Day Two: Searching for Goya, Turks and Punks

The plan for day two was to meet our friends at the Checkpoint Charlie museum for a morning of Cold War edutainment and then split into two groups. Group A, the Boy Group, planned to go to the citadel at Spandau. Group B, the Girl Group (okay, just me), planned to find a Goya exhibition that I’d seen advertised on a bus stop and then check out the alternative/Turkish/rough-around-the-edges neighborhoods in the Kreuzberg area.

The Checkpoint Charlie museum was incredibly crowded. Since the English audio tours were sold out, we were forced to rely on very poor translations of old German signage. What the museum lacked in terms of an easy-to-follow historical timeline, it made up for in stunning pictures and artifacts used in daring escapes. From homemade SCUBA gear to cars with secret compartments, from hiding people in a large piece of welding equipment to hiding a little boy in a shopping bag and cart, the ingenuity and persistence of the escapees was astonishing.

I had two “favorite bits” in the museum. The first was the exhibit on the two families who escaped from East Germany in a balloon. The movie of their escape was one of my childhood favorites. I remember watching it many times, always with the same funny-stomach feeling that this time, the ending might be different.

The second was a picture of a young couple right after an escape. The boyfriend was on the West German side of the wall and he cut some barbed wire and helped his girlfriend and two other people over the wall, while the security forces scrambled to stop them. The hallmark of the photograph is the looks of utter relief and happiness on the faces of the boyfriend and girlfriend.

After I’d had my fill of black and white photographs and escape gadgets, I headed out in search of the Goya exhibition. Due to poor planning on my part, I didn’t really know where the exhibition was, so I did a little detective guesswork. I looked through my Lonely Planet guidebook, thinking “if I were this Goya show, where would I be?” I decided I would be at the Gemäldegalerie, a museum in the Kulturforum that specializes in 13th to 18th century European painters. The guidebook said that the museum had paintings from Renoir, Reubens, Boticelli, Velasquez and Goya.

I walked in the rain for a good 20 minutes – the kind of cold rain that comes at you on a windy slant that makes it impossible to use an umbrella. When I was close to the museum, a woman stopped me for directions. My German wasn’t up to snuff but her English was fantastic. She was looking for the Gemäldegalerie too, so I pulled out my map and showed her where it was. I asked her if she was going to the Goya exhibit and she said “Oh no! You have to wait in line for hours for that. I am an old woman. I cannot wait like that.”

We headed off to the Gemäldegalerie separately. I was relieved when I got there, sure that soon I would be dry, warm, and viewing dark and disturbing Goya paintings. Alas, it was not to be. It turns out that the Goya exhibit was at the Old National Gallery, which was on Museum Island, and was only accessible by bus. I decided that I didn’t want to trudge around on the rain, try to figure out the bus system with my pigeon-German, and then strand myself at some place where I might have to wait hours to see the paintings.

I figured that since the € 6 admission charge to the Gemäldegalerie included an audio tour, that I might as well check the place out. But, of course, they were out of English audio guides so I had to stumble around the museum with my shocking ignorance of painting and short attention span. I desperately wished that my brother Shane was with me to tell me all the stuff that he learned in art school.

I found the museum a bit disappointing because it seemed like all the paintings were hung in such a way as to ensure maximum glare. It was like watching TV in a very sunny room and got annoying pretty quickly. I don’t understand why they would have done that unless the angles are better for the taller folks.

My € 6 wasn’t totally wasted though. I saw a Carvaggio and several stunning Botticellis. I really liked the pleasant peasant scenes that Teniers did, which shared gallery space with Giovani Antonio’s views of the Venetian Canals. I think these paintings jumped out at me because their subject matter was markedly different than the others. Instead of painting exalted religious figures or nobility, Teniers showed peasants dancing and socializing. Instead of the bucolic countryside, Antonio showed a rare glimpse into a city.

And although I missed out on Goya’s grotesque world view, I did get to see some gory scenes of biblical justice. The worst (best?) was one by Luca Giordarno.

After about an hour and a half in the museum, I was dry and fairly museum-ed out. I’m just not good at appreciating art without context because I don’t understand enough about it. I was on my way to Kreuzberg, with grand plans of lunch in a Turkish café, when Peter called me. Turned out that the Spandau expedition was a big bust and he wanted to go back to the hotel room, change into dry clothes, and have a nap. The only potential flaw in his plan is that I had the room key.

I rode the train out and met him about halfway between Spandau and where I’d been. When the key delivery was successful, I went back and resumed my search for lunch and interesting sites. Going into this area of Berlin was something I’d wanted to do for more than 10 years, although the area has gentrified tremendously. It used to be the land of the punks and artists and immigrants. Now the immigrants and punks have been pushed farther east and some froufy boutiques and upscale restaurants and apartments have moved in. No matter, I pressed on looking for the scrappier sections.

I had lunch at a small Turkish café/restaurant. I asked for a Turkish coffee and a falafel. The guy told me I didn’t want a Turkish coffee. This conversation was in German so I’m not entirely sure if he thought I wouldn’t like it or that it would be too strong or what his reasoning was, but he told me to have tea and I said okay. The tea was delicious – very minty and tangy – and the falafel was tasty. Plus, this whole feast only cost € 2. In Dublin, you can get a candy bar and a bag of crisps for € 2.

Fortified with lunch, I headed out again, this time in the direction of Kottbusser Tor, which was meant to be a bit edgier and have cool second-hand stores and a small neighborhood museum. I saw a lot of graffiti, some cool public art and a pathetic little petting zoo before I was in a sort of urban wasteland without too much of a clue where exactly I was.

I didn’t want to pull out my map and I felt that I’d gone too far to turn around. I saw a brick church steeple on the horizon, a triple dome, and figured that would have to be some sort of landmark. So I made like Carol-Ann and headed for the light. The area got a little more nerve-wracking, with road construction on my left side and what looked suspiciously like a traveler encampment on my right side. I just kept walking, pretending like I knew were I was going, and when the church turned out to be in the middle of nowhere, I headed for what looked like a major road.

The only person I passed in this nerve-wracking wander was a girl with a blue mohawk who was walking a massive Rottweiler. They were both wearing studded collars. The irony of this moment was not lost on me. Part of the reason I wanted to go to Berlin in my law school years was to experience the resurgence of the punk culture. At that time, the idea of hacking up my hair, painting it a primary color and living in a trailer would have sounded like a capital idea. Now, in my reluctantly-bourgeois, quasi-respectable, nearly-middle-aged state, I am so far removed from that version of me that I couldn’t help but laugh. Quietly. Once I was well past the girl and her dog.

My head-for-the-main-artery approach brought me some reassurance, as I could see what looked like a train station in the distance. I followed a few other people who came off the main road and we did indeed end up at Ostbahnhof. Tour and excitement over.