Berlin
First things first. In Berlin I saw the worst use of neon lights ever. Here it is:
This sign says "All art has been contemporary". Of course that's hard to read because they inexplicably put the sign behind the pillars. Nevermind the fact that on this old building fronted by a row of pillars, I can't think of anything that would go worse with it than freaking NEON! Who's idiotic idea was this one? And why didn't they just go ahead and add a neon cowboy on the roof while they were at it? Way to ruin the front of one of Germany's best known museums, morons. For the record there was a very nice Egyptian exhibit inside.
But let's rewind a day. The coach arrive in Berlin in the evening and our hotel was on the outskirts of town. Our tour manager told us how to get downtown if we wanted to go that night, but said he'd just be hitting the bar in the Generator hostel next door to the hotel. Most of us thought that sounded like a good plan, so we joined him. It was Halloween night.
The Generator in Berlin is an enormous hostel. The drinking age in Berlin for beer and wine is fourteen years old. Hostels, with their cheap, low grade accomodations, attract mostly young people. Ergo, the hostel bar was full of drunken teenagers. That was kind of different to see in a bar, especially for an American like myself who's used to a legal drinking age of 21. I didn't think much of it at first, but when a guy who looked to be about fifteen stood on a chair and started stripping, it was just wrong.
The drinks were cheap (for Europe) and plentiful, so before long our entire group was feeling pretty good. Not much longer after that, many of us were feeling much more than that, but it quickly became obvious that the most blitzed people in our group that night would be... our tour manager and our driver. After a couple hours, our manager crumpled to the floor. A couple of us picked him up, and a little while later he crumpled to the floor again. Repeat. I learned that Berlin isn't really concerned about serving drunk people at the bar. He'd stagger back up to the bar and they'd sell him another drink.
Meanwhile our driver was smashed out of his gourd too. The following is second hand from the only other American on our tour, a Georgian named Bo who hung out with our driver a lot that night: Our drunken driver, after hitting on a girl that Bo warned him was too young and proclaiming that if you go two of the girls that made 28 (years old), insisted that he was staying in the hostel that night. They were skeptical, but Bo and another guy helped him up to the third floor of the hostel, where he proceeded to try to open one of the doors with what turned out to be his hotel key card. Yeah... it didn't work. They tried to explain to him that he was staying next door at the hotel, not here. He didn't get it. He collapsed on the floor in the hallway and started yelling incoherently. It was about 3am. They convinced a couple kids staying there not to call the front desk, and then they tried to get him to get up and leave with them. He told them to fuck off. They left him on the third floor of the hostel and went back to the hotel to get some sleep. He seemed alright in the morning. Somehow.
So anyway, I did my touring of Berlin the next day. The Third Reich walking tour was interesting. The aforementioned museum was kind of cool. It had a bunch of obese looking statues in front of it. No, really. There was a fat cat, a fat horse, a fat woman or two, and other fatties. Blame Botero. It's what he does. Quite frankly though, I thought Berlin was a depressing city. It looks like it still hasn't fully recovered from the wars. Germany has made a bad habit of starting and losing wars, and Berlin took much of the resulting damages. I'm sure the overcast skies didn't help.
The second night in Berlin we did a fairly forgettable pub tour. Then it was on to Prague!
This sign says "All art has been contemporary". Of course that's hard to read because they inexplicably put the sign behind the pillars. Nevermind the fact that on this old building fronted by a row of pillars, I can't think of anything that would go worse with it than freaking NEON! Who's idiotic idea was this one? And why didn't they just go ahead and add a neon cowboy on the roof while they were at it? Way to ruin the front of one of Germany's best known museums, morons. For the record there was a very nice Egyptian exhibit inside.
But let's rewind a day. The coach arrive in Berlin in the evening and our hotel was on the outskirts of town. Our tour manager told us how to get downtown if we wanted to go that night, but said he'd just be hitting the bar in the Generator hostel next door to the hotel. Most of us thought that sounded like a good plan, so we joined him. It was Halloween night.
The Generator in Berlin is an enormous hostel. The drinking age in Berlin for beer and wine is fourteen years old. Hostels, with their cheap, low grade accomodations, attract mostly young people. Ergo, the hostel bar was full of drunken teenagers. That was kind of different to see in a bar, especially for an American like myself who's used to a legal drinking age of 21. I didn't think much of it at first, but when a guy who looked to be about fifteen stood on a chair and started stripping, it was just wrong.
The drinks were cheap (for Europe) and plentiful, so before long our entire group was feeling pretty good. Not much longer after that, many of us were feeling much more than that, but it quickly became obvious that the most blitzed people in our group that night would be... our tour manager and our driver. After a couple hours, our manager crumpled to the floor. A couple of us picked him up, and a little while later he crumpled to the floor again. Repeat. I learned that Berlin isn't really concerned about serving drunk people at the bar. He'd stagger back up to the bar and they'd sell him another drink.
Meanwhile our driver was smashed out of his gourd too. The following is second hand from the only other American on our tour, a Georgian named Bo who hung out with our driver a lot that night: Our drunken driver, after hitting on a girl that Bo warned him was too young and proclaiming that if you go two of the girls that made 28 (years old), insisted that he was staying in the hostel that night. They were skeptical, but Bo and another guy helped him up to the third floor of the hostel, where he proceeded to try to open one of the doors with what turned out to be his hotel key card. Yeah... it didn't work. They tried to explain to him that he was staying next door at the hotel, not here. He didn't get it. He collapsed on the floor in the hallway and started yelling incoherently. It was about 3am. They convinced a couple kids staying there not to call the front desk, and then they tried to get him to get up and leave with them. He told them to fuck off. They left him on the third floor of the hostel and went back to the hotel to get some sleep. He seemed alright in the morning. Somehow.
So anyway, I did my touring of Berlin the next day. The Third Reich walking tour was interesting. The aforementioned museum was kind of cool. It had a bunch of obese looking statues in front of it. No, really. There was a fat cat, a fat horse, a fat woman or two, and other fatties. Blame Botero. It's what he does. Quite frankly though, I thought Berlin was a depressing city. It looks like it still hasn't fully recovered from the wars. Germany has made a bad habit of starting and losing wars, and Berlin took much of the resulting damages. I'm sure the overcast skies didn't help.
The second night in Berlin we did a fairly forgettable pub tour. Then it was on to Prague!
posted by Patrick at
12:19 AM
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