Berlin Part II

This is Part II of my experiences in Berlin with my friend Heleen. The first part can be read here. Part I stopped at the point where Heleen and I were at the Philharmonie, hoping to score tickets for the Cello Concert.

I went up to the cashier and asked (in my best German) if there were still tickets for the concert. It was all sold out! I felt despair, but when we stepped back I had an idea. Whenever a concert is sold out, there are always last-minute tickets left, from people who decide not to come and cancel their reservations! I was pondering for a few minutes how the hell I was going to ask that in German, but went back to the woman and asked. She replied that they also sell Stehplatzen one hour before each concert that is sold out. In my head I was screaming at her “why didn’t you say so immediately!”, but I politely replied “ok, danke schön”. We both really wanted to go for this concert and decided to come back at 6 pm, way in advance so we could be sure of a ticket. The Stehplatzen are only 10 euros, so we would be cheap off and we didn’t mind standing.

It was 2 pm now, so we decided to sit near the Kulturforum to eat our lunch. The Kulturforum is a cluster of museums we had to skip completely because of our lack of time. I wanted to visit the Staatsbibliothek that was also close by, but it would be too much of a hassle to look inside. You had to hand in your coat, purse, and be screened. No thanks! We decided to go to the park Tiergarten instead. We both needed a little bit of quiet and nature. The park is quite big and has a very nice Rose Garden.

Almost no one was there, except for a few lonely book-readers. We decided to do the same and I retreated with The Karamazov Brothers on a bench. I felt so relaxed however, that within a few minutes my eyes closed and before I knew it I was sleeping! That is certainly not because of the book, because I love Dostoevsky! Heleen was also reading so she just let me sleep for a bit. After some 30-odd minutes I was back in the land of the living and we moved on again.

We left the tranquillity of the park in amazement; why did so few people hang out here? It’s an oasis of quiet in a very busy city. We biked to Gendarmenmarkt, which is the most impressive square according to the Rough Guide to Germany. We secured our bikes against a tree and walked on the square, it is quite big indeed. I was distracted at once though, because I heard the most beautiful saxophone playing ever! An older man was playing My Way, from Frank Sinatra in a way that gave me goosebumps. Perfect tone, perfect dynamics and vibrato. I walked closer and just stood listening. I normally never give money to street musicians (’cause most of them suck), but after he finished the song I walked up to him and gave some money. I told him “das war wunderschön!” and then he promptly answered “Ich weiss”, and I couldn’t help laughing.

We walked up to the Dom and took a look inside. The Komische Oper is also a very nice looking building, but it was closed. We decided to walk around a little and we really wanted to see a bookshop. We finally found one, packed with second hand books. I’m a Bismarck fan and found some really cheap books about him, but I didn’t buy them. My backpack was already full and I wanted to travel back home light. It was almost 5:30 pm so we biked back to the Philharmonie. We stood in line, making puzzles for 45 minutes. We managed to score tickets for the concert though, so we were super happy!

We had a quick dinner at Subway, me likey! It’s about the only fastfood place where vegas can eat a little decently. I love the honey-oat bread! Heleen was dressed nicely (wearing nice jeans and a neat cardigan) but I entered the concerthall in my baggy pants. Everybody was dressed up! Oh well, the poor students are standing anyway…

The concerthall is so nice, completely different setup than the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The stage is way down and the seats are all the way around it, ascending all the way to the roof. Our standing places were almost all the way up and in the back. The orchestra entered and started warming up and tuning. I love watching the pro’s, but we were too far off to really distinguish the faces. They first played a single Dvorak piece, Die Mittagshexe op. 108. I didn’t know it but enjoyed it immensely. This orchestra really mastered all the dynamics, from fortissimo to ultimate pianissimo. Too bad that in the pianissimo parts people were coughing; that sort of breaks the atmosphere. After this piece, the cellist Steven Isserlis entered the stage. I don’t know him, but expected nothing than awesomeness from him! The first notes of the famous cello concert resounded through the venue (important solo for the clarinet!) and I stood transfixed. Goosebumps everywhere. The sound of this orchestra is so amazing! The cellist was waiting for his turn and when it almost came, he raised his bow and tilted his head upwards. The release came and the low sounds of the cello filled the hall. Tears flowed down my face, because this was reaching perfection. The tone, the emotion, the whole composition defies description! Heleen later said she had goosebumps all the time and enjoyed it immensely. After 40 minutes of sneak peak in heaven, the cello concert ended with a blast. Time for a break. We both praised the cellist, who in my opinion did a very good job. I also liked the way he expressed himself, it was very dramatic but not TOO dramatic.

After the break we managed to score some seats very close to the stage and watched the orchestra from close-by. I enjoyed to see the clarinet players in action. The symphonie they played was unknown to me: Symphonie Nr. 4 by Bohuslav Martinu. After the concert we biked to the hostel, tired but happy.

Sunday 19 April
This night was horrible. The three Italians arrived at 11:30 when we just went to bed and they all snored. I did not sleep at all! They left at 4:30 and made a lot of noise doing so. The downside of sleeping in hostels….I listened to the same Empyrium album over and over, the only way I could evade the snoring sounds. At 5:30 am I gave up and stayed awake until we had to get out at 6:30 am. We took a shower and had a hasty breakfast. We asked the guy from the hostel where we would have a good chance of catching a ride to Hannover and he advised us to travel to the suburbs near the [115] highway. Our only transport costs for this trip were: 1,30 for a subway ticket! We stood waiting for one hour, the longest time during our whole trip. At last, a German couple took us to Magdeburg, with 190 km/h (118 mph) in their luxurious Audi. That was fast! There we made our only hitchhiking-mistake of the trip. We accepted a ride offered to us by two Hungarian guys. They drove a BMW, but looked shabby. Plus we couldn’t understand them! They might as well be criminals and we didn’t enjoy the 1 hour ride they gave us. I was holding the map on my lap all the time, tracking where we went. They dropped us off at the gasstation I asked them to, so all was well. We learned from this though: if it doesn’t feel right, don’t get in.
After this ride we had a good score with a direct trip back to the Netherlands. I didn’t like this ride though, because I got very tired and the people we were driving with were Jesus-freaks playing Jesus-music in their car ALL THE TIME. I was too grumpy to talk to them, but thankfully Heleen (who managed to sleep in our last night) did the talking so I could be the grumpy biatch. I was very happy to get out and be back in NL. Our last ride was with a Turkish (though Dutch) couple. We had a very cool chat with them; the woman was very nice! We had one of those talks about cultural differences, but in a very friendly and inquiring way. The woman also told us she finally got pregnant with IVF treatment, and I really enjoyed having such a connected feeling and open conversation with someone that I didn’t know and also is from ‘another culture’, so to say. They dropped us off at Utrecht University (our second home, haha!). From there on, it was only a short bus-ride back to our bikes!

Conclusion: Hitchhiking RULES
All in all, hitchhiking is something I can really recommend. Don’t believe the horror stories other people are telling you! If you don’t trust someone, don’t get in the car. Open up your positive energy and you can end up having very nice conversations with people you don’t know (like we had with the Turkish woman) and even connecting with them. For me, this hitchhiking trip proved that there are so many awesome people out there, willing to take strangers in their car. I found one thing particularly funny. Most of the people that took us, never took hitchhikers before. Maybe they liked the fact that we were female (= harmless?), but when we got in and talked about hitchhiking (which happened in all occasions except with the Hungarians) they were asking us: ‘isn’t it dangerous? aren’t you afraid that you will meet dangerous people?’. I didn’t reply to them that I thought that if it was so dangerous to go hitchhiking, then why would they not be dangerous since they were taking us with them? There’s this whole mystification about hitchhiking that it’s so dangerous, only because a few horror stories are circling around in the world. But life itself is dangerous. Hell, you can trip and fall from your stairs and be dead. You can get stabbed on the street. I don’t want my life to be ruled by fear, and the hitchhiking proved to me that it’s not scary or dangerous at all if you do it sensibly. I spent 50 euros on a weekend in Berlin, and that’s mainly because generous people made it possible that I only had to spent 1,30 on transportation costs from my home in Utrecht to this awesome German city!