I was feeling a bit blue that Sunday morning, so I holed up in my room, munching bread-n-butter and tiny tofu-soya wursts, and indulged in self-pity for a coupla hours. Then I got really disgusted with myself and decided to venture out into the big bad world.
The night before, a Spanish girl I'd befriended while watching the France v/s Spain match on TV had recommended going to the Gendarmenmarkt. I couldn't really catch the name "gendarmenmarkt" from the way she pronounced it, but I'd caught the words "Franzoisische Strasse" and "cathedrals". A google search accomplished all the rest. Armed with all the info hurriedly scribbled down in my notebook, I sallied forth looking for something to fill the void, never expecting that I'd have the most enjoyable (and 'touristy') experience so far!
I love wandering alone in cities which warmly promise to dance with lonely strangers. The interminable bustle and noise of touristy places have their own attraction, but sometimes you need a quiet evening to yourself. This particular day, for instance, my camera's charge got over after just a few clicks. But that's when things really started getting interesting. A camera tends to limit your experience to the visual, framed according to your skills and inclinations, unless of course you're a photographer and then it makes sense. To me, however, after a while, all the cobbled streets start looking the same. All the churches look the same, and all the palaces, all the parks. To retain them in memory, you need to either chart out their history, or to invent a present.
I have a friend who's very good at doing both. She loves to travel and, each time she comes back from a journey, she uploads photos on Facebook with detailed captions that sketch out the experience, its resonances, its everydayness. She doesn't take photos just to register her presence, just to tell the world "I was here" as so many of us do. She takes photos to tell stories, to include us into her experiences.
Anyway, I missed taking a lot of photos, but I was more than compensated by the sheer experience of reading a Toni Morrison novel sitting on the steps of the Konzerthaus, or on a bench under maple trees, or in a roadside Italian pizzeria, eating pizza margherita and sipping red wine. Yes, truly touristy -- I finally felt as if I was in the Europe dreamt of by Hollywood (or Bollywood)! And the feather in my tourist's cap was when I found a pavement memento to a church that no longer exists! Scroll down for further details!
Where I wandered: Gendarmenmarkt, Franzoisische Strasse, Checkpoint Charlie/Kochstrasse, Mauerstrasse
1. the way I walked
2. entering Gendarmenmarkt
3. The Franzoisische (French) cathedral at Gendarmenmarkt
4. View of the plaza from in front of the French cathedral: what we see is the Deutscher Dom (aka German cathedral or Neue Kirche) in the distance and the Konzerthaus in the foreground.
5. Banner outside the Konzerthaus proclaiming "The Hall is my Instrument". Love it!
6 and 7. Winged cherubs perched on lions flank the steps to the Konzerthaus.
8. the Konzerthaus in all its splendour.
9. statue of German poet Friedrich Schiller in front of the Konzerthaus
10. View of the French cathedral from across the plaza
11 and 12. closer view of the Deutscher Dom. Don't the two cathedrals look like twins? :)
13. Inside the Deutscher Dom, the only 'cathedral-like' thing I could find was this crucifix. Everything else was turned into a free exhibition of German parliamentary history! Turns out this 'church' was a very important site of Prussian history. Wikipedia knows it all.
14. No idea who s/he's supposed to be? Soldier? Angel? Knight? Pissed off guardian of history?
15. The fundamental rights
16 and 17. 3D model of the Deutscher Dom with words from the constitution in the background
18. The Schiller statue from another angle
19. Checkpoint Charlie replica at the original site with McDonald's in the background. Ha!
20. this is what you discover when you roam the side streets alone on a beautiful sunny day... a framework marking the place where the Bohemian Bethlehemkirche, constructed in the 1730s and demolished in the air raids of 1945, used to stand
More travels, more pictures and more stories await... or so I hope!
