TravelStream™ news feed for member shumake on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/shumake en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:37:42 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187640000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187640000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187640000/tpod.html Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:37:42 -0500 Terry's Visit

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Berlin, Germany

We continued (what we came to agree was) a perfect day in Berlin by having Radlers at the best beer garden in the city: Café am Neuen See, located at the southern edge of the middle of Tiergarten Park. The weather was perfect as we relaxed with our fellow patrons and watched people canoing in the adjacent lake. (Canoes can also be rented at the café.) Afterward we walked to the center of the park where the famous Siegessaule (victory column) is situated, along the way admiring a cool bridge and some naked sunbathers (sorry, no photos).Also no photos from our evening out at Marjellchen, a Prussian restaurant with lots of local color and some very meaty dishes, followed by a performance in the Tanz im August international dance festival by LaLaLa Human Steps from Montreal. They did a "decontructed/reconstructed" version of Swan Lake which was technically impressive but, for the most part, emotionally uninspiring.Afterward we wanted to go for cocktails at the nearby Galerie Bremer, whose bar was designed by Hans Scharoun, the architect who designed the city library featured in <i>Wings of Desire. I've been denied admittance to the library more times than I care to remember, so I thought, well at least I can see his bar. At first we wondered if we were at the right address because all was dark and seemingly locked up. Then I noticed a sign in the window announcing that the bar was closed the entire month of August for summer vacation. Clearly the universe has conspired to keep me away from the works of Hans Scharoun.It was just as well. Terry had an early flight in the morning to wake up for, which brings our travelogue to its end. [This is a most unsatisfying concluding sentence, but it'll have to do until I can come up with something better, or until our travels continue....]
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187587800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187587800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187587800/tpod.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:09:13 -0400 Terry's Visit

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Berlin, Germany

After breakfast, we made our way to Checkpoint Charlie, the former US Army checkpoint between the American and Soviet occupied sectors of Berlin, now restored to kitschy glory. For a couple of euros you can get your passport stamped with fake clearance to cross the east-west border and get your photograph made in between fake American and Soviet soldiers. As if our giant café au laits from Café Einstein weren't enough, we stopped off for espressos at Café Adler (Adler means "eagle") which overlooks the checkpoint. Afterward we walked the former path of the Wall along Niederkirchnerstraße, passing by the Topography of Terror and ending at Martin-Gropius-Bau, where we took in a magnificent Cindy Sherman exhibit.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187550000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187550000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187550000/tpod.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:28:51 -0400 Terry's Visit

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Berlin, Germany

Back in June, Terry happened to catch the Birmingham production of <i>I Am My Own Wife, starring former BSC student and classmate Dane Peterson, who by all accounts gave a fabulous performance in this one-man play about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite and antiques collector who lived in east Berlin from 1928-1997 and founded the Gründerzeit Museum: a collection of German furnishings from the late 19th century assembled in the Mahlsdorf Manor House, which Charlotte rescued from demolition in 1958 and restored over the following decades. The museum is still around, so we made our way to Mahlsdorf Sunday afternoon to take a tour. Photos were officially verboten, but Terry took the ones featured here in a covert manner that would have impressed the Stasi. I hope you enjoy this peek inside.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1186846200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1186846200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1186846200/tpod.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:27:56 -0400 Terry's Visit

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Berlin, Germany

We spent Terry's first night in Berlin at the Radisson. I chose the hotel mainly because of its aquarium, which is the largest free-standing aquarium in the world. It's 25 meters (82 feet) high and houses 2500 varieties of fish. The photos and video here are taken from the balcony of our room, which overlooked the aquarium. In some photos you will also see people inside the aquarium, riding in a glass elevator which passes through it!I must also comment on the heavenly mattress in our room. I have never had such a good night's sleep in a hotel. It was like sleeping on a lumbar-supporting cloud.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187620200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187620200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/terry/1187620200/tpod.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:19:47 -0400 Terry's Visit

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Berlin, Germany

We returned to Café Einstein for breakfast on Terry's last day in Germany and spent a very pleasant and relaxing morning in the cafe's garden.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/paris-2007/1176490800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/paris-2007/1176490800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/paris-2007/1176490800/tpod.html Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:58:20 -0400 Springtime in Paris

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Paris, France

Paris apaprently liked us so much that she didn't want us to leave. We missed the train we had planned to take due to our own tardiness. We waited hours for the next train. Then, about 15 minutes before the train's scheduled arrival, a policeman came by and told everyone to leave. We then approached another policeman to ask what was going on. He pointed to some unattended bags standing right next to us and intimated that they might contain a bomb! So Maria and I went across the street and observed people approaching the entrance and getting turned away by the police. Several people reacted to this by running away at a furious pace. I mused that they must have feared getting blown up, but we soon figured out that the station had not been shut down as we had assumed, but rather people were simply being diverted to an entrance on the opposite side of the station. They were running to catch their trains! So then Maria and I started running to catch ours, only to find that we had once again just missed it. So we had to wait a few more hours in the now rediculously crowded part of the station that wasn't closed off. I almost wanted a bomb to go off as a projection of my frustration.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/paris-2007/1176339600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/paris-2007/1176339600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/paris-2007/1176339600/tpod.html Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:28:26 -0400 Springtime in Paris

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Paris, France

Leaving the Louvre just before sunset, we walked through the park and gardens surrounding the Jardin des Tuileries, which turns into the main street of Paris, the Champs-Élysées.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1184443200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1184443200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1184443200/tpod.html Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:16:19 -0400 Berlin, du bist so wunderbar!

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Berlin, Germany

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was designed by architect Peter Eisenman and opened in 2005 on the former site of the Reich Chancellery of Adolf Hitler. There are 2,711 gray concrete slabs or "stelae," equal in width and length but varying in height, arranged in a grid. From the periphery, the place seems like a minimalist graveyard of more or less identical tombs, but as you walk toward the center, the ground slopes downward and you soon find yourself surrounded and dwarfed by these "tombs." As you walk forward in any direction, your visual field is alternately and dramatically compressed and expanded as you pass between two stelae pressing tight on you and then enter an open line extending from end to end of a 5 acre field. This perceptual oscillation is disorienting and nauseating, which is a wholly appropriate sensation given the focus of the memorial.Note that you can zoom in on the associated map pin for a satellite overview of the memorial, which looks like a rigorous grid from above.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1181444400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1181444400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1181444400/tpod.html Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:13:15 -0400 Berlin, du bist so wunderbar!

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Berlin, Germany

If you arrive in Berlin by train, your first sight will be the very new (opened May 2006) and very cool Hauptbahnhof (Central Station), which is now the largest train station in Europe. 1100 trains pass through the station everyday. Aside from the first photo, this album gives you an impression of the station and the surrounding Spreebogen beach on a warm night in early summer.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1181440800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1181440800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shumake/berlin/1181440800/tpod.html Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:09:26 -0400 Berlin, du bist so wunderbar!

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Berlin, Germany

The Reichstag was the seat of German government before it was burned at the beginning of Hitler's reign of terror in 1933. It was reconstructed in the late 1990s with a glass spiral dome, which is open to the public, and is once again the home of the German parliament. Here you will find photos of the building and the surrounding Regierungsviertel (Government Quarter), as well as the amazing view from the glass dome at night. I think the latter is a must-see if you're in Berlin, but make sure you get in line by 9 PM to insure you get in before they lock the doors at 10 PM.
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