Conspicuous Consumption Counter Balanced with Art and Architecture

This morning was laundry time. After using the AEG Lavomat and the drying rack here at Dieffenbachstrasse 32, we were off for a journey to KaDeWe and environs. Oh my, this is shopping on steroids. Everything in this complex (yes, that entire building is KaDeWe) is presented in a fashion to delight at great expense, all seven floors. At least, I think there were seven. We did have coffee on the fifth as I recall. Mushrooms and tea were on my mind as items that we could use. Finding each of those, I became paralyzed with the conspicuous consumption in this retail cathedral. Shown below is part of one of the inner elevator areas.



So instead I purchased some Pu Erh Tuocha tea from a small shop in the trendy area near KaDeWe. That was after seeing some very interesting architecure - a sail - the Kant Dreieck building with the 36 m tower designed by Josef Paul Kleinhues, an armadillo - the Ludwig Erhard Haus (housing the Berlin Stock Exchange) designed by British architect Sir nicholas Grimshaw, and an object of abstraction next to the Judisches Gemeindehaus.









The Sail


















The Armadillo



















The Abstraction















The highlight of the day was the Kathe Kollwitz Museum that just happens to be next to the Literturhaus. Kathe Kollwitz (1867 -1945) was an amazing German painter and sculptor. The core of her work that most people are aware of deal with the suffering of people -- hunger, war, death. She died just a short time before the end of World War II, outliving her husband, her son Peter and one of her grandsons. Although much of her art deals with despair, death and tragedy her son Hans and others have commented on her love of laughter.
Poster from the Kathe Kollwitz Museum



















The Literturhaus Entrance
















Both arriving and leaving from the Wittenbergplatz UBahn station, we were able to enjoy the bells from the new tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche. This church is a famous Berlin momument being almost completely destroyed in the bombings of WW II. Two clock faces tell are at twelve. One seems to keep the correct time. The U1 train whisked us across Berlin in less than 15 minutes and with a quick connection on the U6 we were back climbing the stairs to our home in Berlin on the fifth floor of Dieffenbachstrasse 32.
Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche

Sunday in Berlin

Time flies when you're having a good time. So it's already Sunday, it hardly feels like we've been here more than a few days. But it's been six. Each day has been jam packed with walking and many new sights. Today was a perfect day for walking and we did a walk along the canal here in Kreuzeberg to the Deutsches Technikmuseum complete with a DC-3 on the roof. After much more walking including a stop at Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, a neo Gothic evangelical church. we spent quite a bit of time at the Hallesches Tor Cemetery. Forty minutes later, we had investigated many of the grave markers including Mendelssohn's. That wasn't the easiest task but we managed it.

By that point we were definitely hungry and stopped at Mustafa's Gemuse Kebab for a yummy vegetarian kebab as opposed to the Burger King we passed a bit later.

Berliners were out in force taking advantage of what may be the last warm day of the year. At 74 degrees, everyone was happy. Next week the thermometer will drop to the low sixties by Friday.

More photos later. But in the meantime, be certain to check out the flickr photos from yesterday's Penny Parade, dedicated to fun without the conspicuous consumption.

Tuesday in Berlin

Today is Wednesday 23 September 2009. Yesterday was our arrival day. Our travel connections were very easy. That was a good thing because we had been up for quite some time. Sleep on the flight from Portland to Amsterdam was not the best although we obviously had rested. So much so that when we arrived at Tegel Airport here in Berlin from Amsterdam we decided to brave the public transit system immediately. We took the bus to Hauptbahnhof train station where we got the M41 bus that dropped us in the Kreuzeberg area near Dieffenbachstrasse, the street where we live. I was obviously a bit tired since many photo opportunities presented themselves and I didn't take advantage of them.

Meet Olga and Nadja...
Nadja and Olga are the women who we are exchanging with this time. Here's a shot of them when they visited us last week in Portland. Their home is quite lovely and is in the eclectic Kreuzeberg section of Berlin. On the Flickr link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lavallelinn/sets/72157622437023946/), I've included a number of photos of their home and our walk around Kreuzeberg yesterday afternoon. I did capture this one to show us what time it was while we were out and about. Kreuzeberg has quite a Turkish population including a bazaar that we wandered into.

Sitting in Amsterdam Airport

Portland to Amsterdam -- once we were in the air, our flight was fairly typical of transcontinental trips. The actual departure was a bit different though. The flight attendants had secured the doors. We watched the inflight safety film -- how to secure your seat belt, the emergency exits, no smoking, the oxygen masks, the life vests, That was when the captain announced that the plane would be returning to the gate. It turns out that the plane had taken off without one of the passengers. Returning to the gate and having said passenger board the plane would take less time than removing said passenger’s luggage. One of the flight attendants suggested all of us who were seated give said passenger a round of applause since planes seldom return to the gate to have errant passengers board. So who might this character who boarded be? Our guess was that he was an airline employee. He was wearing a badge of some sort. And who else would be allowed to go through the boarding area and then exit out to then miss the plane -- certainly not one of us from the general public.

Yikes, it really is Tuesday morning. Not Monday night like this post says.

PDX Departure

We're sharing a gardenburger and an ale at PDX. We board in a half hour. Bill says fasten your seat belts.

Trip Planning -- Cat Version

Check out the table. Is there enough body language on Hobbes' part to alert you that he is not happy with us leaving on 21 September for Berlin? Or maybe it's the Florence portion of the trip or the three nights in Venice that he's upset about. In any case, he has staked out his territory on the Berlin map. There are four options to get from Tegel to Nadja and Olga's home in the Kreuzeberg section of Berlin. Option 1 is a taxi and will probably be what we take. Or we'll do the TXL to the M41. We'll see. Look for more posts as the days progress. We return on 16 October to Hobbes, his orange cat brother Calvin, and the prince of princes Django, the chihuahua who owns our hearts.