Trip Report: Berlin

There are some similarities among the big cities of Europe. Settled/invaded by the Romans; experienced a period of rapid growth/decline; crippled by plague/fire; divided/united over Catholicism/Protestantism; partially/completely destroyed during the war and later rebuilt/not rebuilt with traditional/modern buildings. Of course that's an overgeneralization, but you get the idea.

Berlin's story is a little different.

You see a strip of undeveloped area and wonder why. It's because until 20 years ago there were two parallel walls in Berlin, 100 meters apart, with a trench between them that was regularly raked so they could see if anyone had tried to escape. It was called the Death Strip.

You see bricks in the road, through neighborhoods. Until 20 years ago, that's where the Berlin Wall stood.

We were in front of the Brandenburg Gate on a gorgeous, sunny Saturday afternoon; runners in the Berlin Marathon would cross the finish line here the next day. Until 20 years ago, the Berlin Wall cut right in front of the Gate. Ronald Reagan gave his "tear down this wall" speech here 22 years ago.

We walked on to the Holocaust Memorial -- officially named the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - a full city block of 2,711 concrete columns of varying heights. It's rather abstract, and I heard a few different interpretations, many of which make sense. In the center of it, where the the concrete towers over you, it's cold and dark, and gravity - figuratively, and what feels like literally - weighs heavy. On the walls of the information center is a quote that comes with its own gravity: "It happened, therefore it can happen again."

We had plans to go to Rosh Hashanah services at the 19th century Neue Synagoge; I went along, naively thinking it would be neat to attend my first synagogue in such an old, historic building. Of course, the original synagoge was completely destroyed before and during WWII; the facade and domes are a reconstruction, and the original 3,000-seat main hall exists only as an outline. Instead, we went through a chain fence, past armed soldiers, through metal detectors, up two flights of stairs, and through narrow hallways to reach a 75-seat synagogue. There, the rabbi -- a woman -- welcomed us herself and offered us English translations of the German and Hebrew service, and we watched as the small, close-knit congregation came and went throughout our two hours there. The cantor sung the Psalms in a melodic tenor voice that I could have listened to all day.  I was wrong, it turned out: It was absolutely amazing to celebrate the new year in such an old, historic building.

I expected to see mohawks and black clothes and rebels and piercings. I didn't expect to go to an artists' community that developed when squatters took over an old, half-destroyed department store after the wall came down; see an artists' premiere in a former public toilet; and attend an opera, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

The reason for the trip was a ladies' weekend -- part of a group of us that started in DC and has now spread out, to Berlin, Paris, Zurich, Cambridge, and more. All of us are in our mid-30s in fairly similar genres of jobs. I expected to have a good time; I didn't expect how much I needed some bonding with peers. What a positively fantastic group of ladies.

Everything about Berlin, from the place to the people I met there, defied and exceeded my expectations. What a fantastic surprise.

"You're Not Singing Anymore"

I only started to worry when the police helicopter showed up.

But that's getting ahead of myself, let's start a few hours earlier. We woke up early Saturday because KT had to to pick up a friend at Heathrow airport and then head for Cardiff in Wales. Why? Well, it's where Dr Who and Torchwood, two of their favorite TV shows, are filmed. Equally important there's the Great British Cheese festival in Cardiff castle, I expect them back tonite with lots of cheese!

It was supposed to be another warm, sunny weekend day so after Kate left, I planned a long bike ride, hooking together several routes I had already done. Though the cloudy start never burned off, the ride was great until about 12 miles out from the house my mobile phone rings--a researcher based in Spain that I needed to talk to happens to be in England and coming to Cambridge. Did I want to meet him in at the Eagle pub in a bit? Uh, yes. I biked about fast as I can go to get home--I did 26 miles in 2 hours (Sadly, I realized marathoners run that distance in the same time!) and met the source for a 90 minute interview.

From there I biked to a Cambridge United game against the big neighboring town of Luton. Luton was a league above us last year but dropped because they were penalized for shady financial dealings. Their fans are not happy about that and a thousand or more made the short trip to Cambridge.

Wild game--United went up 2-0, and seemed in control as the ref ejected a Luton player leaving them a man down and enraging their fans, who were on the verge of rioting. Away fans are segregated from home fans but Luton fans were taunting Cambridge fans with obscene chants and tried to break by the police to "our" side (left).

But after halftime, Luton stormed back, quickly scoring 3 goals. Delirious Luton fans started chanting to Cambridge fans "You're not Singing Anymore" and "We have only 10, We have only 10". A few rows from me a fight almost started between Luton team members sitting in "our" stands and a Cambridge fan. By that point, police reinforcements ringed the field. Cambridge tied the game, but Luton scored another to win the crazy game 4-3. As I walked out of the stadium, police vans and ambulances were lined up, officers were wearing riot gear and a helicopter buzzed overhead--and the Luton fans weren't being allowed to leave until the home fans had departed.

After that true taste of English football, I needless to say biked out of the area fast and came home to watch American college footbal with their passionate, but largely peaceful, crowds!

-JT

Below are some pictures from the much more peaceful bike ride, including one from the backside of the Cambridge American Cemetary.

The Official Fringe Tally

Our 7 days in Edinburgh are drawing to a close. I'm not sure we've hit all the major highlights of Edinburgh tourism, but we sure did see a lot of shows. The final tally: 33 34 between the two of us (18 19 for JT, 15 for KT).

JT:
Manolibera: an Italian group doing sketch comedy using background cartoons drawn with an old-fashioned overhead projector. Light and whimsical and family friendly. This video provides a taste.
Breakfast@Bedlam: a solid morning sketch show with coffee/tea and pastries. Favorite may have been two backpackers trying to outboast each other with tales of their travels and the poor they've helped.
Yianni: a decent standup comic telling his romance woes to mp3 music snips he played by remote control.
Pythonesque: a comical history of the Monty Python group, mixing biographies and their sketches. Fun but not as brilliant as hoped--only 3 out of 5 cocounuts.
Janis: a one-act play depicting the life of Janis Joplin, focusing more on her sexual and drug exploits than her music unfortunately. Didn't like the actress.
Not Spain: a powerful play of a western female journalist interviewing a man caught in the Balkan wars.
Aint that a Kick in the Head: the life and music of Dean Martin, performed by a 6 piece band in an Italian deli! Learned how big a star Dino was.
After the Bomb: Clunker #2, farce about Cold War spies, a crazy professor with a lust for toasters, and an alien planning a world invasion. Actors couldn't even keep a straight face at times.
The Gravediggers: Clunker #1, a well-intentioned but painful comedy about 3 gravediggers in rural Yorkshire, written and acted by 17-18 year olds.
Trapped: a really impressive, professionally choreagraphed dance depicting a totalitarian state. Here's a trailer for the show.
Forgotten Things: odd, one-act play about a suicidal teenage boy, a grandma with dementia, two unattentive parents and a pyschiatrist played by a puppet. Had its moments.
Flhip Flhop: a comedic dance/hip-hop music group. Two painters goof around, making amusing sounds and tunes with their bodies and whatever else is around. Ok, but not great. Here's a trailer for the show.  

KT:
Flying Forward: A modern dance performance from a dance troupe in Liverpool.
Why Do All Catherines Call Themselves Kate: A three-character, one-act play by Mwewa Sumbwanyambe, a student at Leeds University. (I got in for free because my name is Kate.)
Trilogy: A nearly three-hour play-slash-performance art piece about what it means to be a young woman today. Involved rather a lot of naked women. Website for the writer's project is here: http://www.makeyourownherstory.org/
Malaje, the Flamenco Circus: An OK performance of music, flamenco, juggling, and acrobatics from a Spanish group.
Out of the Blue: An absolutely phenomenal a cappella group of guys from Oxford.
Tap Kids: Cute musical with very talented young tap dancers -- like High School Musical, but with tap dancing. Here's some video.
Shappi Khorsandi: A hilarious London comedienne from Iran read from her new book, A Beginner's Guide to Acting English, which is largely about her experience of moving from Iran to London as a child, then living through an assassination attempt ordered by the Ayatollah on her outspoken journalist father.
Jazz A Cappella: Another Oxford group, called the Oxford Gargoyles, who sang some standards, some new stuff.

Both:
The Last Witch: This was part of the real International Festival (i.e., not Fringe) and was a drama about the last witch burned at the stake in Scotland.
The Military Tatoo: Grand military review that includes bands from around the world, and many hundreds of bagpipes. It was absolutely brilliant, and ended with a spectacular fireworks display. Here's an old video of one of our favorite performances from the Swiss Top Secret Drum Corps.
Borges and I: A really neat performance -- a one-act play/physical theatre centered around the life and works of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Sarah Millican: excellent comedienne who appeals because she's just so normal -- and at times, absolutely filthy, but usually in a clever way, not the cheap-laugh way. Here's a video interview with her.
Axis of Awesome: Hysterical comedy rock band from Australia. Here's their 4-chord song.
Lewis Schaffer: I'm so glad we didn't pay anything to see this comedian. Ugh.
Rebel Cell: two hip-hop artists rapping intelligently about changing a totalitarian system by anarchy or by democracy. (JT wrote about co-star Baba Brinkman earlier this year for work and for this blog, and Baba also performed his Rap Guide to Evolution here at the Fringe (It won an award!). We chatted with him before and after the show -- in his last week of doing two shows a day for 3 weeks. His voice was more than a little worn.)

Phew. Now it's off to the Highlands to be entertained by nothing but the rural countryside.

Greetings from Edinburgh!

We took the train up here yesterday -- a 350-mile, 5 hour affair. The first hour or two I couldn't shake the observation that East Anglia (the, let's say, "state" we live in) looks like Illinois. Flat-as-a-pancake farmland. After that, the scenery got more dramatic:

We're here in August -- indeed, most people are here in August -- because it's festival time in Edinburgh -- nine festivals to be exact: Art, Fringe, Book, International, Jazz & Blues, Media, Military Tatoo, Mela, Film & Television. We arrived to gorgeous weather yesterday so set out on foot to get the layout of the city. We "accidentally" ended up at the book festival, where they have artists' readings and signings, writing workshops, and of course a tea garden and bar.

I was there for the bookstore, but so enjoyed the atmosphere that I may have to go back -- maybe even for an event.

But the bulk of the reason we're here is for the Fringe Festival. How to describe the Fringe? Well, let's start with this: John is disappointed we missed Chomp: The Zombie Musical, and that we're here too late to take in Much Ado About Nothing (as performed by a dance troupe from Mexico), Much Ado About Nothing (as performed by hand puppets), and Much Ado About Nothing (as retold by the constable Dogberry) all in the same day.

But we're making our list for potential shows we can see, and it includes a play about eco-scam artists out to make money off the Obama administration; A-Team: The Musical; Kursk, a drama about a Russian submarine crew; various and assorted comedians; and the Taiko Dojo Drumfest.

We haven't seen any shows yet - just taken in the street performances, of which there are many.

 

And, Edinburgh itself is a pretty place.

That's all for now -- we're off to the show!

Latest Skirmish in the Punt Wars

The Guardian notes the latest casualty--two boats sawn in half--in the war among punting companies here in Cambridge. Here's an excerpt.

Sam Matthews of The Punting Company was angry. "It's provocative," he said. "It's somebody hoping to start a war to get rid of us. It's the competition, but which competition? I have my suspicions, but the best thing is not to retaliate."

Matthews is the latest victim of what locals call the "punt wars", a series of disputes between rival operators in the £2.5m punt industry in Cambridge. The battles have reached new heights after two of Matthews's boats were found sawn through from top to bottom.

The nighttime attack is the most audacious in the spate of clashes that have disrupted the tranquillity of the Cam and prompted calls for a cap on the number of boats competing for custom from the four million people who visit the city each year. Observers say punting is now in danger of becoming a tawdry industry that will lower the city's reputation.

The panoply of weapons used in the punting wars is said to include stink bombs thrown from bridges to render a rival's boat inoperable, washing up liquid squirted to make it too slippery for the punter to stand, and bolt-cutters to snap mooring chains. But never, until now, an electric jig saw.

And here's an look an upcoming documentary on the punt wars:



-JT

And yet, summer marches on

It's funny how nice weather can erase any memory of bad weather. Since the Met Office retracted the barbecue summer, it's actually been pretty nice. Above is an outdoor production of The Tempest we went to this week in the Trinity College Fellows Garden.

And here's a rest stop on our 20-mile ride today, for which it was sunny and 80 degrees F, around the villages north of Cambridge. That's a giant chestnut tree in front of St. Michael's Church in Longstanton. The church dates from the 13th century.

Last weekend, we took a 12-mile walk with our local Ramblers group along the River Ouse. We both wore shorts and short sleeves. We stopped under this tree for lunch.

Those walks almost always involve cutting through pasture. Our encounters with livestock vary.

The walks also always involve a pub stop. This is in the one-pub town of Holywell. You can see what kind of weather we had to contend with.

We also encounter a lot of churches.

All in all, when the weather's not crap, it's really gorgeous -- the most gorgeous summer we've had here, by far.

Where's Cakes and Ale?

To continue with the cycling theme of my Tour de France blog post...This Sunday, with KT off in the U.S., I woke at the crack of dawn, loaded my bike onto the car and sped out to the Suffolk countryside, driving through dense fog most of the way. Fortunately, it had cleared into a gorgeous day by the time I arrived at Glemham Hall (not that I saw it) for the start of the charity ride organized by Bike Events. One of the best things about this group is the announcer who is very English and very witty--at a recent ride we just did (blog to appear later) he sent us off quoting what I think was a Wordsworth poem. This morning, he was amused by a local group wearing shirts that said "Suffolk & Tired".

The day was sunny, with just a wisp of a breeze--perfect cycling weather. And the route was excellent, with hardly a big hill and a nice variety of scenery. We rolled through farms, small villages, a nature reserve, forest, and sandy heath on the way to a stop at a beach. I soon reached a decision point where I had to chose between the 35 mile route (map here) and the 60 mile route--all had been delightful to that point but I fearfully recalled my last planned 50 mile bike ride, where leg cramps hit at the 35 mile mark. This was a much easier but I still wimped out and went the short way. Oh well--turns out it was actually 40 miles in the end.

The rest of the ride was equally pleasant. The beach stop was Dunwich, a once vibrant port town noted in the Doomsday book and "lost" to the sea hundreds of years ago. At one point I sped by a sign that caused me to quickly brake--yes, it indeed said "Cakes & Ale". I looked down the side-road and saw nothing so I reluctantly rejoined the bike ride route. Turns out it's just a caravan site with an odd name. But the sign had gotten me thirsty, so I had to stop at the last refreshment break--a pub that thankfully had already opened. Fueled with a pint of ale--but no cake--I made it the next few miles to the finish line (just a bit after some who had done the whole 60 mile trip!). --JT