On my mission to see as many new places as I can this year, I have only re-visited a few European cities outside of Hungary (like Vienna and Ljubljana), but when I heard about the opportunity to go back to Berlin... I was champing at the bit! Berlin is one of my all-time favourite cities and it just so happens to be the site of the International Fulbright Seminar each year...
The Fulbright Program continues to impress and introduce me to incredible opportunities; this week was just an extension of the standard. The program was filled with insightful panel discussions, networking forums, workshops, cultural outings, and capped with an incredible Music Gala at the Universität der Kúnste Concert Hall. Not to mention, they put us up in the middle of the middle... in Alexanderplatz at the famous Park Inn Hotel... But, above all, the most valuable part of the conference for me was meeting all the other Fulbrighters from around Europe... hearing their stories, learning about their experiences, and exchanging perspective of culture. From medical doctors to professors, writers to scientists, students to researchers; everyone has a unique story and they all add to the global effort... it's pretty freaking awesome really.
I arrived a day early to do some exploring on my own... to meddle around the art scene, seeing what I could discover. Just as happenstance, I finally had the opportunity to watch Exit Through The Gift Shop on the train to Budapest the morning that I left... and the inspiration hit at just the right moment. Just a few hours later, I was walking along the East Side Gallery... peeping, arguably, the best street art scene in the world... I walked along the Berlin Wall remains and stared at the Super Moon, the biggest, brightest, and closest full moon in almost twenty years... on the eve of the spring equinox... and Luna's sixth birthday!
The flexible conference schedule gave us a lot of time to tour the city... and since I had already been to Berlin before (and did the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, the Führerbunker, etc.), I was able to dig further into the rich art scene that Berlin has to offer. I can't even begin to abstract all the places I wandered into and all the rad people I met over the course of the week... but these are a few places I remembered to write down (or at least take a photo of)...
Neurotitan Gallery. Off the beaten path, this gallery had plenty of new artists and lots of household street artist names too (Banksy, Blue, etc).
Neue Nationalgalerie. (New National Gallery) An incredible collection of expressionism, dada, bauhaus, and surrealism... from Kirchner to Léger, modern to contemporary... all very cool.
Mauerpark. This place is the illest! I originally went to meet up with Saya, a former student of mine and current student at Humboldt University in Berlin... She was helping out at Operation Onigiri... trading rice balls and paper cranes for donations to the earthquake/tsunami relief fund in Japan. I finally got a chance to meet up with her (about five hours after I got there), which was awesome! And, in the meantime I got caught up in the party in the park, fading into the crowd of thousands at the Sunday Market!
Hamburger Bahnhof. This huge contemporary art museum is housed in an old train station... one of the coolest art spaces I've ever seen. I went with Saya and her sister, who was visiting from Japan.
Deutsche Guggenheim. Agathe Snow: All Access World. Radical reinvention and inspiring aesthetic experiments!
Vans Butcher Block. One of only eight Vans retail stores in the continent, this one must be the king! This real-deal old-school butcher shop turned shoe store has an exclusive limited edition slip-on to represent the (over 100-year old) original green porecelain tiles...
The only bummer of the week was when I found out The Black Keys canceled their gig at Astra on Tuesday night... I had plans to check it out, BUT it just gave me more time to check out some other local Berlin dives at night, including: Astro Bar (some funky little hipster joint in the hot Freidrichshain District) and White Trash Fast Food (yes, that is the name of this tattoo studio / independent cinema / nightclub... and, yes, it is as cool as it sounds).
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