Post Titled: Potsdamer Platz. ick.
Earlier I got lost in the 'burbs looking for the Consulate, which was an unmarked fortress. I didn't find it because the address I had was for the Embassy, not the Consulate, but a very nice man in the Japanese-German Cultural Center helped me figure that out, I'll try again tomorrow. Meanwhile, a fence covered in dead and abandoned bicycles behled this ad (tied to a bike) for a Bow-Shooting Range suggesting you could have A CHILDREN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY there,... does that sound like a good idea?


POTSDAMER PLATZ
This commercial hub is even more commercial and more of a hub and although the name is fun to say but the place still pretty-much sucks unless your a 14-year old girl out with friends or a middle-aged businessman on a business lunch.
The last time I was here was 6 years ago when this was still (or Berlin was still) 'die groesste baustelle die Welt' (the largest construction site in the world. Potsdamer Platz looked like 'Jestons Theme-Park Island' or if there were a slice of the 5th Element's NYC plopped into a field in the middle of Berlin (which was leftover after East/West reunified.) It was lonely, sharp and fascinating. I think I mostly liked it because I was really into Rem Koolhass at the time, and the place is really just a architect/urban-planner's wet dream.

Now, 6 years later, the tiny trees have grown up quickly, but the entirety of Potsdamer Platz now strikes me as curiously repulsive (or repulsively curious)...

Of all the places not to visit for more than 10 minutes in Berlin (unless you are a Suit) Potsdamer Platz takes the cake thus far, (maybe there is somewhere more fake? More pretentious? If so, please let me know.) Sure it is glitzy, full of good shopping; stuffy dull resteraunts/cafes, and big movie screens but it could be anywhere ñ it is a shopping complex so pre-designed to be giddily futuristic mini-tropolis that is is absurd and dull after just 5 minutes. That is, if you don't arrive from the U-Bahn. Entering the shopping mall from the U-Bahn station is very threatening. One is greeted by a Space-Age hall full of overhead concrete cones, very heavy concrete cones that seem like they might crush you at any moment, just before you escape into the retail underground.

To my surprise and dumbfoundment there was a mini Weinachtsmarkt (Christmasmarket) brewing there complete with authentic-enough looking Austrian eating cabin/chalets, a ski slope which they were still filling with fake snow and, of course Gluhwein (even though it wasn't such a cold day), wurst, and those silly huge frosted-and-shrink-wrapped cookies.
I gawked at the ski slope with all the wurst-munching tourist and took photos...

at least there is still the awesome Jeff Koons sculpture (now flanked by a Blue Man Group poster instead of the Lion King)... when I was 19 I plastered all of Potsdamer Platz with Shawn Wolfe's PANIC NOW stickers... and it is still a place that should inspire panic in the core of the human-being, at the very least.


Nadine's agency offered to pay for the ticket afterall so all is well, at least I had a fun time at the internet room with the Turks and Arabs... (see below)