A sculpture of Vladimir I. Lenin on the side of a building- photographed from the bus.
Our fourth day in Berlin already! We'd had enough of guided tours and it was time for an original Freeman tour. I was feeling great in the morning despite the pub crawl. We began by making our way to Kurfürstendamm, part of the commercial heart of the former West Berlin. It really showed- there are shops in just about every building, hocking clothes, electronics, more clothes, and other goods.
We checked out the bombed out Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
The ceiling of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
Outside the church, break dancers put on a nice show, though they were quite insistent on getting their €2 from us. After seeing how they treated Andrew when he refused to give them more money, I felt obliged to underpay as well. It wasn't exactly a 2 euro quality dance.
A break dancer dances with his skateboard while warming up before a performance outside Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
A child stares at a break dancer performing a handstand outside Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
We headed down the road to KaDeWa, a very large department store. It is the second largest in Europe, and is seven stories tall. We did go all the way up, where we got a look at the restaurant. Unfortunately it was far too crowded to get a table for such a large group.
While walking to the entrance, we passed by a large ad from Vogue that is a bit on the racy side by traditional American standards. Some other tourists thought it was good enough to take a photo of it.
A man takes a photograph of a particularly visual Vogue ad on the side of the KaDeWa department store
Our next goal was to make it to the Allied Museum (Alliierten Museum), which is at a location that was the former site of one of Prof. Freeman's teenage jobs. After getting off the S-Bahn (or was it a U-Bahn?) we walked through a very pretty residential neighborhood. As we passed near what appeared to be a school, several of us were bombarded with young children who were clamoring to get their pictures taken making silly faces.
One even decided to make offensive gestures at the camera. Quite surprising, given their age group.
We finally arrived at the Allied Museum and saw the exhibits, including a section of the wall (again), a guard tower, numerous relics, and even an actual plane from the Berlin Airlift.
I've started my correspondence with my subject now that we're facebook friends (free communication!), but he's off work for a few days. We'll see when I get to get on the move and shooting for that. In the meantime, we'll have some free days and a few group events.
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