Being in Berlin

After my return, i still owe a better description of this culturally rich city, which indeed is the most interesting and worthwhile to visit while being in Germany.

During the Easter weekend I visited one of my oldest friends - Truong, whom I met with 9. He also moved to Germany when he was little, originally being from Vietnam, which has been some sort of common ground of understanding. At one point of time, around his early 20's he decided to move to Berlin and since then has pursued his career as an artist.

Knowing Berlin a bit, one is not surprised to hear that people move to Berlin to engage themselves more intensively with art and the more cultural aspects of life. Berlin to me does not only mean to visit a friend, or being in the capitol, seeing a big metropole with nice old architecture. I tried to capture how I perceive Berlin and what makes it a rather special place to me.

Freedom and Tolerance - The struggle for freedom has been always part of Berlin's history. Wether the fight of West-Berlin and the allies to keep it free of Russian rule, by the means of the "Air lift" , or the ultimate fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which has been a symbol for the success of the peaceful movemements against the socialist regime in GDR.
Now while walking through the streets, especially in the Eastern side of the city, one can easily grasp the feeling of what we in Germany refer to as "multikulti", a multicultural open minded environment, where you can get the best Döner (Kebap) and meet people from all over the world.

History - Berlin has been the location of many important historical events in the last hundred years, which are still reflected in the city when walking through. Especially the recent scenes of the unification, seeing the pictures of emotionally overwhelmed people in tears crossing the boarders and entering a new free life, listening to the contrarious life-stories of Germans from the East and West side is quite thrilling and moved me a lot when learning about it the first time.

Culture and Creativity - Whether the Bonn Biennale, Tacheles, the numerous art galleries, sculptures, or the wonderful artistic graffities everywhere, Berlin presents itself full of life and creative dynamics as if, despite the rather bad weather it usually seems to have, it would still capture the restless blossoming of diverse thoughts, approaches, artistic traits in springtime.

Great Food - Diverse in kind, e.g. there are heaps of good Asian restaurants, e.g. the Kuchi, or any other types, framed in stylish Berlin scenery with countless cafés and bars. A great bonus for dining, breakfasting or snacking in Berlin are its prices, e.g. a vegeterian main course in an Indian restaurant only cost me 4 €, quite nice!

Last night I watched the German movie "Herr Lehmann" ("Berlin Blues" in English), which plays in Berlin-Creutzberg and also is available with english subtitles. It has been really nice, as it captured some of the typical Berlin features so well!

View the pics of Berlin ...

April - A deep breath

Last wednesday I handed in my last uni paper, the last one still missing to be able to start writing my final thesis. I had some incredible busy times, pretty much sitting at the computer at least 20 hours a day at work and continuing at home. This has been going on already for way too long, but ultimately resulted in creating two papers of each 30 pages in the last 2 months. After all I did enjoy writing on these topics - diversity and the other mediation in small scale societies - which kind of grew into me abit.

April meant a deep breath for the last sprint, finishing the last puzzle piece to post it on wednesday, at the same time a deep breath for the awaited relaxation.

I was literally running home from the postoffice, to pack up high speed in a couple of minutes and get the plane to Berlin for some wonderful chilled holidays, visiting friends, celebrating and showing Arthur by far the most pleasurable city in Germany.

I only returned last night and though the spring did not really present itself yet fully in the Eastern part of Germany, I still enjoyed Berlin's very special atmosphere, the sounds - each night we happened to experience different music performances -, the simple way of pursuing art around you (Berlin Biennale), feeling of serenity, "take it as it comes and do the best you can. Creativity out of little or nothing."