Our groggy jet-lag was soon overpowered by the sunshine and food smells of Alexanderplatz, a bustling public area of formerly-east Berlin. Here we found the world clock, the Fountain of International Friendship, a shopping plaza, a four-story electronic store, and several street performers. The fountain was built in 1970, during the time of the German Democratic Republic, to establish the area as a public center.
Another relic of the GDR is of course the small stretch of the Berlin Wall that remains intact. For twenty-eight years that wall existed to separate all aspects of West Berlin from East Germany. It was a physical boundary as well as a representation of the oppression East Berliners endured under the corrupt government that followed WW2.
This information was not new. The topic of the corrupt socialist government has been a popular topic in American history classes since I have been in school, and I would bet heavily that this has been the case for the last half-century. Today though, seeing brought a new sense of feeling. Discordant melody rang through the site, the perseverance of humanity crashing against man's compulsion for greed and power.
It only seemed fitting to end our first day of Deutsch adventure with bier, both a German idiosyncrasy and an international fetish of mankind. (Mind you this is "bier," a liquid substance offered in Berlin to organisms that walk on two legs. This is not to be confused with "beer" a liquid substance illegal to persons under the age of 21.) Needless to say, we will all sleep well tonight.
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