Berlin's East Side Gallery

I mentioned in my last post that I would be posting some photos of Berlin's East Side Gallery, which is a 1.3 km long section of the Berlin Wall that consists of 105 paintings by artists from all over the world. All of the paintings are unique and beautiful in their own way, so the fact that I have chosen ten of them in no way suggests that these were the best. But they were ten paintings that have a dramatic flair about them, many of them are colorful, and they get their message across very clearly. 

If you are in Berlin, visit this wonderful outdoor gallery. As I wrote previously, it has to be experienced in person in order to get the full effect of the immensity of what the wall represented and what the fall of the wall opened up. I normally copyright my photos, but have not done so this time, as these paintings are not mine. They belong to the world, and it was a privilege to experience them. 

Sunday evening in Berlin

11 pm in Berlin—sitting in our room at the Hotel Palace Berlin and listening to the celebrations in the streets outside—cars honking and people cheering. Spain just won the UEFA soccer cup; they beat Italy 4-0. The other night it was the Italians cheering in the streets after having beaten Germany. Now midnight, and the celebrations continue…….

Dinner tonight was pasta at a restaurant called Noah’s, where our friendly waiter, after noticing that I had finished a particularly spicy penne all’ arrabbiata dish, commented that I had done a ‘good job’ since I had finished it despite its numbing effects on my lips and tongue. It was very good, even though it was probably the hottest version of this dish that I have ever consumed. Sat outdoors and just breathed in the scent of the linden trees, and enjoyed the warmth of the summer evening.

Spent some time sorting through all my photos of Berlin and Leipzig (about eight hundred or so). What would we do without digital cameras these days? I cannot even remember what it was like to use film, although I do remember some trips in the 1990s when I took a few hundred photos using film. Many of my photos of Berlin this week came out really well, especially photos of the East Side Gallery—a 1.3 km long section of the Berlin Wall that consists of 105 paintings by artists from all over the world; it is located on Mühlenstraße in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district. It has to be experienced—the paintings are incredible. I’ll be posting some photos from this exhibit shortly.

Reflecting on our stay here in Berlin. We’ve done the Berlin Wall walking tour; what struck me was how this part of history was also a part of my generation—we grew up hearing about the Berlin Wall and reading newspaper articles about the misery associated with its existence, and then experiencing the fall of the wall in 1989. Visiting the Chapel of Reconciliation was particularly moving; this chapel was built on the site of the old Church of Reconciliation (Versöhnungskirche) on Bernauer Straße in the Mitte district of Berlin. The chapel had a black-and-white photo exhibition until the end of June (we caught it just in time) called Mauerkinder (translation ‘Wall Children’) by Thomas Hoepker, which was emotionally-wrenching to see, mostly because the children, photographed during the early 1960s, seemed so unaware of what horrors were going on around them--innocents in a world that had become hell.

Thinking about the sparrows that are in abundance in this city; like sparrows everywhere, they are nearly tame, and will take a piece of bread right out of your fingers. We watched a number of them help themselves to one young man’s French fries while we sat eating our hamburgers at Burger King. Then there was the caged crow at the Berlin Zoo, who ‘talked’ to me while we stood there and watched him, and who followed me in his cage as I walked away, cawing loudly. It’s tough to see birds and animals in cages; I have mixed feelings about zoos, more so now that I am older. You wish for them what you would wish for yourself—the freedom to live an unfettered life. I know it’s not always possible, and yet, it’s still a wish. A wish for animals and birds, and a wish for mankind too, especially for those individuals who suffer at the hands of dictators and totalitarian regimes. 

A New Yorker in Germany

This week I am A New Yorker in Germany. After many years of driving through Germany on the way to visit and vacation in other European countries, I decided it was time to explore Germany. As luck would have it, the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) CYTO 2012 conference (http://cytoconference.org/CYTO/pages/default.aspx) took place in Leipzig, Germany this past week, and my husband and I were in attendance, along with some of our Norwegian colleagues. What is always nice for me about these particular international conferences is that I end up meeting American colleagues from the different places where I have previously worked—Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the University of California at San Francisco. This time around was no exception—it was a pleasure to catch up with earlier colleagues like Zbigniew, Bill, and Claudia. The ISAC conferences are special for me, because it was at one of them, in Cambridge, England, that I met my husband for the first time, and for the second time when the annual conference was held in Breckenridge, Colorado. After that, we became a couple and have since attended many other such conferences together. The society has evolved through the years to meet the changing needs of its members, but remains at its core a flow cytometry society, although it now embraces image cytometry and mass spectroscopy as it moves into the future.  

As a pre-teen and teenager, I had a pen pal in New Zealand, by the name of Lillian. We wrote to each other from the time we were twelve years old until we were about sixteen, at which point the letters stopped. But I had learned a lot about New Zealand and her about the USA during that time. When I last heard from her, she had decided to take a job working on the New Zealand railroad. I still treasure the small gifts I received from her—volcanic sand and a hei-tiki necklace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hei-tiki). I was reminded of her this past week because I had the pleasure of talking to a new conference attendee from New Zealand by the name of Kylie—it was a pleasure to meet her. Meeting her reminded me of what these conferences are really all about—encountering new people and forming new networks and connections. But it was our conversation about New Zealand films and also about how the New Zealand government has worked hard to integrate the Māori people, that I remember most. I want to find some of the films she mentioned, and to read a bit more about New Zealand society generally.

It is true what the Dalai Lama says— ‘Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before’. Because you never know who you’re going to meet, or what kind of experiences you’ll walk away with. This by itself—the excitement of unwrapping the unknown—is worth the time it takes to travel to new places. It doesn’t matter if the purpose of the trip is business or vacation. It is about staying open to the world around us. I’ll be writing more about Germany in coming posts. I’m happy we finally decided to spend some time here. From what I’ve seen so far, it is a fascinating country of contrasts.