Where have all the angels gone

Flew in to Berlin around 12 pm. It was freezing. I found some free benches on the airport to sleep on and the whole hobo thing was really happenning once again.

It had been a dream for years to come here, with so many historical and cultural references gathered there. In the morning, the first thing I did after dropping my bags in a locker was to take a musical reference train ride: the U2, from Zoo Station, to Potsdam Platz. The underground train looked just like it did in ‘Der Himmel Uber Berlin’! However, Potsdam Platz looked nothing like what I hoped it would look like. Granted, those hopes were taken from the same movie, where the whole thing is just a plain of mud with some derelict housing estates in the background. The hi-tech Sony center completely upset that aesthetic.

At the ‘Film Museum’ at Potsdam Platz, I found a map of Berlin with all the locations of ‘Der Himmel Uber Berlin’ indicated. I thought I’d base my sightseeing around that, as it’s one of my favourite films. Unfortunately, very little of that kind of Berlin was left, with developers having ‘improved’ things. Still, it was interesting to walk around and see how much the city had changed. Much of the architecture in the new developments was absolutely stunning, and I enjoyed the decentralised nature of the city and the dyed hair, army clad radical youth aesthetic.