Berlitzed Beyond Berlief

Berlin is a living, breathing, history lesson. Great and terrible things have taken place within its bounderies; mostly terrible, but I'm not one to point fingers. A heaping ladle of justice was eventually served and most of the city was leveled during World War II. You can spend hours walking around looking at the bullet holes left by Allied troops as they marched on the capitol. It would make a good drinking game if it weren't for the fact that the sheer number of battle-scarred buildings would leave you in an inebriated coma by the time you were done. I spent my first day exploring the city by bike, which I highly recommend as a means to significantly shorten your life expectancy. Dodging cars, drafting buses, and clipping pedestrians is the best way to explore this sprawling metropolis. Some of the highlights: The Berlin Wall, which presumably fell to make room for the new Sony IMAX megaplex at Postdamer Platz; Checkpoint Charlie, the point where East met West in a titanic staring contest for twenty years (we won); The Reichstag, the German Parliament building with the giant glass popcorn dome on the top; The Holocaust Memorial, a series of massive, stone blocks of alternating size - some twenty feet high - laid out in an enormous undulating grid across an entire city block; Brandenburg Gate, a big...well, gate for the Brandenburgs; and the Victory Column, a 220 foot tall spire positioned by Hitler to point towards France as a challenge to their sovereignty. Back in the forties pointing a statue at another country was grounds for war. That evening I participated in the traditional heavy drinking games of Berlin's nightlife. I don't know much about drinking games but I'm pretty sure I lost. After a slow start the next morning I participated in a facinating Third Reich walking tour. We goose-stepped our way around the city while learning how the Nazi regime came to power and how to Heil a taxi. Most interesting factoid: of the 20,000 animals housed in the Berlin Zoo at the start of the war only 50 survived the bombing. If I had to guess, I'd say cockroaches. The tour ended at the site of Hitler's underground bunker, which is now, fittingly, a parking lot. But of all the disturbing sights and stories I saw and heard in Berlin, perhaps the most perverse was this: a large, organized choral group, sitting on the steps of the awe-inspiring Berliner Dom cathedral, belting out an a capella rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. No joke. So, hooray for Democracy, I guess.