So earlier this year, I was notified that a choir was looking for an accompanist for a tour of North-Eastern Europe. I love traveling, and Europe, and music, so I was like “heck yiss let’s go” except more formal because they were paying my airfare/hotels/transportation because I poor and can’t afford to go otherwise.

Here’s the photo evidence of what I saw! Click for larger on pretty much all pictures.

The first flight was Vancouver-Frankfurt, which was about 10 hours I think? I was on the left side of the middle bank of seats, and the guy in the window seat to the left kept opening his window every couple hours which, since we never crossed the terminus line, would let a BLAST OF SUNLIGHT into the cabin every time. I think he was trying to check the view, since the map said we were flying over Greenland and such, but I doubt he saw anything from our altitude and also I WAS TRYING TO SLEEP and failing because I don’t fall asleep easily at the best of times and on airplanes basically never. I watched a couple of space documentaries, though. One was about Elon Musk, one was about the ESA, and one was about the Space Shuttle! Flew Lufthansa and the food was actually pretty good.

Customs was really simple as usual when entering Europe; no talking involved, which was great, as I was kind of sleep-deprived and grumpy!

The above is on the Frankfurt-Berlin flight, showing the German countryside – it almost looks like a game map, forests and farms and towns all equally dispersed.

Coming into Berlin, you can see the radio tower on the left, and right in the middle is the Berliner Dom with the copper green domed roof at Museum Island! Tegel Airport was surprisingly small with surprisingly old technology.

So that evening was the welcome dinner, everyone got a free shot (I had about a millilitre of mine and I was good haha (it burned)), there was the most amazing buffet (lots of hotel buffets on this trip! this hotel had the BEST breakfast buffet though), and then I went to bed on time because haha I was pretty tired after that.

My room was crazy posh and they didn’t even assign me a roommate the whole trip (except one time when we were staying at a smaller hotel but seriously I didn’t mind) so I had it all to myself which is ridiculously kind of the organizers <3

(the only thing about this hotel was that the water pressure and temperature in the shower was kind of variable, but the amazing breakfast buffet more than made up for that. Anything you can imagine for breakfast, they had, and then some!)

The street outside this hotel was largely pedestrian only (it’s a dead end) and filled with trees, and those trees were full of birds singing and singing all day, it was really quite magical.

Day 1 proper began with me heading downtown on the bus (the trains were down :P) to meet up with my two European friends, Tharash and Khem. We all play FFXIV together, and they live in cities close enough that meeting for the weekend was feasible! We decided to meet on Museum Island because we’re all giant nerds who like museums! This picture is of the Altes Museum which looks cool but I didn’t go in that one.

The Berliner Dom, which I also did not go inside; if you look closely you can see two menfolk heading in my direction as we hadn’t met up yet.

We then greeted each other, and traded gifts – I brought smoked salmon, Tharash brought Belgian chocolate, and Khem brought FFXIV pins as seen above (they’ve been sold out of Dark Knight pins for a while so I am now a proud pin-carrying member of the Dragoon Floor-tank Brigade) (Khem has Summoner, and Tharash was of course Scholar). Then we headed west a block to visit the Deutsches Historisches Museum, because I wanted an overview of German history.

The bridge to the west had many statues like this; my impression is that they’re related to the tale of Troy but I didn’t see any signs explaining that so I could be incorrect. Those nipples could cut glass though. Heck, those abs could probably cut glass. But the sword can’t cut anything.

Hippocampi! Why? Dunno! On the left are centaur-mermaids which I didn’t even know was a thing! Greek mythology be cray.

Pictures were not allowed in the museum, but Tharash snuck in a couple, because he’s multiclassed to rogue. The museum had many suits of armour, which was our favourite part; also a wacky medieval fantasy sword with teeth, so it seems humans have had a fondness for cool impractical weapons since forever. Although seeing a screaming person running at you with this thing would be pretty intimidating. There were many objects covered with ornate decorations, and it really struck me that the more modern something was, the less filigree it had. I think it’s a little sad that this tends to be the case, that modernism is all about efficiency rather than beauty (although modern stuff can be beautiful! Just not in the way that this medieval/Baroque stuff is, with its inefficient indulgent glorious romanticism) (we don’t even have to hand-craft everything anymore, and it still hasn’t come back in style). That’s probably why I like FFXIV and all its impractically ornamented art design so much, haha.

When I retrieved my camera from the bag desk, I took a picture of the courtyard, which has been covered over (it was quite warm :O)

Also Khem, who’s been living in Germany for like 11 years, was really nice about translating signs my monolingual butt can’t handle. Thank youuuu <3

This square is across from the Deutsches Historisches Museum but it is quite familiar to me from Nazi Zombie Army, which goes all over Berlin past a lot of famous landmarks lol.

After I left the guys to go to choir rehearsal, the bus went right by the Canadian embassy! I didn’t need it but it was cool to know it was there.

Our first rehearsal took place in a little chapel beside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. I played piano, not the organ, but it was a nice piano.

During break, I stepped outside to take a couple pictures of the old church, which was bombed during WWII. For some reason the modern bell tower beside it was covered in a giant Huawei advertisement. This was controversial to several people in the choir but I wasn’t paying attention to cellphone scandals in the past year so it kind of went over my head. More importantly, that is indeed a giant bird’s nest in the empty space, and it’s an art installation. Unfortunately I was a dummy and didn’t take a picture of the poster explaining that so I don’t know who created it.

During my entire trip, I saw a lot of really incredible roses; here’s the first batch, around the chapel.

I don’t know if it was rose season or what, but over here in Europe they seemed healthier and longer-lasting than the roses I’ve seen in North America.

The front of the church.

The mosaics on the ceiling were incredibly gorgeous; the people in them were near-photorealistic which strikes me as being difficult to do in mosaic but they did. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the other side of the ceiling, which was even better than this side, featuring real historical people with nametags (like the eponymous Kaiser Wilhelm), because they were selling postcards of that side and I thought it would be disrespectful to take pictures instead of buying one (but I didn’t buy one haha I played myself). However you can see a picture of the whole ceiling and read about the history of this church (and its rather ugly modern replacement (redeeming feature: 63-rank pipe organ)) on this page.

Model showing the original church and its neighbourhood. Can you believe that within ten years of its (expensive, lavish) construction, people were campaigning to have it torn down because it was making traffic inefficient? Germans smh

The modern neighbourhood, showing that all that survives of the church today is really just the entranceway.

After rehearsal, I went to go find my friends again; we agreed to meet at the Reichstag but it’s a big building! It still took me a while and I was pretty hot and thirsty once I arrived, and then I had to go all the way around to find them. I thought this was the front at first, it’s so grand.

No. THIS IS THE FRONT.

The glass dome can be touristed, but one needs to make reservations beforehand, and we had not, so we just admired it from afar.

Photographic evidence that the three of us did actually exist in the same meatspace! I hadn’t viewed the front side of the Brandenburger Tor on my hurried way to the Reichstag, so the guys kindly agreed to see it again with me. It was one of the top things on my Berlin wishlist so I’m really happy to have been there.

Khem took this picture for us! I’m wearing the band shirt Tharash sent me for my birthday, and he’s wearing the Royal Tyrrell Museum shirt he obtained last winter during our roadtrip together.

We headed south, going through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was a strange experience to walk through. Sound travels oddly there, and since it’s a perfect grid, sightlines are very stark. We then passed by the parking lot that is where Hitler’s bunker used to be, which is marked only by an information sign for obvious anti-Nazi reasons. Further south, we passed the above building which was built by the Soviets in the style known colloquially as ‘Stalin Baroque’. It’s a very serious style that metaphorically announces in a stentorian, authoritative voice that “NO FUN IS ALLOWED HERE”. There is a mural in the shadows of that colonnade showing what life was idealized as under Soviet rule – brightly coloured, happy frolicking people, sunshine and rainbows – and there is a water feature in front showing an equal-sized photograph of actual life under Soviet rule – grim, sullen-faced people in poverty.

A segment of the Berlin Wall, near the amazingly-named SS museum The Topography of Terror. Even where the wall has been completely torn down, there’s a line of cobbles in the sidewalks so you know where it’s been. It won’t be forgotten.

Soviet car museum: this was the only type of car available to drive. It’s cute, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world where it was the only option.

Checkpoint Charlie. Not high on my to-do list so we just observed its existence and moved on.

Typical street. We were looking for somewhere to have dinner; eventually we settled on a really nice pub (I think it was this one?) for the purposes of eating traditional German food and I had a lemonade-beer and got super giggly. (I honestly couldn’t taste that it was lemonade; it tasted different from Tharash’s regular-beer but not in a discernibly lemony way to me.) The food was excellent but there was so much of it.

We had planned since before the trip to go up this (tethered) hot air balloon, and this was the view from near the top! It was a little breezy but the city was really neat from up here. The old buildings and the new are both really interesting in their own ways. This is looking north towards Tiergarten (the big green swath).

The big stark square to the left is the Topography of Terror; this is looking west and a bit south.

Tiergarten again, and you can see the Reichstag’s glass dome.

Even more zoom! And now you can also see the Brandenburger Tor and the Jewish Memorial.

Museum Island, feat. the Berliner Dom.

A nearby rooftop caught my attention.

Trabi World, that car museum, from above.

Afterwards, we went to get apple strudel!

The next morning began with choir rehearsal in the conference room of a nearby hotel to the one I was staying at. These roofs, seen from the conference room balcony, were interesting.

I then took the U-bahn southwest, quite a ways out of downtown, as I was going to meet the guys at the Samurai Museum, which turned out to be located in the basement of a seniors’ home. It was a formerly-private collection of armour, katanas, masks, and other war-like items from Japan. The swords and their accessories were fascinating! Again, medieval/Baroque craftsmanship is stunning all over the world. There were tables covered with incredibly detailed tsuba and minuki, some with such tiny engravings they can barely be observed with the naked eye. Some craftsmen spent a long time hunched over magnifying glasses, I expect. (takes notes for samurai character) All the fabric was faded, and I tried to imagine what it would look like when new. I imagine it was quite spectacular.

We returned downtown and I took them to see the ruined church. It’s quite strikingly framed at the end of this street (although that silly cellphone ad is kind of in the way).

Following that, we took the train much farther east to see the painted section of the Berlin Wall, what’s known as the East Side Gallery. It looks like a full-time job keeping it free of graffiti, and many sections were being worked on. In fact, graffiti seemed like a real problem all over the parts of Europe that I went to. Some places embraced it, but I think a lot of it was just visual litter. It’s especially selfish when it’s on existing art, like this wall. Anyway this panel was one of the ones that particularly struck a chord with me.

And this one is about space and given that I’m an even bigger space nerd beginning this year, I needed a picture. The text reads “You have learned what freedom means and never forget that.”

It was a pretty emotional walk, and coupled with the hot sun and some sunburn, I was a little bit wrecked at the end of it. But also at the end was this strange medieval-style bridge.

Funny graffiti on a sign in a train station.

I don’t remember why I took a picture of this building? Just because it was old, probably? It was back closer to downtown, near Tharash and Khem’s AirBnB. We went for dinner at a Japanese restaurant (unagi-donnnn), and afterwards got ice cream!

My dad has a barbecue exactly like this but somewhat smaller so I had to take a picture.

We then went back to Museum Island, approaching from the east this time. Of course this is the back of the Berliner Dom.

The front of the Alte Nationalgalerie. Goodness it’s ostentatious.

We left the island on the west side, walking north along the modern part of the Neues Museum (which is so named to differentiate from the Altes Museum, although iirc the proper part of the Neues Museum isn’t that much younger than the Altes Museum lol).

Part of the Pergammon Museum, where Tharash and Khem had spent the morning looking at Babylonian architecture while I was in choir rehearsal. Tharash was very kind and gave me a woven bookmark as a souvenir.

The Bode Museum, which I regretted a little not being able to go inside after seeing such spectacular pictures beforehand. But hey, more to see next time, when I come spend more than two days in a city at a time!

Sunset on the museum; we three were a bit quiet at that point, not sure why, but I knew I didn’t really want to stop hanging out so soon. Probably from being weary introverts who didn’t want to say goodbye yet. But anyway maybe we’ll do it again sometime!

Next stop: Leipzig!