Weird!
But at last, late that afternoon, we made it to Berlin, a city that had been hyped by Dr. Hatteberg for weeks as the coolest city you'll ever see. He may be biased - after all, he lived there for two years in the early 90s.
We dropped things off at the hotel, where I seriously considered just going immediately to bed, but I knew that would entail missing some interesting things, so I went out to this food festival others had heard about and were talking up with a group.
We had to take the subway to get there, which Hope helped us navigate, having also lived here for two years in the early 90s, and once there we agreed on a meeting point and time for getting back.
The festival itself was immensely crowded, filling the streets and sidewalks of the collection of blocks it occupied, and a handful of us quickly tired of fighting our way through crowds, so we broke off to see what some of the quieter blocks were like.
We found a place for dinner, and everyone but myself ate - I was still full from all the pizza at lunch, and besides, what I was feeling more than anything was run down and in need of sleep. So I just had a soda.
After food, we found a nice park at the end of one of the streets and hung out there for a bit before making our way back to the subway meeting spot.
Waited around for the last few people, then made our way back to the hotel for some much needed sleep. It was crucial to be well-rested for the next day, where we would be singing as part of the Pentecost service at the Berliner Dom, one of the most impressive Cathedrals I've ever seen and by far the best place acoustically I've ever sung in.
Happily, we had as part of our repertoire some of the music Mendelssohn had written specifically for this church back in the day, so we paired that along with some of our other sacred pieces for music throughout the service. It seemed to go over well.
Next, we went to another dome, this one attached to the Reichstag building, famous for burning down in 1933 giving the Nazis a good excuse to drum up fear across Germany and get themselves entrenched in power. Today, it is still a governmental building that holds the Bundestag, which is more or less the German congress.
We got ourselves a nice tour of the place, courtesy of someone somewhere liking our choir and inviting us. Shots of the tour:
The color of those chairs was apparently invented just for this room. Or something along those lines.
Then, a second, adjoining tour up to the roof to walk around the big glass dome:
I don't really know why it's there but it's hecka neat.
Here's a buncha people sitting under the German flag:
And a shot of the building as we drove away:
We then went into the city to this Currywurst place Dr. Hatteberg had been hyping for a few days, which I thought was fine but nothing to write home about, and then to the last stop of our group tour for that morning and afternoon: Mendelssohn's grave.
Mendelssohn has been an important component of Dr. Hatteberg's life, of the Cardinal Singers' repertoire historically, and of our specific iteration's repertoire that year, so it was only natural we'd pay the site a visit. And - as always - sing a bit for him.
For some reason, we all made a pact to return to that site in 50 years time, June 5th of 2067. I know I'll be there, provided I'm still alive. Just hope we have all the parts covered so we can sing again.
Once that was over, we got on the bus and returned to the hotel, where it was free time for the rest of the night. A couple people and I were planning to go out to see the Brandenburg Gate, but we were greeted just outside the lobby with pouring rain. Instead, we got dinner at a place close by called Ambrosius and made contingency plans for the following morning, which would also be free time.
We did get a good early start the next day, while not the supremely early hour we'd initially planned. Made it to our first stop, called Potsdammer Platz, where there was supposed to still be part of the Berlin wall up. It took some asking around to find it:
We got to the place eventually, which was a few remaining slabs of the wall, but mostly just a line where it had once stood:
But it's pretty weird to imagine the city, now whole, having once been sectioned off in such a stark way. Clearly a different time.
I've sometimes mused about how there are people who, being born in late 2001 or early 2002, just missed one of the most impactful events in history, which of course was 9/11. While I remember it vividly, for them it is just yet another event read about in history books, as distant in time to them as the World Wars or Ancient Greece (that is to say, infinitely so). And I've wondered what that must be like. But of course, it didn't take much time to realize that I, having been born in December of 1989, know exactly what that feels like in relation to the Berlin Wall coming down.
Anywho! Enough naval-gazing. The group continued on, passing this city block sized memorial:
And the US Embassy:
Before reaching our gated destination at last:
Glorious!
...we then spent an hour or so souvenir shopping. Not my favorite, nor my choice, but oh well. It gave me time to pore over the map of Berlin and plan a walking route back to the hotel that would take us by some interesting spots:
We only made it to that statue before the rest of the group elected to return to the hotel to have enough time to pack. I had something else I particularly wanted to see, so I bid them auf wiedersehen and went out on my own.
Then at last made it to my destination: this old church that had been bombed out during WWII but had been rebuilt in an ultra-modern style:
That was damn cool, and the rest of them missed it! Their loss.
Got back to the hotel with time to spare and packed up most everything as it would need to be for the flight home, leaving just a few things on top with easy access for our final night. The stop in Frankfurt was not really one of sightseeing or performance or anything, but rather just to get us in proximity to the airport for the next day.
It took another long drive to get there, with a stop at a German gas station Subway for lunch, and by the time we arrived my "trip is ending" sensors seemed to be running full blast. I cooped up in the hotel room and went to bed early. I likely would not have done that had I not visited the city before, back in 2015 - it would have been like the Wrocław night, with just a quick walkaround to see the city at all. But I was pretty much done.
The next morning, after breakfast, we said goodbye to the dozen or so people sticking around in Europe to do some further exploration. I probably would have enjoyed doing that, especially given some of the far-flung places I saw through Instagram in the days and weeks that followed, but it was also nice to get home and rest. And as hum-drum as it sounds, it was good to get back to making money rather than spending it.
Someone took this photo as the other 30 of us boarded the bus and left the hotel:
At the airport, we sang for Norbert, he having completed his final bus drive for us. Then, to my great surprise, I saw parents of host families around us, reuniting with their "children" and saying goodbye!
And there, in the middle-distance, already talking to Ethan and Chris, was Elie, come from Staudt to see us off.
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