Nobody bothered to upload photos yet, it seems, and I don’t have my own. Anyone wanna donate me a digital camera? Didn’t think so.

For those who don’t know or keep forgetting (I love you too ), Berlin is the capital of Germany, situated in its north east. As you can see in the below image, Bonn used to be the capital:

(Sorry for the French in that picture.) The reason is simply that, when Germany was split in the West (U.S., UK, France occupation) and East (Soviet Russia occupation) parts, Berlin, too, was split into these four so-called “sectors”. The West didn’t get all of the former government parts, so they decided to move to a different town, and chose Bonn.

The red line, of course, signifies the wall, built by the Soviets in the early 60s in fear of further refugees.

Enter 2004:

Now reunited, the pre-war capital has become the new one again – and they not only show so with pride, but by spending a lot of money on showing off.

For example, the local representatives building for Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen; my state) and Schleswig-Holstein cost 86 million Euros. Think about that: There’s sixteen states in Germany, and two of them team up to rebuild their government agency for almost a hundred million US dollars. Similarly, lots of money was wasted on refurbishing the Reichstag (parlament) building, adding a futuristic dome to it.

Billions of government money spent aside, the world’s biggest construction plant also brings us Germans a new mall-like thing called the “Sony Center”, with a park (including trees, fountain, and multiple layers), exaggeratedly complicated architecture, and, of course, shops of all kinds. I don’t even want to know how much it costs, alone, to run that huge screen showing seemingly random short films, for free.

Right next to this new stuff is lots of old stuff, and you will also find lots of unused areas: much belongs to Jews killed during the Holocaust, and now the government seems at a loss as to who is supposed to own that land.

The hotel was neat, that is to say: the breakfast was fine, with a great variety, and the rooms were clean and definitely big enough to fit the three of us in. No internet access, however; maybe I should have brought an AOL CD and tried the modem jack.

We had power jacks in the fast ICE trains. Also multiple radio stations and nice (overpriced) selection of foods. Definitely good to stay there. 250 kilometers an hour? You betcha.

You have to wonder, though, whether this was truly much of a school trip of the lower proficiency politics classes. Seemed more like clueless, poorly scheduled sight-seeing to me. That’s not to say the teachers were too stupid to plan this – they just failed to do so in time. The whole trip was just a reaction to the one of the two higher proficiency classes, and that is exactly how it felt.

So, that was Berlin. Nice town, although way overpriced at anything (hotel costs, food costs, government money we have invested through taxes) and maybe feeling a little, uh, “infinitely unfinished”?

If you want something like Berlin, just cooler, I suggest Chicago.