Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Sunday, 16 November 2003

# 10:40 PM (GMT+1)

I don't have as many photos from the Tiergarten as I'd like, because the batteries in my camera went dead somewhere in there. Fortunately I brought the charger along, and an adapter for the German 220V house current. This adapter is labeled "Use only with heat-producing appliances rated 50-1600W, not with electronic devices." I can think of no plausible reason for either restriction. Empirically, the charger is a 6W device and it only generates heat because it isn't 100% efficient (and because the charging reaction of NiMH cells appears to be mildly exothermic), but it worked fine. However, I freely admit I do not know from electrical engineering, maybe there is a good reason I shouldn't've done this.

I did get a chance to take pictures of the circle of "buddy bears", on the Ebertstraße. This is a fun local phenomenon. Since 2001 local artists have been painting ceramic bear statues and placing them in public places around Berlin; in 2002 the idea occurred to have artists from lots of different countries each paint one bear, and then put them all in a big circle. It's been very popular. The collection now goes on tour regularly to raise money for UNICEF, but I happened to catch it in between trips.

I also photographed the under-construction Holocaust memorial, also on the Ebertstraße. Rant follows: As a Jew, it offends me when memorials are erected to the Jews who died in the Holocaust, but the Catholics, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, and political dissidents who were also murdered are forgotten. Their deaths are no less significant. Nor were the Germans responsible for the sole government-orchestrated mass murder of the past century, or even the worst. Statistics.

# 10 PM (GMT+1)

I'd had enough of museums, and Dara and Nathan were tired and wanted to stay home, so I went for a nice long walk. I started at Potzdamer Platz, then walked up the Ebertstraße to the Brandenberg Gate and the Reichstag. I might have gone into the Reichstag (I wanted to go up in its glass dome and look out) but there was a line all the way down the steps and out onto the lawn. So instead I walked the long axis of the Tiergarten (Berlin's Central Park) which is a good 3km. The Tiergarten at this time of year is a riot of deciduous leaves turned yellow or red and in the process of falling off. There are huge piles of leaves on the ground, and when the wind blows it makes a constellation of them in the air. Soon they will be on the ground; the trees will be bare, with only the conifers still green. Just in time for the snow.

I climbed a tree somewhere, along the way, just for the fun of it. Not sure what kind. It was broad and had lots of handy forked branches to climb. Smooth, dark gray bark. [Upon returning home and discussing it with my housemates, we think it was a black walnut. —Ed.]

After I got to the other end, I came back to the flat, collected Dara and Nathan, and we all went round to a local pizza joint for dinner. Now I'm back in the flat again, writing this and listening to the rain.

# 12 AM (GMT+1)

Today we planned to visit the zoo, the museum of modern art, and a performance of Brahms' Deutsche Requiem at the rebuilt Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedäctniskirche. What we actually did was chase all over town after postage stamps, abandon the idea of the zoo, and discover that the Neue Nationalgalerie (which we had thought was the museum of modern art) was in fact a house exclusively for special exhibitions. Further, it was currently showing some complicated deconstruction of anarchy which none of us wanted to spend 10,-€ on.

Feeling a bit demoralized, we went to see The Italian Job (which, being about revenge methodically planned and executed in an utterly realistic fashion, makes a nice counterpart to Kill Bill). This cheered us back up again, so we ventured out — not to the Requiem, but to the Berliner Philharmoniker, playing a retrospective of the work of Max Bru[c]h on the occasion of his 165th birthday. The setting and the musicians were fabulous; the compositions were good, albeit not up to the standard of a Brahms or a Beethoven — but then, that's why Bruh is an obscure 19th century composer and they are famous. I have never before seen a piece performed which requires two pianos as well as a full orchestra; that one was, in my opinion, the best.

After the concert, we went to Alex(?)'s Diner (a decent German imitation of a good American 1950s-style diner) for dinner, and observed France beat Germany at soccer, 3-0.