20mm to Freedom

So, there you have it. Fat, sweaty construction workers doing double duty as archeologists. This is actually impressive. You can see the city and metal pipes, or perhaps clay they didn't really let me get a close-up look. This city was built thousands of years before Christ was born. Some estimate that Serdica, or parts, is 7,000 years old. 

This also happens to be a metro station. There is a church on display in the metro station, or the ruins of one anyway. The church is from around the 4th century A.D. so there is a lot of history stacked on top of itself.

 Because the Serdicans enjoyed a bit of sport there was a colosseum just outside Serdica, it was nearly as big as The Colosseum in Rome. Someone built a hotel on it, and a few embassies as well as a few other things. Hey, progress what are you going to do?

The color of the road here, and in much of the city center, is important too. The bricks are yellow. I read somewhere that they were specially made and that no one really knows the formula to make the exact color again. You can read a little about it here but it looks like the bricks are now a national heritage. So, yes, to Bulgarians they are kind of important. I think to most people they are just bricks.

Not far from the Lasko, across the street actually, are some important government offices. I believe it's parliament, but I'll have to ask a Bulgarian to be sure. There was a small card table set up across the street from this building with a person sitting there in protest with what I assume was some sort of petition.

There is a changing of the guard here once an hour I think. I walked by while it was happening once and decided it wasn't really worth my time to go back and see it again. Either way, guarding this building must be intolerably difficult judging by the expression on the face of the guard on the left. This building has a courtyard inside it, as most buildings in Europe do.

If you're walking from the Church of St. George to the Nevsky Cathedral you will see the "Russian Church" in the photo above. It has a real name too, you can read the wiki for that. It's a pretty church and minuscule inside. It is full of beautifully hand-crafted woodwork though and that alone is worth the trip inside. From what I read, the Russian Church was built at the same time as the Nevsky Cathedral. 

Above is the Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church. There is a fruit market in front of it and it ties the neighborhood together quite well. This church is where I realized that the Bulgarians not only made the church the center of their lives in a spiritual capacity, but in a physical one too. Almost every neighborhood has a church, some of them a few hundred meters from one another. Churches have small markets outside and playgrounds and parks. They are places to worship, yes but they are also places for people to meet and rest and feel safe. Most churches also had some sort of drinking fountain out front too. It really made me feel that the Bulgarian Orthodox church made an effort to be a stable element of community life. It was a refreshing thought. There was some sort of service going on when I took this photo, as you can see from the priest blessing people in front, so I didn't venture inside.

You can't mention churches in Sofia without bringing up the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. I think the Sofians are really proud of the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Some of them might also be tired of it. My friends for example. We met one night for beers and one of them asked me, "did you go to the cathedral? I've been to that thing like 100 times." She was happy that she didn't have to show me that particular landmark.

It is a monumentally impressive structure, literally it is a monument. Of course it looks like every other Bulgarian Orthodox church, but there are differences. I think the Bulgarian Orthodox Church saved a lot of money on architectural costs by using tracing paper after they designed a church they really liked. 

Theses are photos from the inside, which I don't think you're supposed to take. It is intimidating with its emptiness and size, but it isn't a warm or inviting place. I imagine the church is protective of the icons inside. There is a relic in this church and it might be from Alexander Nevsky, the guy the church was built for. The acoustics are amazing for speaking and holding mass, but horrible for trying to sneak photos with a super-loud DSLR with a mirror that sounds like a firecracker every time it goes off in a quiet place. There is a crypt turned museum under the cathedral and you are allowed to take photos in there. 

Stepping away from the churches for a moment, and staying with the history theme. The city was founded because there were hot springs there. I'm not sure why, but ancient people all wanted to stick a city on top of hot springs. 

These are the Sofia baths. They used the water from the hot springs. They are closed now and the building has been turned into a museum. Allow me to show you what is currently in the museum.

So, yes the place is basically empty. I'm not being fair though. There is a horribly inadequate exhibit about architecture upstairs above the hall where this car is parked. I would have loved to get closer to the car, but the glass door to the exhibit hall was locked. I image this place will make an amazing museum once there are actual museum pieces in it. It is an enchanting building and it still smells a little like a bath. 

Very near the building for the baths are the public fountains for the springs. There are public fountains outside the baths too. These are across the street and they were almost crowded. 

The dog on the right in the above photo is a stray. Sofia has a feral animal problem. There are stray cats and dogs everywhere. No one really seems to care about it and I saw some people feeding stray dogs like pigeons in the park, it was kind of strange. Mostly the stray dogs are just lying around not bothering anyone. If you haven't seen a stray cat before please tell me where you live in the comments and if there are job and housing openings there. 

What you see there is a Roma (Gypsy) family dumpster diving with a home-made horse cart, and an uncooperative horse, literally a few dozen meters from the busiest and most high-brow shopping pedestrian street in the center of Sofia. It's almost like if you saw this on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. 

All over Sofia there are parks. People like to visit them and relax. It makes a lot of sense. Prague is very similar in this respect. I think it has something to do with the fact that everyone lives in apartments and nobody has a yard to chill in. If you don't have a yard you might as well head to the local park. I have three parks a stone's throw from where I live, I don't chill in them as much as I should.

This is the National Theater. The huge fountain helping keep things cool and there are many trees around the park. It is a meeting place for a group of old men who were always in the same spot and arguing about things. They may not have been arguing, but when you don't understand a language so well it often sounds like people are arguing. 

It's not just a place for retired guys to meet, drink beer and discuss (argue) politics or whatever it is they talk about. It is also a place of people to meet and play chess, I assume for money. There are parks in San Francisco where this happens.

This guy is a few feet away from the usual chess spot. Maybe he is the bargain teacher, or maybe he is really just in it to enjoy some games. It doesn't matter to me, anyone who brings pillows in addition to his chess set is committed. Next to him is a public drinking fountain.

On the other side of the fountain is where the serious chess action happens. I saw a few pretty big crowds around some of the games and there were at least four games going on every time I was there. I had a "one that got away" photo moment in this park with a guy who brought a chess set, table and chairs and set it up next to the fountain. As one of my photo professors always used to tell me, "show me, don't tell me." So I will shut up about that now.

There is also the park near the National Palace of Culture. Everything is a "palace" in Sofia, if it's a government building that is. In that park several interesting things were going on. It is a busy park and it is under construction which makes it even more crowded since 50% of it is fenced off. 

In the park by the palace is this dilapidated sculpture in it. My friend told me it is controversial. Some people want to restore it, others want to tear it down. I just took a picture of it. 

In this park, and others, people rent electric cars for kids. At first I thought all these parents were schlepping heavy, battery-operated toy cars to the park for their kids to play with. Then I saw that there were guys renting them. Its one of the funniest things I've ever seen and one of the coolest at the same time. There isn't any way a kid at the park would not be completely intolerable until his parents bought him some time in an electric Big Foot truck.

Finally, because I have run out of words to accompany the photos I've placed here, I will show this photo of the monument to the Russian soldiers who liberated Sofia. This isn't the whole monument. It is, like a lot of places in Sofia, a huge park. It is also a skate park. I actually love seeing gigantic communist monuments turned into skate parks. It is how you truly know capitalism won.

A little under a year ago I went to Berlin for the first time, and only time at this point. It has taken me a while to write about it for various reasons I won't get into.

At this point I decided the best thing for this space is to pick up where I left off and just get right into it. So, with out further ado:

I took the train, like I try to most of the time I travel, and it was a pretty interesting trip. My cabin was empty until I got to Dresden. Then two wonderful old German ladies joined me for the rest of the trip to Berlin. They mostly discussed either a trip to the hospital or convent, there was a lot of discussion about "swestern."

Before the ladies found their way into my cabin, a man, who to me appeared to be homeless, asked me for some money. I pretended that I didn't understand him and then my future cabin mates behind him became his victims. This would have been fairly uneventful -- I hardly call two nice ladies giving a beggar two euros each an event. The thing is, right after he got his money from them he proceeded straight to the lavatory, locked the door and remained there until Berlin. I would have expected a German train conductor to both notice and do something about a lavatory that was locked for nearly three hours, but this guy was safe.

Once I got to the hauptbahnhoff I was immediately impressed. There are trains going though the station on tracks 50 feet in the air. It was pretty cool. There was also a fairly good military presence. I suppose security isn't something Germans take a laize faire attitude about.

I pretty much started exploring right away. On this trip I only made it to two "museums" and another trip is definitely in order because there is so much more to see. I of course did see the wall in a few different places throughout the city.

The first place I saw that I can only describe as imposing was the Reichstag. It is just massive and an amazing structure. It's right next to the modern parliament complex and as far as I know no legislative business happens here now. The Reichstag is also very close to the Brandenburg Gate and a bunch of other stuff. This had me thinking that maybe Berlin was kind of small and that I could see quite a bit of it quickly. I was wrong. 

You see the glass dome on the top of the Reichstag? You can go up in it when you get a tour. You need to book a tour in advance -- next time I'm totally doing this. It's not far in advance, there are booths a few dozen meters away from the building where you can get a tour. I think it is mainly for security reasons, because there is a substantial security checkpoint outside the building. Like I said, Germans don't goof around with their security.

The obvious next place to go after the Reichstag was the Brandenburg Gate. It too is an impressive structure with a ridiculously beautiful park right behind it. I'd love to show some amazing photo of the gate here but there was a slight problem. There was some sort of soccer tournament happening in Brazil at the time and Germany was doing pretty well. As a result the was a giant television screen and stage set up behind the gate. It didn't really make for a great photo of the thing. I did take a photo though, because what trip to Berlin would be complete without one.

As you can see there is a big structure behind it. There was also a giant white barrier all around the bottom. I didn't photograph that here because it was really really really ugly. On the day of the soccer tournament final there were nearly 500,000 people crammed into the park behind the gate to watch the game -- and drink. I tried to get in, but there was just no way. I watched the game in a bar with some old German dudes, some of whom started crying when the game ended.

So, the next thing you have to see is Checkpoint Charlie. I thought, "I bet it's pretty close." I thought wrong. It is at least a few kilometers from the Brandenburg Gate perhaps two miles. I don't remember. I also got turned around trying to find it because it isn't exactly obvious unless you've seen it before. After you've seen it once there is no mistaking where it is. Conveniently located nearby are a few places where you can check out some remaining pieces of the wall as well. There are some museums and other things around Checkpoint Charlie and I'd have to say I bet it is COMPLETELY different than it was 30 years ago. I do know a few people who were there when it was an active checkpoint. Their photos look a whole lot different than mine. It was so crazy and busy that I decided it might be better to make my way back at night to photograph it with less people.

I was right. Even at this time of night, which was somewhere around 2100, I had to wait for tourists to stop taking photos in front of the thing before I could get this. Notice the McDonalds right behind it. Talk about making a stereotype come true. I found it interesting that there is still an American flag there, but I suppose it was for effect.

There was more to see of course and it did look pretty interesting during the day too. They had some neat signage and giant photos of both U.S. and Soviet soldiers to punctuate the idea that this place used to be a major border with security beyond what most of us will ever really know about.

They made it pretty clear which way you were going with these signs. On the obverse of this sign was the "You are leaving the soviet sector" message and a giant photo of PFC Beltbuckle your checkpoint sentry for the day.

While I was looking at the checkpoint I heard some commotion on the "American" side of the checkpoint near a museum for it. I wandered over to see what was going on. As it turns out some Germans were having a protest in the middle of the street that leads to the checkpoint. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that they didn't have a permit for this protest since it was in the middle of the street and all.

They were carrying on and making a bunch of racket in addition to climbing on buildings and blocking traffic in the street. Then, in the most spineless move of protest I have ever seen, they evaporated as soon as police sirens got close. The only thing more impressive than their cowardice was how quickly they disbursed. It was literally less than 30 seconds and there was no way to tell who had been participating and who was just an innocent bystander. Perhaps the repercussions for such activity are more intense in Germany than they are in the U.S. but I was still disappointed with them.

Like I said, from Checkpoint Charlie it is easy to go see a defunked section of the Berlin Wall and start to understand why people didn't just hop over, or under, it.

There isn't much to say here. It's a 20 foot tall reinforced concrete wall with a cap on the top to make it more difficult to climb over. Someone who was an experienced, or fairly desperate, climber might not have too much trouble with this. Understand though that 30 years ago this would have been pretty smooth. That would have complicated things a bit and I'm willing to bet there were very few East Berlin bouldering gyms at the time. The problem gets a little more compounded however.

When you go the the Berlin Wall Memorial it becomes more clear. It wasn't just one damned wall. It was a wall, a huge section of open space patrolled by dogs and soldiers, and another wall. So, it's a little easier to see why more people didn't just hop the thing and sprint to freedom. I have a lot more respect for people who were able to get around this thing. 

The memorial shows a lot more and there are small circles on the ground where people were killed trying to get over the wall. 

The S-Bahn station here, Nordbahnhof, is fairly interesting because it was closed for a very long time. The reason is that the metro lines went under both zones of the city. It would have been pretty easy to just sneak into the train tunnel and then walk to a station outside the soviet zone. The soviets put a stop to that quite quickly and used all manner of motion-sensing equipment and alarms to keep people from doing just this. This station is a small museum about how people tried to escape through the metro tunnels. It's also an active station. A quick note about the Berlin UBahn, the doors open when the trains are still going about 20kph so be ready for that if you go.

Overall the wall is humbling thing to see and honestly, at the memorial you would have to be pretty dead inside not to feel something about how oppressive it must have been to live with this thing in your backyard. Compound that with the fact that in many places you could most likely see progress happening from your bedroom window with no way to do anything about it and you'll understand why some people risked everything to get out.

So, then there is Potsdamer Platz which I guess was supposed to be part of Hitler's impressive Berlin redesign. You can say a lot of things about the crazy little dictator, but you can't say he didn't have BIG plans. The big tower thing in the previous picture is at Potsdamer Platz as are a few other things, like hotels and fountains and a church or two. It's a pretty large open space and there is a lot going on there.

Even Poseidon needs a groovy pair of kicks, right? I really just thought it was amusing that someone would chuck a pair of shoes on this fountain. You see this done all over the world on power lines, but not very often on fountains.

As I said, I was in Berlin at the same time that some big world-wide soccer tournament thing was happening. The final game was going to be between Germany and Argentina. Next to one of the fountains at Potsdamer Platz some Argentines decided to play a little pickup game of soccer. Now, I'm not one to say if this is appropriate or not, the place is a public square after all so good on them. Turns out one of them got a little over excited and kicked the ball to the top of a fountain. Rather than just write the ball off as a loss, because soccer balls are expensive, a rescue was arraigned.

Now, I only assume that this gentleman is Argentine. I base my assumption on his skin color, yes I'm racially profiling this guy, and his Argentina blue jacket. He seems to be taking in the view after going to retrieve his precious ball. I really do hope he isn't taunting the Germans about the soccer game because seriously, everyone knew Germany was going to win. I have some other photos I like less where he is clearly taunting someone.

The other thing I noticed from Potsdamer Platz was the sheer scale of construction that is, or was, happening in Berlin. I took a photo to illustrate my point -- duh isn't that why I do all of this? There were more tower cranes than you can see in the photo and I can count at least 12. I think the flower that best represents Berlin is the tower crane.

So, I did visit a few "museums." I use quotation marks because they were anything but traditional. I wanted to visit them both and I was pretty excited before I went. One was awesome, with only one smallish problem, the other was a HUGE, massive, depressing disappointment as well as perhaps a good learning experience and affirmation of my beliefs about certain things.

The really really cool one was the Berlin Underworld Society. If it's under Berlin and interesting, these guys probably have a tour of it. Take a look at their website to be sure, it's in English. I was interested in most of the things they had to offer, but only had time for one -- the flak tower tour.

You can check one of my many Vienna posts to find out a little more about flak towers, there will be another Vienna post at some point. 

Hitler built a few of these towers in Berlin. They tell you quite a lot about them during the tour, but in addition to being AAA firing platforms they were also bomb shelters. The tour guide also speculated that they were also designed to become grand palaces after the war. Grand, bomb-proof palaces.

So, how do you destroy a giant reinforced concrete structure designed to withstand the force of the largest bomb anyone in 1940 could imagine? The answer, if you're French, is that you don't. There were a few of these towers in the city when the war ended and since areally-delivered ordinance (read bombs) of the day just wasn't capable of even scratching these structures they needed to be blown up by expert sappers from the ground. Only the French found a way to screw this up. Lucky for me, because they have tours -- inside. Unfortunately, they don't allow you to take photos. My guess is that they misunderstand copyright and trademark issues and want to cover their asses. Hey, they are spelunkers not lawyers.

This is what remains of the tower. FDC was in a different tower and controlled all the gun towers. This thing looks like it is on a hill, it's not really. It is surrounded by a giant pile of rubble that has become a hill. This is not something rare for Berlin. The allies did some pretty substantial destructive work on the city. Now the flak tower is a climbing wall and park. It overlooks a neighborhood called Gesundbrunnen, which is crawling with Islamic peoples who refuse to assimilate for the most part.

The next place I went to was also built on the rubble created when Berlin was destroyed by the allies. It's called Teuflesberg and it means Devil's Mountain. Most of the rubble from the war was collected and piled up near the Olympic Stadium forming a huge hill, the largest in the city in fact. On top of that a listening station was built. This grand place had electronic ears that scanned the skies during the cold war and intercepted messages from the soviets keeping Europe, and by default the world, safe from the Red Menace. I know one person who visited the place once when it was operational -- at least that is what he told me. It is ALL he told me. 

I was really expecting something moderately impressive. In reality the place needs to be bulldozed to match the rubble that it is constructed on top of. Somewhere after it was decommissioned and all the important equipment removed it became an artist community. A counter-culture, free-love, use-all-the-drugs-you-want-and-be-responsible-for-nothing artist community. Someone bought it and had grand plans -- but then he got high.

So, if you're interested in seeing why counter-culture societies don't work, by all means visit the burnt out wastoids at Teuflesberg. It's pretty clear that at one time it was a come-in-and-check-it-out-everyone-is-welcome kind of place, then someone got a little wise and decided a complex that should be condemned isn't a place you just want people wandering into to play around in. There is a group of "artists" who live there and get high in addition to giving "tours" of the place. If you do take a "tour" don't expect to learn anything, you'll really just have a fucked-up drug user walk around and kind of make sure you don't kill yourself by falling off a building with no walls. They do have a pet pig though "Swiney" he's cute. The views are also really cool.

Here you can see that most of the walls here are covered with graffiti. Yes, some of the artists have some talent at least when it comes to copying other people's styles and imagery. I can honestly say the only "original" thing most of these people have done is lived in this place. It can't be easy because they don't have access to the municipal water or electric services. It's funny what happens when you don't pay bills because that's not what counter culture is all about.

Like I said, the place has some pretty good views since it's the highest place in the city. It also reaffirmed my belief that socialism doesn't function when every member of your society decides that "art" is their work. I'm willing to bet that this place subsists primarily on charity and benefit payments from the German government. It's a shame too, because it could have been something great.

I'll stop with my complaints about counter culture now.

As it turns out, there is a river in Berlin. Who knew, right? A popular past time is sitting by the river in a lounge chair and drinking beer. This is something I can totally get behind. People do something similar in Prague, but without the lounge chairs. In this respect the Czechs seem to have things a little bit more together, but who am I to say?

In an attempt to experience this lounging by the river and drinking beer I made my way one afternoon to the banks of the Spree, that's the river's name if you hadn't guessed. Sadly there weren't any lounge chairs available, but I saw some other neat stuff.

I was able to take a seat on a small retaining wall by the river and watch two Russian men pull fish out of the river. These guys were doing pretty well. The only way I knew they were Russian was because a Russian family with a young daughter walked by them and the daughter spoke with the men for a little while. 

My Russian isn't what you'd call "great" or really even "extant" for that matter, but I know enough to know it was Russian. She stopped to say something to them before leaving and gave me a cute frame.

Near there was a riverside flea market type thing that was wrapping up but it was a little overpriced and there wasn't anything I was interested in. I was able to grab this photo of a puppet-show theater on wheels and a badass ice-cream truck.

The whole shebang was happening next to a museum. I didn't go inside the museum, but I saw a real-live stone cutter making some column caps in a shed next to the museum. It was very cool to see the restoration/recreation process from this perspective. I'm not so sure there is an effective way to have a machine do this work. He was going off an original which was highly worn and needed to use a lot of creativity and experience to fill in the gaps and make a new one. This level of craftsmanship is something I have a lot of respect for. 

This stuff will probably be 3D printed in the future. Let's hope not. 

That is pretty much it from this trip to Berlin. I really enjoyed it. The city is completely different from Prague. There were of course good parts and bad parts, but I've just written the Cliff's Notes here. As I said, another trip is in order and I will surely write about it again.

Pretty much your standard fare here with skulls and bones stacked on top of each other. The light was nice inside the basement part of the chapel though and someone had placed a small flower arrangement on one of the corner areas. I won't bore you with a multitude of stacked-bone photos. If you really want to see those you can look back to my first post about the place.

The upper gallery of the church was open and I decided to venture up there. If you can I think it is worth seeing. There is a lot of information about the history of the place and how the construction progressed from 1380 or something. The place is OLD. My favorite part of the history was a story about how the monks at the Jesuit college next door took over the church for a while and replaced the baroque roof with a renaissance one. Everyone hated it, except the monks of course, and as soon as the town got control back the first thing they did was replace the baroque roof. The church also happens to be one of the only ones in the world, if not the only one, with dual flying buttresses. I couldn't really find any information on it on the internet. You can see in the photos the double buttresses, and baroque roof.

As I was wandering around the church I noticed that people were setting up for some sort of symphonic concert. I didn't think a whole lot of it and I assumed that whatever event it was would begin long after I left. Then something started to happen about 16:00.

They started warming up. It was loud and chaotic and yet still impressive and beautiful. The acoustics in the place during the warmup were absolutely amazing. It was so loud that the above flautist was forced to play mere inches from this pillar to even have a chance of hearing himself. The funny thing was this tumultuous cacophony of noise was anything but an assault. It really did sound beautiful thanks the the design of the church. Then about 16:30 this happened.  

The warmup changed into a rehearsal of one of the pieces in set for the performance, complete with violin soloist. While the piece itself was beautiful, it wasn't really the most amazing composition I've ever heard. The sound however, was nothing short of moving. There really isn't any way to describe it with mere words. It was all around you and literally the most amazing "concert" I have ever seen in my entire life. The only thing I could think to do was try and record it at least a little bit. There is a video at the bottom here that I took with my phone. Watch it, listen to it. The sound is still impressive even though it was recorded with a crappy phone microphone. It was so moving and inspiring that I was actually glad the mine tour was sold out, because if it weren't for that unfortunate inconvenience I never would have experienced this beautiful moment.