Tuesday 26th: being a little lazy, then seeing 'Tacheles'

[ just 37 photos today: https://picasaweb.google.com/110144623598348247797/20110426?authkey=Gv1sRgCMu06O7D6r_iyQE# ]

I woke up and I was feeling quite tired. I went out to the main lounging area of the hostel and spent some time on my laptop trying to figure out the next few days. Since I'm feeling a little tired and the city looks quite nice I decided that I'll just stay in Berlin for a bit longer and then go to Amsterdam before going home. I was going to fit in some other cities after Berlin, but that seems to add some cost with transportation, and I transportation time, and since I'd been travelling for about 26 days by this point, I was starting to feel like I just wanted to be less rushed with my time.

I spent some more time sitting around on the laptop because I just felt like doing this.

In the afternoon, the guy from Australia, Evan, saw me in the room. He was having a quiet day as well, and asked if I wanted to check out some things with him in a while. I said sure.

On the way I got a subway sandwich since I hadn't eaten breakfast. Then we rode the train for a stop and then changed and got a different one. We didn't buy a ticket since they seem to be expensive and apparently they don't often check for tickets here.

We went to see some 'grafiti' and another place he said was good. I don't think grafiti is really my kind of thing, but I had no plans prior to this.

When we got off the train it was raining a lot. I thought this was great. There was lots of thunder as well. It was a kind of very loud cracking thunder as though the city was under assault.

Very heavy rain.

The rain cleared a little and we made it to this place where he wanted to see the grafiti.

actually I thought some of this stuff looked interesting.

Some stuff was just more scribbles over top of each other, though. I think that stuff is a bit stupid.

We went into this shop that sells lots of books and things about art. At first I felt a little dread that everything in the shop was about grafiti appreciation. But I found a few books about architecture. They were really interesting. One was about different materials that have been developed.

Outside they have this strange sculpture. If you toss a coin in it might do something. It also might not.

Nice looking park, as we walked to the second place that Evan wanted to check out.

This is a place behind this building called Tacheles. This is the second place Evan wanted to check out. It's a 4-5 story building which has artists living inside as squatters. They do their art and people can come and see it. It's really interesting. The government is trying to tear it down apparently. Evan was telling me that he thinks that after the wall was torn down, a lot of people left east Berlin leaving a lot of buildings empty, and then those buildings were taken up by others. I'll have to look into this theory.

We went into this area behind the main building and looked at some artwork. It was all very impressive I thought. I only have pictures of artwork from this outside area, because in the areas inside, they are quite strict at not allowing photography unless you pay them one euro, since they need to have some money for their work etc.

This is looking up at the main building from behind.

Inside the main building, could take pictures looking out, etc. Just no pictures of their artwork.

The stairwell.

Very strange place I think. It was cool to see. It is unlike anything I have seen previously.

On the top floor of the building they had an exhibit by an artist called Alexander Rodin. This artwork was amazing. He created very intricate paintings.

It is unfortunate that I could not take pictures of the inside, because I think that's where I saw some very cool things.

Then we went back to the hostel. We found that instead of taking two train journeys, it actually just one stop away. The australian guy just was not sure where it was at first.

I think that when I got back I went to a supermarket and bought lots of great food. Then I think I just spent some time with the laptop.

I'm in one of those cool multi story apartment buildings where the top floor has a kind of slope in the roof. On this slop there are windows, so you can look straight upwards into the sky. I love this kind of concept. This window is right above my bed, which meant that I could lie down and watch the rain falling onto the window. It was very cool.

Each room in this hostel is decorated according to a theme. This room was 'eden' I think. Consequently the light gets some kind of strange decoration. There is also things on the wall made to look like grass, with flowers stuck on.

In this hostel I met some quite nice people I think. I met two girls from Germany. One is from Hannover, the other from Hamburg. They are in Berlin because they have won a kind of fashion contest. They are going to be studying fashion soon at university, and so are now doing a small course about the whole thing trying to give them a great introduction.

I also met a guy from Canada. He lives near Toronto, doing work outside fixing people's homes, so he gets to be out in very cold weather. He wants to visit Australia to do bungee jumping because he and his wife are quite into that. I was a bit confused that you would go to Australia for that, but I explained to him that from all I've heard, New Zealand is the place to do that stuff. He might have been confused, or maybe I don't know enough about it.