Berlin & the ECM

Last Wednesday, I headed to Berlin for the European Company Meeting. During the day, I had received a couple of emails about participating in the presentation for the ECM Award for best project for one of the projects I was on in France. It involved singing a song...
When I arrived at the hotel, the first people I bumped into were Jacques, Clement & Loic from the team. I was then roped into the rehearsal. The presentation was at the end of Thursday before dinner. I found out that of the other 2 projects that were competing for the award, I had also been on one of them - almost a no-lose situation. The presentation went as well as it could have and, apparently, there were only 8 votes between the first and third projects. The other project I was on won. The dinner on Thursday night was nice and it was really good to catch up with people I hadn't seen for ages.

On Friday morning, I set out with David in tow to see Berlin. We hit the tourist sites, passing by Potsdamer Platz, bits of the Wall, the Holocaust Memorial (a haunting set of grave-size concrete blocks and its underground museum), the Brandenburg Gate (very impressive), Unter den Linden with the Russian Embassy and other big buildings, stopped off at a Christmas Market for some potato pancakes & currywurst and made our way to Museum Island and the Pergamon Museum (aka the Pokemon Museum, according to David). As I had been to Pergamon on my tour of Turkey, I was particularly enthusiastic about seeing the Pergamon Altar, which was dug out of the ruins and shipped off the Germany in another of these supposed 'contracts' on antiquities from which European countries seemed to have done so well. It is an amazing piece of sculpture - the Greek Gods battling the Giants. It seems very clever of the archeologists to be able to work out who is who until you find out that each God's name is etched into the stone above their head. In some places, both the God and the name have survived, in other places, only one or the other and in still other spots, there is just a big blank space. After the museum, we wandered down to Checkpoint Charlie, stopping on the way to have some apple strudel drowned in vanilla sauce on Friedrichstrasse.
On Saturday, I headed out to Charlottenburg Palace, much of which was damaged by bombs during WWII and since refurbished. Many items of furniture, paintings and tapestries were brought over from the Berlin Palace, which was completely flattened during the war. The palace is not laid out well for a tourist. There are not enough signs to tell you where to go next, particularly if you have paid for all of the exhibits and want to get to the rest. In the afternoon, I went all the way from the West side over to the East side to the Stasimuseum. This creepy place was a recommendation from Christof, a former East Berliner. It took me ages to find the place as there were, again, no signs telling you where it was and the building had no sign at all. The Stasi, the secret police of GDR, spied on East Germans using all sorts of sophisticated gadgets that look like they come from James Bond. I particularly like the little camera that was hidden behind a big button on a coat. The most disturbing things were the glass jars with yellow cloth that held the scent and sweat of ordinary people who may or may not have been up to something. The museum is housed in the former HQ of the Stasi and you can see the offices and conference rooms as they were furnished back in the day. The 60s bleak decor, low levels of lighting and the lack of other visitors is really freaky especially for a person with an overactive imagination.
On Sunday I went to see the Reichstag, home of the Bundestag, the parliament. I also caught a couple of the buses that traversed the city. On the buses, I passed the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) in Alexanderplatz and a bunch of other sites I had already visited. There was a tour group also on the buses so I got the benefit of their guide's commentary as well. I finished off my tour of Berlin in the Sony Centre in Potsdamer Platz and the Christmas Market and shopping centre opposite.

I am all Christmas Marketed out. There is only so much schmuck one can look at, especially when it isn't all that good quality.

After several weeks spent in the company of German colleagues and a weekend in Berlin, I have come to the conclusion that the German way of dealing with the war: the brainwashing of its schoolchildren into a mass responsibility culture, the putting up of numerous memorials that show its citizens in a poor light and the trampling of any even moderately right wing view is just as bad an extreme as the Japanese denial of any atrocities perpetrated by its people. There needs to be a balanced view. I am not sure that making your citizens utterly ashamed of their past will be any better at preventing history from repeating itself than them not knowing that any of it happened at all.

Photos in the usual place.