. We wouldn’t have seen it at all otherwise. After driving around the city for a couple hours, we were so lost we actually had to get a police escort to the hotel.

I don’t know if Jamal knew what he was getting into or if it was just the only affordable hotel in the city during the World Cup, but the hotel we were staying at turned out to be a youth hostel. I was a little nervous about bringing my passport and computer to a hotel overrun by thousands of football hooligans, but it actually turned out to be okay. It was very close to the center of the city, which was handy for sightseeing, but crazy loud. When the window was open in our room we had to shout over the noise just to hear each other.

The city was pretty cool. It was huge, and I’ve never seen more graffiti in my life. Every surface in sight was tagged. I don’t know if it started on the Wall and expanded when they ran out of space or if it’s just full of gangs, but spray paint merchants must make a killing there. It was late afternoon by the time we went out, but we still got to see lots of groovy stuff. We went to Alexanderplatz and then down the main street past all the cathedrals and government buildings until we came to Brandenburg Gate. That was the place where you could pass from East Germany to West Germany during communism. Now they apparently use it as a city center. Although they wouldn’t be hosting a game in the city until the following day, they had set up a big screen just past the gate and had bands playing and booths set up everywhere. People were swarming to the gate and hoards of police in full riot gear were doing crowd control.

We headed back just as everyone was coming to the square. We walked past people dressed in the colors of every country playing in the cup. There were people from all over Europe, as well as some Americans, Africans, Asians, and people from Central and South America. There were loads of Brazilians. Elona was wishing she’d been dressed in American colors just to get in the game. So we stopped at a shop on the road and I bought her an American flag to wave. Then, just to be a jackass, I bought a Mexican flag to wave, since I’m New Mexican and that was as close as I could come. Whenever we passed Mexicans they’d shout, “Viva Mexico!” and we’d yell back, “Mexico es el mejor!” It was more fun than I’d expected to have at a sporting event.

After a while Elona got tired of holding her American flag and gave it to her mother. Elona’s mom is the most patriotic American I’ve ever seen, even though she’s still Albanian. We couldn’t pry that flag out of her hand for the rest of the night.

When we went back to our room we turned on the game with Germany against Poland. You could hear people on the street watching it at the same time, and when Germany made the game-winning goal in overtime, it was like everyone in Berlin screamed at the same time. Even in a fifth-floor room with the windows closed we could hear people going crazy and cars honking and revving their engines. I lived in Salt Lake during the 2002 Olympics, and I’ve never seen anyone as worked up over sports.

The next day we went to the Berlin Zoo, which was huge and amazing. I'm terrible about visiting zoos. I always want to take pictures of animals, like I don't know what they look like. The coolest part of the zoo, though, was the bison display. Of course the animals themselves were massive and amazing. But the zoo decorated their paddock with "native american" facades. There's nothing funnier in all of Berlin than the German version of Native American culture.

Then we headed home. So we only did Berlin for one day, but at least I’ve been there.