so i'm getting more and more into yoga. it's doing tremendous things with my muscles, which i can feel are getting stronger, more resilient and more flexible. also, yoga is a great counterbalance to my ultimate frisbee playing, which is destructive due to impact and repetitive motion.
i may be going to the Krkonose mountains this weekend on a retreat with (mostly) people I don't know but who all take yoga. It's not really a yoga retreat, it's just more of a something-to-do retreat (featuring very little yoga).
i'm trying out a different brand of contacts today, since i'm stepping away from the computer for a majority of today. this is a different brand from the kind that constantly irritated my right eye and which also tore in half the last time i tried to remove them. (i posted about it) and it seems, as of right now, that these lenses will be going in the trash as well, since my right eye is tweaking a little. i'll give it a little time to adjust though. maybe it's just an initial thing.
UPDATE: i didn't post this entry right away and now the contacts have been removed. i could tell within 15 minutes that i was going to have the same problem with them. *sigh*
i bought new shoes last night. i hope i can post a photo of them soon. they're cool.
nothing terribly drastic is or has happened in relation to my business plan so far this week. just small progress as always.
i did, however, just have a revelation and i now know one way i will be including user interaction within the site. this was an obvious detail and it sorta smacked me in the face once i realized how obvious it was. anyway, suffice it to say, i'm happy i figured that out.
today i'm heading into town early and i'll have down time for certain, so i'm going to look for a 'How to' book.
i have completely updated my Berlin photo page.
and thus concludes my end-of-summer project. i have no more photos to show you.
i hope you enjoyed them!
i won't be getting to my business plan today in a formal sense - maybe i'll hit some bookstores re: "How to" books on business plans. i won't be working here because i have too many things to do in town, so i'm getting ready to go in momentarily.
but i did want to note that i am the "winningest" man in Czech ultimate frisbee this year. i am the only man in the Czech Republic this year to have won the Czech Open (mostly male) division, the Czech Co-Ed division (which was this past weekend) and the Central European League championship (which was two weekends ago).
so, i suppose i'm ending my Czech frisbee career (for now) on a high note, eh?
i have completely updated my Copenhagen photo pages. again, i had to split the photos into two pages. Page 1 is here and Page 2 is here.
unfortunately, as always, some of the photos are not entirely in focus. i attribute that to my camera.
tomorrow i will put my final Summer 2005 gallery (Berlin) online. thank goodness.
the first real day of online research:
i've spent most of my business plan time today scouring the web and firing off e-mails to various companies. for example, Hawaii Movie Tours. alternatively, there's a whole slew of film tours based around LOTR.
incorporating these folks' tours is just a small part of my website idea, but i need to know what they know. so, i've been finding similar websites and e-mailing the operators. i imagine i will continue doing this for a little while longer after posting this, but ultimately i will have to head off to... um.. play ultimate. geez, an unintentional pun there.
i also started listing and writing down two very critical parts of my business plan: who i will need to hire/contract and what my responsibilities will be as the operator.
every day a small step.
i have completely updated my Stockholm photo page.
some of the photos are out of focus, which is unfortunate. in particular, almost any image taken indoors is a victim of lack of focus which is the symptom of using a camera not capable of good indoor photos. so, for example, the photos of the murals in Stadhuset or of the Vasa itself came out kinda blurred.
i guess the answer is take a better camera next time i'm in stockholm! heh heh.
tomorrow, i might get the Copenhagen gallery online. but i doubt it. chances are Copenhagen will be finished on Monday and the final city, Berlin, will be finished on Tuesday. at which point, i can commit completely to my business plan.
the grind.
today i realized how difficult things are going to be. it's not that i lack the drive to do this. i absolutely am committed to this, of that i'm sure. the problem comes with the fact that i'm not going to be producing results any time soon. when will i actually feel as if i'm accomplishing anything. i mean, at the moment i'm not far enough along on the business plan to feel like i have accomplished something. but i'm beginning to think that i won't feel that way until the whole process is over, which might make me feel a little subdued about the whole thing in general.
but i will finish this, of that there is no question.
on a different note, and more related to the actual business plan, i've received word back from my contacts in the film industry. indeed, studios do maintain archives of call sheets in some form. all of my contacts, however, are uncertain how often they are purged. this is something i'll need to know soon. so, on my schedule now is to contact the studios (and Academy library).
i probably won't get around to doing that this week, unless i can via e-mail (something i'll look into soon), but it will definitely happen next week at the latest.
i have completely updated my Overnight Cruise photo page.
this page contains a plethora of photos featuring either Stockholm or Helsinki harbors or skylines, more or less. there are a few other miscellaneous photos but, by a large majority, the harbor photos dominate.
enjoy!
tomorrow may be another big update with Stockholm being the focus.
i have completely updated my Helsinki photo pages. yes, i said pages. the first page focuses on the city of Helsinki itself and Porvoo. the second page focuses almost entirely on Suomenlinna.
i had to go with two pages because i think they just became too long for the movable type folks to handle. i would save and it would delete everything i had just added up to a point, so i figured the easiest way around that is simply to make a second page. so i did. but that's also why it has taken until noon today to finish it all. erg. talk about frustration.
i have to run now, but as i feared, i was unable to finish my Helsinki photo update. it's only about 15 to 20 away from being finished and i've been working on it since about an hour after i woke up, but that still wasn't enough time. and i didn't really procrastinate, it's just a lot of frickin' photos to go through. i didn't finish and i even divided the overnight cruise photos into a separate update.
so, either late tonight or early on tomorrow i'll have it up. and then by mid-afternoon i'll probably have the cruise photos up.
hmph.
i have completely updated my Tallinn photo page.
i realize now that sometimes i might have some interesting angles on some important buildings in a given city but no straight forward shot. this, of course, is kinda awkward since all i can show you is a distorted perspective...
random photo explanations:
- the Mayeri steps photo - the lions painted on the vases were once actually carved out of stones, but the Soviets didn't like them due to their imperial (and hence extravagent) origin.
- i took this photo by more or less blindly aiming the camera at full arms' length over a wall - i'd say it came out quite well considering i could barely see the video screen from the angle i was holding it!
- the Cat's Well was a location of many sacrifices in Medieval Tallinn. apparently, the residents of Tallinn in the Middle Ages thought that there was an evil spirit who would dry up the town's water supply unless it was given regular animal sacrifices. the sacrifices, mostly stray cats, would be dropped in this well - talk about unsanitary drinking water!
- the Town Hall tower has a weather vane on top that goes by the name of "Old Thomas". Old Thomas symbolizes Tallinn and has been there since 1530.
- my photo tour of Soviet era Tallinn begins with the former KGB prison photo and continues through to the pictures of/from Linnahall. what i did fail to capture for you was the TV tower. since every former Soviet city inevitably has one of these monstrosities, i've so far been able to capture some of them (most notably in Riga). this time, however, i have failed. oh well.
- the photos from the Marine Mine Museum are in very soft focus if they are in focus at all. i apologize but the lighting there stunk.
- and, of course, these are the photos that include the photos of the president... of Estonia.
tomorrow, i will endeavor to get my photos from Helsinki online, although i don't know how possible that is. i think it may be my largest update yet. unless, of course, i divide it into photos from Helsinki and photos from the overnight cruise, which i very well might do.
i just got back from Lab (pronounced LAHB), Slovakia where the CEL championships were held. CEL stands for Central European League and, of course, the championships were for ultimate frisbee.
we won it all. another notch in our belt. so, at the end of our season, more or less, we have won most everything we've done. an excellent showing overall.
but i thought i'd tell you a different story -
on friday, since i didn't work i decided to try out my last pair of daily contact lenses. if you recall, my left eye is bad and is why i need glasses at all. my right eye is okay. i've been trying contact lenses for a few weeks, but not really last week when i was busy in front of the computer most days. since i'm near-sighted in my left eye, it's not really a good idea for me to wear contacts that help with seeing a greater distance if i'm just going to be sitting in front of a computer.
and, if you also recall, the previous times i've tried them, the right eye has never adjusted to them properly and has, instead, just been plain uncomfortable. non-stop blinking, watering, itchy contact eyes. it's not that my eye was dry. it's that it felt like the contact was slip-sliding around. not comfortable, irritating and a little awkward.
but friday, i tried out my last pair, hoping that maybe they'd be better.
alas, i put them in and the right eye was not good yet again. so i decided that, after meeting my friends for lunch, i would head for the optometrist's again. i didn't want to take them out, in case the optometrist wanted to do something about them.
i went and he checked them out. he said they were fine. i said that no, indeed, they were not fine. he said, okay.
after checking them out a bit, he let me take them out. we moved rooms to a room with a chair and a mirror for me to look in.
i had some issues getting the right out initially. so i worked on removing the left one. no problem. the left came out okay.
i went back to the right. it was really beginning to bother me. he helped me and he pulled out...
half of a contact lense.
he looked for the other half. nothing. we went to the diagnostic room again, he looked in the eye very closely. nothing. he flushed the eye with a lot of solution. nothing. he couldn't find it. it felt a little weird, but maybe my eye was just recovering from the contact. or maybe the other half had fallen out. so we agreed that maybe i should forget about it and come back in two hours if i still felt it was in there.
i went to a music store to browse the overpriced cds and listen on the listening station to some of the newer titles. after about 20 minutes, i began to feel that yes, indeed, there was still something in my eye. the other half was in there. i was fairly certain of it.
so i went back to the optometrist. again, the optometrist could not find anything. i knew, though, that it hurt quite a bit to look up. it felt like maybe the piece of the contact remaining was going to slide around behind my eyeball. the idea was frightening.
so, after repeating the motions of before expect with closer inspection, he said there probably wasn't anything there but i should probably go to the emergency eye doctor at the closest hospital.
so i did that. i hopped on the metro and walked to the hospital. the map outside the building indicating where the emergency optical room was was horribly outdated. because when i walked into the hospital area - it's a huge hospital composed of many buildings, by the way - there was another map indicating a completely different building housed the emergency optical area.
so i found my way there. at first there were professional signs for the room. and as i progressed deeper into the building they degraded - at first from printed cardboard to printed paper to handwritten on paper with an arrow to nothing (more or less). no door was clearly labelled as the emergency optical room. the arrow, however, pointed to a room with two doors.
it was awkward, for sure. which door do i choose? it would've been kinda funny if my hadn't been growing increasingly agitated and painful.
i loitered for about ten minutes, going back and forth between the signs and the two doors, trying to make sense out of my limited knowledge of czech.
eventually, somebody opened one of the doors and i asked if it was the emergency optical room. she said yes. i said excellent, i think i have 50% of a contact lense in my eye. (i still don't know how to say "half".)
she then proceeded to rattle off many questions in czech. i said, eeeheheheh?! sorry, i speak a little czech. she asked again as a man in a coat walked in the room.
i figured out that she was asking if i had been there before, to which i replied no.
the guy interrupted in english and asked what was wrong. i told him that i thought i had half of a contact in my eye still. he took me to another room, put some dye in my eye which colored the lense and removed half of a contact lense.
i did have something in the eye. so i wasn't wrong. considering how my eye was feeling and that i had been feeling excruciatingly tired - i wanted to close my eyes for a LLLOOONNNGGG time SOOOO badly... (i almost called my friend who lived nearby to see if i could crash at his place for a few hours, because i didn't want to deal with making my way all the way back out to my place.)
i thanked him, he said no problem and i left. no paperwork, no money involved. in the U.S. it probably would've cost me about $150 (not including the x-rays of my skull and the catscan) and taken about 83 1/2 hours. i've made the mistake in spain before and now i realize, european medical practices are more efficient and faster (and occasionally more blunt and hence more painful) than the U.S. hallelujah.
and after that, my eye recovered quickly and i was not tired at all. whaddayaknow.
p.s. "cocky" (pronounced CHOACH-kee) means both lenses and lentils - just a fun fact for ya'll who made it all the way through that story.
continuing with baby steps.
it's slow going right now because i have been spending quite a lot of time on the photo updates. i cannot wait to finish those, but i'm also happy to move slowly into this. it's an ambitious project and i don't want to rush it. i'd prefer to do it write.
anyway, today i started scribbling a lot in my small notebook - mostly putting down concretely what the design of the website will be. i realize that ultimately that has little to do with what the actual business will be, but it's a necessary thing.
and i scribbled a lot today. i'm beginning to code my language, as well. for example, some of the most frequent topics that will come up with respect to design are the three different types of pages that will make up the vast majority of the site. by coding, i have labeled them the fairly innocuous and vague Type A Page, Type B Page and Type C Page. the nice thing about this is that they will also correspond with the search function on the page. i also redefined some words so, for example, the word "AREA" now has a specific meaning in the context of the design of the page.
alas, i'm saying too much already. other questions that have popped up today are the staffing and how it will be organized and how i will incorporate user/customer interaction. almost all successful websites now have some form of direct user interaction if not contribution. so how will i do that? that's something to think about. it could be something as banal as comments or a forum, or it could be content contribution a la wikipedia.
i found a website that does something similar but which will not be direct competition and i have sent out an e-mail to them with basic website questions. i wonder if they'll answer, since i told them i want to start up a website that does not directly compete with them. hmm... we'll see.
my film industry contacts have yet to get back to me regarding the database of locations. the answer to this question could fundamentally alter my planning. i hope they answer sooner rather than later.
i have completely updated my Riga photo page. it is definitely the longest one so far. again, i'm fearing Helsinki, which i will put up on Monday or possibly Tuesday.
the question has arisen, and i answered it in a comment yesterday, why do the cities look so empty? take a look at the photos of buildings. in how many do you actually see doorways? in how many are the shots a little higher than the doorframe? that is mostly because i aimed high so as to avoid having people in my photos. i wanted my photos to be as postcard perfect as possible. it's a joke, but i tried.
with this update and in hindsight, i notice that my framing tends to be predictable (maybe that's an inescapable part of trying to shoot 'postcard perfect') and, for the most part, vertical. hopefully i didn't shoot so vertical in Tallinn. guess you'll find out tomorrow (or Monday - I'm not sure if I want to bother with a photo update tomorrow).
oh, and the last dozen photos actually taken in Riga on the page were mostly of buildings made by a single architect, Mikhail Eisenstein. i thought the buildings were absolutely gorgeous, even though some are yet to be renovated.
anyway, enjoy!
i realize that i'm not making very fast progress on my business plan at this moment. but that will inevitably change. it doesn't help that a majority of my working time for the past few days has been directed towards uploading my photos from my trip, that's for sure.
i'm also maintaining a fairly busy "after work" schedule, mostly composed of athletics followed by some form of social outing.
today, for example, i've worked up until i posted that last entry and now i will be checking out of my flat in order to go start yoga.
that's right, yoga.
i'm giving it a try for the first time today. and for that reason i MUST skedaddle right NOW.
baby steps. baby steps.
having bought notebooks yesterday, i settled down today to start my education of how to build a business.
the first thing i did was write down what questions i have from the get go. some are very broad (what about the finances?) with specific subquestions (how much will a web designer cost to hire?).
the second thing i did was write down some problems that i already know of - for example, my complete lack of knowledge of almost everything financial.
i bought two notebooks. one is larger and sturdier and will serve as a section by section breakdown of the business plan. i haven't touched it yet. the smaller notebook is for the questions, little notes, overall/general information. i have touched it.
since i feel that in order to do this right that i need to be highly organized, i decided to break down the smaller notebook as such: each page will be numbered and each question, problem or fact that needs (further) addressing will be numbered. when i am addressing an issue, i can refer to it by the page number plus the issue number - for example, "1.11" means issue #11 on page 1.
the final thing i did today was to e-mail my few remaining contacts in the film industry in the hopes that they can answer a question that may or may not fundamentally alter the process of setting up the website.
i have completely updated my Vilnius photo page.
this page has more photos than the first two and it took me awhile. i'm dreading Helsinki now, because i might have to either take all day or even two days. i took a lot of photos in Helsinki. and i think i'm going to add an entire page devoted to the overnight cruise from Helsinki to Stockholm.
anyway, enjoy! tomorrow i will have the Riga photo page updated. i think from here on out, actually, most of the updates will take increasingly longer (except Stockholm and Berlin, probably).
i hope to document with some clarity my exploration of starting a business from the initial step of writing a business plan, to research and finding investors, to implementation and creation and finally to functioning business. and here is where it shall start, Day 1 - initial exploration.
things to do today:
- start finding out what it takes to write a business plan / check
- purchase a good notebook in which to sketch out my idea in detail
taking a look around that website, there are many useful things there. the first thing i noticed was the origination of the site - the US government. i suppose there really is no better place to start than the SBA, since i'll have to work with it eventually, regardless. the second thing i noticed is the general description/outline for business plans. the third thing is the link to a large number of sample business plans.
looking ahead, i can tell this will be a very educational experience for me, even if it fails utterly. i know, for example, that i know very little about money management on a large scale (and some would argue that i know very little about it on a very small scale as well, including myself). i also know that a problem will arise on the more trivial matter of incorporating graphs into the business plan, as what i have right now is concept and implementation ideas and not so much in the way of financial ideas/knowledge. where will i break down the budget? how much will things cost?
also, on a conceptual note relating to research, i don't know if film studios maintain archives of call sheets and whatnot, but i'll need to find out sooner rather than later.
regardless, these are issues for the future. today and for the next week and a half at minimum, i imagine i'm going to be focusing on merely the basic structure of my business plan and not the technicalities.
here's to that.
oh, and as a last minute thought, i think i should add that at this moment my posts regarding my business idea will be purposefully vague. when i finish my business plan, i will most likely give a full account of what the idea actually is.
as promised, I have completely updated my Warsaw photo page. it's kind of weird, but i don't think the photos quite capture how forced the "old" town feels.
i think that's actually my problem with Warsaw. they're trying too hard to make their renovations sound and feel "old". other towns, although they had similar destruction, rebuilt their old towns but don't try to force it, so they feel more genuine.
tomorrow i will have my Vilnius, Lithuania photo page online.
in anticipation of tomorrow, i post this little tidbit:
now that my photos are all uploaded onto my computer, i think i'll be creating a city by city photo album - one city, one day - and the rest of the day i will be working on my business plan. except for certain weekends, of course - like this one, when i'll be playing at the CEL ultimate championships in Slovakia.
things happen, people fall apart, it's a shame and it's difficult to accept, but it's inevitable.
but those aren't the contacts i want to talk about, actually.
what is bothering me is my right eye. it seems like it wants to reject my new contacts.
i recently started wearing contacts. they are one time use lenses that i toss at the end of a day. i've only tried them for two days now. i want contacts for miscellaneous things, but in particular for sports.
my left eye is the one with a problem. i got glasses last year because of astygmatism in my left eye. my right eye, for all intents and purposes is okay, even today. but my right eye doesn't like the contacts.
the left contact sits okay in my eye. no problem. the right contact, however, keeps me blinking and teary-eyed and it feels like it's moving around loosely in front of my eye. and, what's worst, sometimes i'll blink and it will feel okay and everything will be in focus and then i'll blink again and everything goes blurry. or, alternatively, everything starts out okay, but if i don't blink quick enough, everything grows blurry quickly.
anyway, it's kinda frustrating, really.
i have updated my Krakow photo page completely. other cities are forthcoming. you will probably notice that the photos from the Wieliczka Salt Mine are significantly darker than the rest (hmm, wonder why) and unfortunately, some of them are not quite in focus. regardless, i think they're worth seeing.
i'm beginning to think something is wrong with me in a medical sense.
i haven't had clear sinuses in about a year. not even one day. it's constant mucus.
in the past few weeks, i've also started to develop headaches. not big throbbing, i need help headaches, but these low, lulling headaches that just gnaw slowly. sometimes, like today, they work their way to the front of my head and my sinuses in particular. that's when i have to take something.
i just took some generic tylenol and i hope it kicks in soon.
part of me thinks, in particular for these past two days, that it's because i've been sitting in front of my computer for so long. but that wouldn't account for the headaches i had this weekend, when i was out in the sun. i was overexposed, i know, because i burned and i'm still itching from it, but on top of that, the sun made my head hurt pretty badly.
the computer theory is also invalidated by the fact that i have been away from a computer for a very large majority of the past two months.
and then, sometimes, i put on my glasses and it hurts more. but it's not from my prescription, though. i went to see about contacts last week and they tested my eyes again. there was only a fractional change in my left eye, but other than that, my vision was more or less the same. no change in prescription necessary.
another x-factor is alcohol. i drink a single beer on average about two out of every three days. sometimes two beers, if the food takes too long to arrive. those few drinks also bring the pain forward, which stinks.
on a different note, if i drink coffee, the headaches go away. i don't think it is addiction, because i haven't had coffee in at least four days now, so if there were any sign of withdrawal, it should've subsided by now. maybe not, though.
so, i'm beginning to think. maybe i should just stop thinking.
after my long trip around northern/north-central europe, i had little time to get in shape... because this past weekend i went to a frisbee tournament, my first in almost two months.
the tournament in question was the Czech national championship. we won it last year and the question was could we win it again with a slightly different roster?
the answer is yes. we could. and we did. we beat every team decisively and we won the Spirit Prize as well, which was an enormous surprise to us. for those of you unfamiliar with ultimate frisbee, the sport relies on the good spirit of the players and does not have officiation. therefore, in order to encourage this tradition, many tournaments (in Europe, at least) have spirit prizes which are given to the team with the best spirit.
it's not that we were surprised because we think that we didn't have good spirit, but rather that a team that so thoroughly dominates rarely ever wins the spirit prize. especially if the team is composed mostly of expatriates. heh.
oh well, here's my own hand patting my own back. well done, chappie.
as for today and the future, the hard part has arrived. my first task is to sort through my photos from my trip. my second task is to organize and discipline myself and write my business plan.
i woke up at 7:30 to catch my train back to Prague. no problems there. i was back in Prague by early afternoon. i threw a Frisbee with a friend and had a nice dinner at his place. we topped off the day by watching some films. and that was the end of a very long journey.
highlights:
Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn – cities (and countries) undergoing spectacular changes stuffed into the period of a few decades. it’s a phenomenal thing to see.
Krakow – an extraordinarily beautiful city with great people. plus, there was a guy playing G’N’R’s “Don’t Cry” on a violin and singing off key, which was naturally very amusing.
Helsinki – a very attractive city with great art museums.
Copenhagen – free bikes and a beautiful and seemingly satisfied culture.
Berlin – a fun time with a lot of history, especially recent history.
lowlights:
Warsaw – disappointingly unengaging. whitewashing the past with paint and providing only memorials doesn’t make for a particularly interesting experience. i’ve heard the club scene there is great, but i didn’t really see it.
Stockholm – a very large city. too large for walking. great museums though (especially the Vasa Museum). i definitely need to give it more time in the future to remedy my inevitably flawed impression.
on this, my last full day of the tour, i started my day by going to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. the museum is fascinating. it started off during the Cold War with stories and items showing how people escaped from the DDR (East Germany). it now houses many more such items but also has a large exhibition on people overcoming oppression. in essence, the museum celebrates liberation. so, after a long tour that had frequently focused on oppression and life under occupation, i had come full circle and was learning all about people who overcame these things. it was the perfect place to conclude my trip.
some of the ways people escaped were fascinating. one woman was sewn into the passenger seat of her husbands car. another woman was put in two suitcases with holes in the sides on the upper shelf of a train compartment. a girl snuck out in a hollowed out speaker. a guy stole out in a hollowed out stereo. another man hid in a plastic cow that was being transported ostensibly for a fair of some sort. the list is long and the amount of creativity that went into these escapes could fuel Hollywood for years.
i spent a good portion of the day in the museum because it is deceptively large and contains a very large amount of information. i, of course, wanted to read every last thing. even so, i couldn’t do it because it was just too much.
after the museum, i retraced my tour from the day before to take more photos. at the end of the evening, i went back to my hostel to meet a girl i had met on the tour and who happened to be staying at my hostel as well. we had agreed to meet up with some other people from the tour, but beforehand we were going to go up in the roof of the Reichstag (the German parliament) which supposedly has a gorgeous view and grab some dinner. the former had an extremely long line, so we walked to where we were going to meet the others to find something to eat. we ate some falafel and met the others for an organized pub crawl.
the pub crawl was fun for the socialization aspect and i got to see some great German clubs. and it was a good way to reorient myself and finish my trip. i got back to the hostel at 2ish and went immediately to sleep.
my first day in Berlin was a day that began with much movement and ended with very little movement. in Berlin now, there is much competition between companies offering free guided tours of Berlin, with the assumption that one tips the guide at the end. so i decided to partake in this experience. it was also this day when i renamed this whole tour to “Capitals, Cathedrals and Atrocities” because that is more or less what i had been seeing and learning about since i left Prague.
the walking tour was led by a history student from Dusseldorf who is living in Berlin and studying, well, history at Humboldt University, one of the oldest universities in the world. she is also the only professional historian guiding tours for her company, or so she claimed. so, she was to guide our tour around former East Berlin.
oh, a side note here, part of the service her company provides is to meet in “West” Berlin and be guided to the meeting point for the tour. the meeting point in West Berlin is outside a Dunkin Donuts at Zoologischer Garten, which is a big train station amongst other things. some of you may be familiar with a little rock group named U2. awhile back this band released an album entitled Achtung Baby, which is German for “Listen (Baby)”. the album was released a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and starts off with a song entitled “Zoo Station”. i never understood that title until now, since Zoo Station is the train station in Germany.
anyway, so the main meeting point for the tour is next to the Brandenburg Gate. the Brandenburg Gate, of course, is the most famous landmark in Berlin – again, photos are coming. it features a statue of a horse-drawn chariot on top which was, at one point, pilfered and taken to Paris by one Napoleon Bonaparte. upon its return to Berlin, the rider in the chariot was given a large staff with many symbols of Germany (a two-headed Eagle, for example) in order to make people certain that it is indeed German.
the Gate also lasted through many Wars and was one of few constructions actually left standing in the area at the end of WWII. so, for the Germans, it represents their endurance and survival. weirdly, the German government has now given permission to the U.S. to build a new embassy almost directly next to the gate. I say “weirdly” because of the security restrictions the U.S. puts on their embassies now which includes an enormous safety perimeter and it simply doesn’t seem like the area for the building next to the Gate is big enough for much more than a security perimeter and a one room shack.
on the opposite side of this construction site, heading south from the Gate, we saw the newly opened Holocaust memorial and museum. we didn’t have time to see the museum, but the memorial is fantastic. it’s hard to describe, but roughly, it is a concrete graveyard with tombs of multiple heights and angles, arranged symmetrically. it’s truly fantastic, but it’s “coolness” of design also leads many people to play among the blocks (which i think hinders its significance).
from there, we walked to the former site of Hitler’s bunker which is now nothing but a dusty parking lot. the Germans do not want Neo-Nazis congregating there, so it is left completely unmarked and unfamiliar. additionally, the pit where the Soviets found his body (yes, it’s been proven since the fall of the USSR that they found his body – what they did with it, on the other hand…) is immediately across the street from the parking lot except, of course, it is no longer a pit. it is now a soccer field and playground. so, in effect, children are playing on Hitler’s grave.
from there, we moved onto an old building that is soon to be refurbished (the scaffolding is up) that is one of few buildings left in Berlin to still show signs of WWII. there are bullet marks and chunks missing all along its façade.
around the corner from this building is what is now the Finance Ministry. it is one of the few remaining buildings that was actually built by the Nazis. the architectural style is very linear and right-angled. during the soviet times, it was the Ministry of Ministries and was, in particular, the focus of a massive protest in the early years of the DDR (German Democratic Republic aka East Germany). it was, for the Nazis, the Air Force Ministry and was left untouched by the Allied bombers in WWII. it also has a fairly substantial piece of Soviet propaganda still adorning one of its exterior walls, just behind the memorial to the protest.
behind this building is one of the largest stretches of the Berlin Wall that remains intact. the wall is now protected by a fence to prevent people from pillaging a chunk of the wall. contained in its immediate vicinity as well is a museum piece entitled “The Topography of Terror”, which tells of the horrors inflicted by terrorism throughout the history of the world and by the Nazis in particular.
a short walk away, following the old line of the wall, we reached Checkpoint C – one of the most famous gates between East and West Berlin and better known as Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled at the end of the DDR, but rebuilt as a remembrance memorial sometime thereafter. on the street with the rebuilt Charlie is the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which i visited on my own the next day – but i’m getting ahead of myself.
after Checkpoint Charlie we walked into the older area of Berlin, starting with the Konserthaus and the two identical cathedrals that flank it on either side. in an earlier period of German enlightenment, when the royalty wanted to expand the population of the city, they encouraged people of many faiths to move to Berlin, Jews in particular. part of this encouragement came in the form of these cathedrals. so as not to discriminate between Christian religions, the two cathedrals were erected – one is Lutheran, the other is Catholic.
the next stop on our tour was Bebelplatz, which is surrounded by old buildings. on one side is the old Staatsoper (State Opera) which was also built by the same enlightened Germans. up until this one was built, the Opera was a thing for nobility and not the common individual. with the creation of this Opera House, the experience was opened up for the everyman at a cheap price.
opposite the Opera house is the building that served as Humboldt University’s library (and once again does, i believe) in the years before WWII. it is in Bebelplatz that the Nazis held their book burning. it is also here that one can find a very nifty memorial to the book-burning. the memorial basically consists of a room painted entirely white with nothing but empty book shelves. but the kicker is that it is under the plaza and one can only see it by looking through a small glass window in the ground at the center of the plaza. of course, when one looks in, there is a reflection of the looker which causes one to think about themselves as well. it’s a very effective, well-made memorial. across the street from the plaza is Humboldt University itself.
a little further east from Humboldt, there is what the Germans refer to as “The Wreath-Dumping Place”. in reality, it is a memorial to those who have died in any and all wars. originally constructed by the Soviets as a Soviet War Memorial, it features a single statue in the middle of an open building. the statue is a woman grieving over her dead child. it was changed to being a general war memorial after the fall of the wall. it is also here that foreign dignitaries come on visits to Germany to place wreathes in remembrance. the Germans feel that this ceremony is overused and overexploited and for this reason have given it the facetious name of “the Wreath-Dumping Place”.
from here, we walked across a bridge to Museum Insel (Museum Island), which contains many old (and some not so old) buildings. the island was the location of the original settlement of Berlin. the island contains five museums designed to house specific collections, mostly collections of items pilfered from other nations throughout the ages – i.e. Egyptian, Persian, etc.
centered around the Lustgarten (more accurately translated as “Pleasure Garden”, ahem), the central square of the island originally was surrounded by a museum, a large Protestant cathedral and a Palace. the first two still remain whereas the last was destroyed, not by the minute damage inflicted by WWII, but rather by the Soviets who resented such symbols of excess of an egalitarian class. there are now plans, however, to rebuild the palace. it seems like a bad idea to me, considering the other completely rebuilt palace (in Warsaw) that was quite disappointing to me.
next to the parking lot that used to house the palace is a Soviet-era building that is absolutely atrocious looking - it is quite possibly the ugliest building i have ever had the unfortunate chance to see. many people want it torn down and some people want it left as during the DDR, the building was one of the few that actually provided sanctity and pleasure to the population – it had a bowling alley, a cinema, etc. the problem is, though, that they cannot tear it down. due to the precarious nature of the island it was built on, if they tear down that building, the cathedral will also collapse.
the foremost of the museums houses what is reported to be a fairly spectacular collection of Egyptian artifacts.
it was on the steps of the museum that our guide told us the spectacular story of the fall of the DDR:
for many years, people had been struggling to escape the oppression of the DDR and it began to culminate in 1989 when the protests had grown to a size that made them impossible to disperse by the typical tactics of the DDR government. to appease the people, the DDR government announced that they would be making some drastic reforms. the DDR decided in reality that they would write one of the most confusing and perplexing documents on the nature of the reforms so as to appease the population without giving them any idea what the reforms would actually be. but, by now, the population was used to this trick and it didn’t work. the protests continued to grow.
so, on a day of national unity, the government decided to call an international press conference for only the second time in the DDR’s history.
the minister who was to speak to the press had quite a bit to drink the night before due to the stress of the upcoming press conference – after all, he was used to the highly staged, highly organized press conferences of the isolated DDR. in this case, he was inevitably going to be asked questions by nosy international journalists.
so, the day arrived and he showed up moments before the press conference was to begin. before he went on, however, an aide came up and handed him a memo.
“Really, Sir. You must read this. The other ministers met this morning and decided some things. You really should read this before going into your press conference.”
he stared at the memo for a moment.
“Ah, zis is too complicated. I must think about zis aftervards.”
so he folded up the memo and stuck it in his pocket. he received his well-prepared speech and headed for the podium. he took the podium and started his speech. the thing is, the man was not a great orator by any means and he was dry and dull. the international press got tired and most had left by the end of the three hour speech. those few that were remaining were either asleep or stunned at the end, so when he finally finished the room was silent.
taking note, the speaker must’ve thought to himself. “Ja. I am on a roll. I must keep speaking.” so, not having any more prewritten speeches left, he pulled the memo out of his pocket and read it directly.
“Residents of the DDR will now be allowed to get Vest German visas without restrictions.” What? That can’t be right! the press started to wake up and pay a lot of attention. the speaker began to get quite nervous. having not been given enough time to consider the memo, he had bypassed the usual bait and reverse tactic of the DDR, which was to carefully word every thing so that any liberties could be taken back.
hands shot up all around the room. the press had questions. the speaker grew more nervous. “Wait. Zer’s more.”
“Zee DDR will allow unlimited passage betveen East and Vest Germany.”
the hands stayed up. “Okay. Okay. You.”
“Excuse me, you said unrestricted visas? When will these be issued?”
the speaker studied the memo. his eyes glazing over. he looked on the front of the memo. he looked on the back. nothing.
“I zink it is immediately.”
the East Germans seeing this press conference immediately took to the streets. the West Germans seeing this press conference immediately took to the streets. the party had started. the crowds gathered and gathered. the border guards began to get nervous. at the Brandenburg Gate, the guard picked up the phone and dialed his superior. busy. he dialed the government security office. busy. he dialed as many offices as he could think of. busy. busy. busy. he dialed the guards at the other gates. they answered.
yes, the same thing is happening everywhere. what do we do? nothing. it will blow over like it always does.
at the Brandenburg Gate, a young man gets impatient and climbs on the wall. the guard is very nervous now. he decides to take action. he sprays the man with water.
the crowd, seeing this pitiful response, also climbs on the wall. the guards retreat to their sheds and decide that there is nothing to do. they raise the gates and remain inside. the wall falls.
this was the end of my walking tour. after which, i went to a pizzeria with cheap beer and spent the rest of the day socializing with other people from the tour. i got back to my hostel at midnight, or so.
i started the day by depositing my bag in the Copenhagen central train station. immediately upon that, i headed out for yet another day of non-stop walking.
i started by doing a tour of Vesterbro. Vesterbro is the old worker’s quarters for the city and starts just outside the central train station, which made it a logical place to start. the free guide i had suggested starting outside Tivoli Gardens, so that’s what i did. Tivoli Gardens is well known because it contains one of the oldest amusement parks in the world (1843). from there you walk to the central station and along a slightly seedy street lined with sex shops and wandered by a few notorious-looking individuals. after awhile, however, you pass out of this mess and get to a nicer area of the city. for example, there is a building with a mural covering one entire wall (a wall without windows, that is) and on a sunny day, as it was, it looks as if it is another building entirely.
anyway, also along the Vesterbro walk i passed a miniature model of Copenhagen circa 1600, i think. the walk eventually leads one down a series of streets lined with old Townhouses, originally built to house the workers of the nearby Carlsberg brewery, which is where the walk ends, incidentally. the Carlsberg brewery has a very beautiful, elaborate gateway that is supported on the backs of four (drunken-looking) elephants. it is also on the other side of this gate that the next walking tour starts, which leads one through Frederiksberg.
Frederiksberg is an independent municipality within the area of Copenhagen. originally, Frederiksberg was built as a country village a short distance outside of Copenhagen in order to provide a nice setting for the Royal Family’s summer residence. now, Copenhagen has grown to such an extent that it entirely engulfs Frederiksberg on all sides, but Frederiksberg maintains its independent government.
the walk starts in the garden called Sondermarken. after walking through this wooded park which is not a formal garden as one would expect since it borders the Frederiksberg palace – the aforementioned summer residence, you pass statues of famous Danes and eventually you reach the palace. the palace is separated from the park by a large road, which carries volumes of people to the Copenhagen zoo, located next to the palace. after contemplating entering the zoo and spending what little of the rest of my time in Copenhagen there was there, i opted instead to pass in between the zoo and the palace into the formal gardens of Frederiksberg Have, located behind the palace. Frederiksberg Have is understandably better maintained and is full of people on hot, sunny days – like the one i had.
on the other side of the park at the main entrance to the park (and former site of the main gate to the palace lands if one is coming from inner Copenhagen), there is a church. the church itself is nothing terribly spectacular but behind the church is a sizeable graveyard which includes the grave of Carl Theodor Dreyer, so i inevitably had to pay my respect.
the walk from there takes you through some beautiful old buildings, including some long-established pubs (late 1700’s) and beautiful residential buildings that line a massive boulevard which used to serve as the royal road (and which leads one from Copenhagen to the former main gate to Frederiksberg Have).
eventually, one is led back to the lakes which surround the inner city and the beginning of the next walk (and the last one i took) through Norrebro. my hostel happened to be in Norrebro, so i was already slightly familiar with the area. Norrebro is the multi-culti part of Copenhagen featuring markets run by immigrants of many varied nationalities. the architecture in the area is not really inspiring either and the main site of interest is a graveyard, which was the goal of my walk in this section.
after stopping through my hostel to use their services one last time, i went to the graveyard. the graveyard, Assistens Kirkegard, was originally created as a place to bury the poor from the rapidly overcrowding (and hence, overcrowding graveyards) of the inner city but became a place of respect as the city expanded that direction and people of note requested to be buried there. it is there that one can see, for example, the graves of Hans Christian Anderson (he of Little Mermaid fame) or Soren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher. it is also very large and well-tended so it provides a nice respite from the noise and heat of the city that surrounds it, which is why many people can be found reading books on its benches today.
from the graveyard, i more or less headed back into the central city to catch my train to Berlin. on the way to the train station i wanted to buy some groceries for dinner and i had only about 15 minutes to spare. I ended up buying some very expensive groceries in the train station because my time was running short…
my train was scheduled to depart at 15:40ish and I would have a 20 minute layover in Hamburg…
until my Copenhagen to Hamburg train was delayed by 20 minutes. when I heard this, i frantically went upstairs to change my Hamburg to Berlin ticket to a later train, since i figured i would be arriving in Hamburg late and therefore miss my scheduled train. i even got some money back on the ticket.
and then i got on the train, which crossed over from Denmark to Deutchland via a ferry, which was cool because there was a seagull that skirted the boat for a majority of time hovering only a few feet over peoples heads, expecting food. and i arrived in Hamburg on schedule and found out that i could indeed make my initially scheduled train using my new ticket. so i had got a refund from the office in Copenhagen only to catch the same train in the end. it was a good way to end the day, more or less. arriving in Berlin, i went straight to my hostel and fell asleep.