Another weekend, another trip. I spent the weekend in Berlin, to check out the city and Love Parade. On Friday, I mistimed my departure and got to the airport 65 minutes prior to departure, instead of the recommended (in Switzerland) 40 minutes, and was rather annoyed at myself for having wasted an extra 25 minutes that I could have spent, er, checking email or something.
This is the first time I've been to Germany, besides a few layovers in the Frankfurt airport, and one venture across the border shortly after I arrived. It was interesting to try out Angela German, which is sort of a high German/Swiss-German/pidgin hybrid. The German they speak in Germany and the German they speak in Switzerland are extremely different, to the point that many Germans can't understand Swiss German. The grammar is different, the pronunciation is different, and even the vocabulary is different. The Germans (who were amazingly friendly and helpful) humored me, and I managed to get by without having to lapse into English too often.
Berlin was not what I expected, although I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have been less surprised. Most European cities are a mix of quaint and modern, with central areas having a heavy emphasis on old architecture and urban planning: cobblestones, steeples, funny little buildings, and narrow streets. Berlin, on the other hand, sometimes feels like a city that was built in the 1960s. After noticing the difference and thinking about it for two seconds, I realized, "Duh, the city was pounded during WWII, so a lot of the old stuff is gone," but I hadn't thought about it in advance. Things you don't think about when you come from a country that hasn't fought any home-turf battles in over 140 years… Also, Germans like wearing socks with sandals. I didn't expect that one, either.
Love Parade, a Berlin institution for fifteen years, came back this year after a two-year hiatus. Perhaps because it lost some momentum in that time, Love Parade wasn't the crazy spectacle I had been expecting, especially after having heard that it was like Zurich's Street Parade, only bigger and crazier. Comparing this year's Love Parade to Street Parade from the last two years, I think that Street Parade (at least now) has a higher percentage of people willing to make a spectacle of themselves. That said, however, there were still people in costume (including my friends and me), or not in costume (barring thongs and some tape over their nipples), techno music, and rowdy mob behavior. Germans apparently like to climb things: every streetlight had partygoers perched rather precariously on top, some jumping up and down in time to the music, despite being about fifteen feet above the ground.
The surprise hit of the weekend? Big sunglasses. One of my friends hadn't come up with a costume, so we stopped in a novelty shop and he bought a pair of gigantic sunglasses. Between the three of us, we also had a women's tank top (on a man), a feather boa, fake eyelashes, a red-white-and-blue (for France) wig, and so on, but it was the sunglasses that got constant comments, pictures, and thumbs-up signs. Who knew that Germans liked big sunglasses so much?
A relic of the days of East and West Germany and the quartering of Berlin is that they have more airports and train stations than really necessary, since you couldn't very well expect the Soviets and the Allies to share back then. So Sunday evening, we split up and took cabs to our respective airports (too early again, I'm losing my touch when it comes to planning travel down to the minute). And life is back to normal, at least for now. With "normal" meaning hot days without air conditioning, evenings with friends, and weekends by the lake. Pictures coming soon, I promise.
This is the first time I've been to Germany, besides a few layovers in the Frankfurt airport, and one venture across the border shortly after I arrived. It was interesting to try out Angela German, which is sort of a high German/Swiss-German/pidgin hybrid. The German they speak in Germany and the German they speak in Switzerland are extremely different, to the point that many Germans can't understand Swiss German. The grammar is different, the pronunciation is different, and even the vocabulary is different. The Germans (who were amazingly friendly and helpful) humored me, and I managed to get by without having to lapse into English too often.
Berlin was not what I expected, although I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have been less surprised. Most European cities are a mix of quaint and modern, with central areas having a heavy emphasis on old architecture and urban planning: cobblestones, steeples, funny little buildings, and narrow streets. Berlin, on the other hand, sometimes feels like a city that was built in the 1960s. After noticing the difference and thinking about it for two seconds, I realized, "Duh, the city was pounded during WWII, so a lot of the old stuff is gone," but I hadn't thought about it in advance. Things you don't think about when you come from a country that hasn't fought any home-turf battles in over 140 years… Also, Germans like wearing socks with sandals. I didn't expect that one, either.
Love Parade, a Berlin institution for fifteen years, came back this year after a two-year hiatus. Perhaps because it lost some momentum in that time, Love Parade wasn't the crazy spectacle I had been expecting, especially after having heard that it was like Zurich's Street Parade, only bigger and crazier. Comparing this year's Love Parade to Street Parade from the last two years, I think that Street Parade (at least now) has a higher percentage of people willing to make a spectacle of themselves. That said, however, there were still people in costume (including my friends and me), or not in costume (barring thongs and some tape over their nipples), techno music, and rowdy mob behavior. Germans apparently like to climb things: every streetlight had partygoers perched rather precariously on top, some jumping up and down in time to the music, despite being about fifteen feet above the ground.
The surprise hit of the weekend? Big sunglasses. One of my friends hadn't come up with a costume, so we stopped in a novelty shop and he bought a pair of gigantic sunglasses. Between the three of us, we also had a women's tank top (on a man), a feather boa, fake eyelashes, a red-white-and-blue (for France) wig, and so on, but it was the sunglasses that got constant comments, pictures, and thumbs-up signs. Who knew that Germans liked big sunglasses so much?
A relic of the days of East and West Germany and the quartering of Berlin is that they have more airports and train stations than really necessary, since you couldn't very well expect the Soviets and the Allies to share back then. So Sunday evening, we split up and took cabs to our respective airports (too early again, I'm losing my touch when it comes to planning travel down to the minute). And life is back to normal, at least for now. With "normal" meaning hot days without air conditioning, evenings with friends, and weekends by the lake. Pictures coming soon, I promise.
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