I was in Germany from around February 16–24. Berlin, the capital, and Dessau, about an hour and a half by train from there. I was with a classmate from my study-abroad cohort on the outbound journey and for the afternoon of the second day; the rest was solo.

It's a long article so feel free to skip around. There are lots of photos so it won't take that long. Broadly in chronological order, but I've also grouped things loosely, so things jump around a bit. Venues and attractions are collected in one place, but street scenes are woven in chronologically so you can read it with a sense of walking the city.

You can swipe / scroll left and right through the photos (not all of them, though).

2/16

Travel always begins with the trip to Geneva airport. The train was absurdly delayed, which was a drag.

It was easyJet (LCC), so it delayed without incident and landed without incident. 11 PM. On the way to the hostel I stopped at a späti (a convenience store-like place that only sells alcohol and snacks) and got greeted with "xin chao." Old East Germany casual racism? I thought, but maybe I'm overthinking it. Good thing there were no neo-Nazis. I found just one lighter with an AfD logo on it lying on the ground, but I spotted "Fuck AfD" stickers maybe 100 times.

Arrived at the hostel. Felt somewhat seedy, a bit off. Seven nights here, hmm.

2/17

I could hear voices until around 2 AM, thinking that's annoying, but when I woke up at 8 everyone was asleep. I took a shower without caring. I'm staying on Karl-Marx-Allee (what a name). A big avenue—one of the roads that radiates outward from the TV tower in the center. For this trip I stayed longer and planned to use the kitchen to cook, but the hostel was too uncomfortable to relax in, let alone cook.

After spacing out for a while, I ate an omelette and had coffee at a café. While I was researching where to start, I watched from the table as delivery cyclists and office workers came and went. I started sightseeing nearby.

East Side Gallery

Various murals painted on the Berlin Wall. It stretches about 500 m, which is impressive. You can view all the works on the official page.

Stasimuseum

The Stasi was the East German secret police. I had just watched "The Lives of Others," so it was especially interesting. The machinery was great.

Walking around

Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island area. Lots of relatively small museums and galleries you can get through in about 2 hours, which is great. Cold. Also bought a tote bag and magnet at the Ampelmann shop. Went to the Topography of Terror. The exhibits were document-heavy and honestly got boring.

The Brandenburg Gate is impressive as expected… or rather, what I realize when you actually come here is that it's the wide roads and cityscape around it that make the gate stand out.

Public Transport

Transport is run by BVG (Berlin's transit authority equivalent), covering trams, buses, U-Bahn (subway) and S-Bahn (regional rail), as well as DB (equivalent to JR), the national railway. The yellow U-Bahn cars are cute. They make a near-futuristic sound when accelerating and braking. Unlike Japanese subways, there are no fare gates or platform screen doors, keeping things simple. Stopping positions are casual too, so none of those related displays.

Both the streets and the subway had noticeably few big-brand advertisements—mostly landscape photography or posters for nearby performances and exhibitions—and I liked that. Even at Christmas I noticed this, but compared to Japan, commercial influence felt smaller.

I bought a Deutschland-Ticket (€63)—a pass that covers all local trains anywhere in Germany. Since I'm making a round trip to Dessau it pays for itself. There are also tourist combo tickets bundling museums and transport, but Berlin has solid student discounts (roughly half price), so for students staying 4+ days the combo isn't much of a deal. mo.pla was handy. But since the ticket was phone-based, the battery was a constant worry. In the end not a single ticket inspector came.

5:30 PM. I had a Currywurst at Berlin Hauptbahnhof and said goodbye to my classmate. Now alone.

After wandering around Kreuzberg (the southeastern area; as I'll mention several more times, this was the most enjoyable neighbourhood to walk around) I went into a bar called Schmetterling. Bars you can see into clearly are easy to walk into. The first hour or so I didn't talk to anyone, just listened to people's conversations, but when a shot came along the counter I drank it and coughed because it was strong, the atmosphere lightened, and a bit of conversation happened. I also talked to the person next to me. Europeans tend to say "I'm thinking of going to Japan next year." Since I was apparently unusual (no other Asian people seemed to be there), we ended up talking about all sorts of things—mostly trains, working conditions, and politics. They had seen "PERFECT DAYS" and we got excited talking about that. Turned out they worked in finance and could speak French, but ordinary Germans usually can't, they said. Even among trilingual speakers, English-French-German versus English-Japanese-Thai must be a completely different difficulty level. In other words, Thai vocational students are impressive.

In total I had 30cl of beer ×3 (Pilsner, Eichhofener—quite drinkable and I liked it) and some shots called Mexicaner(?) ×2 that got passed my way. I'm not sure why shots keep appearing, but that's what makes it fun! One was tomato-flavoured, with some spice, but somehow delicious. The people around me were mostly drinking Kölsch. I wanted to try it but ended up leaving without doing so.

Home at 12:30 AM. Too drunk. I meant to take the bus but walked the whole way. No one around at this hour, no cars either. In the end this evening was the best part of the trip so far.

2/18

I woke up around 6:30 when the old man in the bunk below started rustling around getting dressed and left. That ended up happening for about 4 consecutive days. Annoying. Had a baguette and coffee at a café. The place was called Kosan—convenient, cheap, the owner was kind and unpretentious—I ended up going back 3 times.

First went to the shopping mall near the center (Alexanderplatz) and randomly bought something like a "Puddinglaur" pastry from a bakery called Kamps. Sweet, thin pastry like a melonpan with what's labelled pudding (custard?) inside. Heavy! I'm not even sure why I bought this.

Shopping malls are convenient for the sheer number of seats. It had lots of local brand stores and felt somehow familiar. Like an AEON Mall. The kind of place you find in capital cities of developing countries or near airports—shiny faux-stone floors, ceiling branding in white on black (most of it probably subsidiaries of LVMH anyway), a landscape of roughly 7:2:1 white-black-gold sprawling across multiple atria, and you struggle endlessly to find the escalators. That kind of place is draining.

There's a supermarket in the basement. Environmental consciousness is a notch above even Switzerland. The bottle-recycling machines I'd only seen in textbooks were actually running, and I went "oh wow." About €0.20 of my €0.90 sparkling water was a bottle deposit. And every price tag states whether the container is einwegdisposable or mehrwegreusable.

Alte Nationalgalerie

Vaguely (?) interesting. Midway I was asked to sign a petition and thought just giving my name would be fine, but then they persistently asked for a donation. I said I had no cash and they said card works. Getting suspicious, I made my escape. I'm stingy, so I don't donate on the street. I'm also somewhat cold toward high schoolers collecting with donation boxes outside stations—I think it's a good cause, but I'd rather do proper research and give to a reputable organization.

Carl Rottmann, The Battlefield at Marathon (no photo—I'm bad at this): those landscape paintings with horizontal and vertical lines inserted were great. I had no idea what the reason was, though.

I find the glimmer of metal appealing—irregular, rough highlights painted on. About a year ago when I toured the State Guest House, the door handles had decorations shaped like animals (a bird, dragon, or seahorse, I think), and rough white brushstrokes faithfully follow those forms. Maybe I should try oil painting?

Hamburger Bahnhof

A converted train station turned contemporary art museum. The video works (like Annika Kahrs – Le chant des maisons, 2022) were good. I thought it was only the special exhibition and saw things in random order, then found the permanent collection at the very last moment. Saw it in the 10 minutes before closing. The classic large-museum experience.

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Had the famous kebab. Delicious! There was even sweet potato? or squash inside—an orange one. The spice of the sauce and onions plays against the sweetness of carrots etc., and even with a decent amount of meat you don't feel stuffed. It looks vivid and great. But the kebab shop was too clean, which somehow felt unsettling.

Bernauerstraße

The Berlin Wall here is preserved as-is. Nearby remnants of watchtower bases and the ruins of a church demolished when the wall was extended also remain. While East Side Gallery transforms the wall through art, this feels more like raw negative heritage. There's also a documentation center. A group of students was there on a field trip. Plaques are set over the sites of underground tunnels dug from east to west, and I walked tracing them.

Street Art

Kreuzberg is covered in graffiti yet barely feels unsafe. Maybe because the streets are wide and bright? The only person who approached me at night was one old man with the sweet scent of marijuana. It was the same in Lausanne, so perhaps that's the safety ceiling in Europe? There are many beggars and homeless people. What must it be like being homeless in a city this bitterly cold? There are tents, at least.

In the center too, the area under the elevated tracks between Alexanderplatz and Hackescher Markt—the south side has tiny shops like Tokyo's Yurakucho viaduct, but the north side is just plain gritty, chaotic with posters and art.

Near the Bundestag

2/19

DDR Museum

Neue Nationalgalerie

It happened to be a free admission day, but that meant lots of people and I got tired, couldn't concentrate much… The building itself was great. There was probably one exhibition looking back at the gallery's history and another on Gerhard Richter, which I breezed through. I can't quite figure out how to appreciate Richter's work, so if anyone can explain the appeal, please do.

It was already dark when I came out. Walked around Kreuzberg for a while. There was a mysteriously large dump of small clothing items in one spot—cardboard boxes on the street with clothes placed inside them. Help yourself, apparently. There seem to be food places too, might be fun to come during the day.

Stopped by the cheaper supermarket Penny (Denner's German counterpart?) and bought Haribo, a drink, and gum. Apple cider is tasty. I've basically only had cider and beer.

Went to another bar (Silverfuture) and sat at the counter. Was gently told to move because I was in the way (may have been a misunderstanding), went to the back of the room, finished a pint, sketched for a while, then came back. The interior decor was eclectic and pleasant. Lonely! But drawing is fun. Something like that—didn't talk to anyone until 11 PM. Sad! Left around 11 and walked to the station. Eating Haribo on the way back. There was a guy on the train who looked like he was rehearsing a speech. And there's always someone who suddenly starts playing music on the train. There was one in Geneva too. An interesting proportion of people give money, I thought. The tram's colour scheme—black and yellow—reminded me of the Utsunomiya LRT. I want to eat gyoza again.

Nothing really happened this day… Walked along the river and went home.

2/20

Woke up around 10, was thinking what to do over coffee and cheesecake at a café, and suddenly it was noon. The place was called "pretty café" or something like that, but it was full of nothing but old men.

Got hungry. Had phở. The cilantro was reassuring. Asian noodles are just delicious… Should I be eating more local food? I thought, but then again, kebab itself is listed as the famous street food, so… It was so cold I wandered into secondhand shops and bought a sweatshirt for €7. Everything was half off. A freight worker's orange high-vis jacket was tempting too, but it would have absolutely no use.

Saw the Jewish Memorial. Maybe I was tired, or my imagination wasn't working—honestly I didn't feel much. But the weather had improved, I'd added a layer, warmed up, and was in better spirits. Walked to the Berlin Cathedral and strolled around for a while.

Went to the Berlinische Galerie. The three-dimensional works were good.

For dinner, had rheinisches Sauerbraten (I'm not sure about the exact name—see photos) at a restaurant called Max & Moritz. Soft meat with what seemed like a berry demi-glace sauce. Delicious! I almost cried—I hadn't spent much on food until then. When I asked for a Pilsner, they recommended the house beer, so I had that; it turned out to be stronger than expected… The side dish, Knödel (made of bread, butter, and potato?), was good too. Described as "like a dumpling" but definitely not gyoza. Somewhat… doughy. Like a baby castella at age 30? I can't find a good analogy. With tip: €33. Expensive but can't be helped.

Went into a bar with a sign saying Kein GruppenNo Groups, but that apparently didn't mean what I thought, because it was full of friend groups! Deceived! Lonely! … Had one drink and left, ended up sitting on a bench by the river spacing out. A city with plenty of benches and rubbish bins. The ground was packed hard and white, almost skateable. Got the train north and arrived at the hostel around 12:20. The station was still busy. Everyone's fashion is black—not grey, but truly black. A different kind of cool from Tokyo. Sorry for staring. The sweatshirt I was wearing was grey with "Wackler Service Group" on it, which blends perfectly into asphalt.

2/21

Crawled out of bed around 9 and showered. Finally discovered the kitchen. Oh right, I also need to do laundry today.

The next station over—Frankfurter Tor—is quite lively, but all the cafés I looked up were the kind of trendy spots you'd find in stylish Tokyo neighbourhoods, which was too much effort. So I came back to Kosan again. Baguette and coffee. The bread is nicely crispy. The cakes looked tempting too, ugh… Maybe searching for "bakery" would get me closer to the no-fuss vibe I'm after.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Headed west. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church—part of the building was damaged by air raids and left as-is. Like the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. The interior is ordinary, but looking at photos of what it looked like before the damage gives you quite a shock. The new church built alongside it had a cool interior.

Near Alexanderplatz I stumbled upon a group of people in a park area holding red hearts (?). One old man in the group had a cardboard sign with the character "愛" (love) on it, so I talked to him. He said something like "I want people to have a consciousness of loving and valuing themselves." Apparently he had worked in public health. What a fun protest (?) I thought. Nice.

A short walk later I ended up on a street lined with brands I know only by name—a copy of Tokyo's Ginza. Nothing for me there, so I left quickly. Thinking I preferred East Berlin, I doubled back and stumbled into a district called Haus Schwarzenberg, all chaotic with stickers and murals. I bought some postcards from a gallery there called Neurotitan. Casual, laid-back stuff.

2/22

Showered around 10. After spacing out, had phở again. Running out of things to do.

Bought some small things at the Mauerpark flea market. Picked up a DDR pin and a U-Bahn station sign magnet. I've never been to many flea markets, but it's fun. Though it also has a strong tourist-attraction feel.

Figured there was no rush, so I just lazed around at a café indoors. Sketched and drafted some blog posts. Tried to read a paper but got bored in 3 seconds. I remember next to a seated homeless person there was a perfectly white mattress with "Keine Zeit für Kunst (no time for art?)" spray-painted in red. I didn't photograph it.

It was the final day of the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), so I went to a screening at night. With all the award ceremonies wrapping up, the only remaining tickets were for a late-night horror slot. I watched Saccharine—about a college student who uses some dangerous drug to lose weight. Enjoyable overall, but watching only in English I couldn't quite follow the more nuanced parts.

I needed to show a QR code for the ticket but my phone had died. The counter staff—who looked like student part-timers—let me charge it there. Since it was the last screening of the night they were half done with work, and three of them were solving a paper crossword together. An old man sitting next to me on the train home was also solving a paper Sudoku. Some kind of digital detox thing?

Since the battery had died I walked home (though nobody would've known if I skipped the fare…). Lucky the venue was close to the hostel.

I'm tired. Don't even feel like going to museums anymore. The technical museum would probably be fine, but I just went to the Swiss Transport Museum… What I mean is, there seem to be few grand historic buildings or monuments you can just walk up to and go "wow." Maybe because of wartime destruction—they're mostly converted into museums or galleries now. Maybe there are more in other parts of the country. Searching for cafés is also getting overwhelming with too many options. Actually, 2–3 places within 4–5 minutes like on Karl-Marx-Allee—a bit quiet and low-key—is just right. Ugh, I just want to get to Bauhaus already!

2/23

Woke up around 7. Checked out quickly. That was a tiring hostel stay… Maybe I was being too guarded around people.

Researched at a café in Alexanderplatz until 9:30. What kind of café doesn't serve black coffee? I've been spending about 1.5 hours a day just planning things, which feels excessive—but not much else to do about it.

Bunker Tour

Sick of figuring everything out on my own, I joined a tour I found called Berliner Unterwelten. It starts at a regular subway station—behind a certain door is a civilian air raid shelter. There are two types: Bunker (blast-resistant, ventilated, suitable for extended stays) and Shelter (simple concrete holes). The government ordered about 1,000 Bunkers to be built to prepare for war, but only 4 (!) were ever completed; the rest were about 100 Shelters used at the start of the war. Numbers might be off. In any case, nowhere near enough for Berlin's civilian population. So residents' cellars were converted into shelters (not entirely irrational since buildings here are stone, unlike in Japan), but as the war neared its end people's homes were being destroyed and crowds poured into these shelters. Since they were merely Shelters, the idea was that people would leave once the bombing stopped—but with wave after wave of raids, nobody knew when it would end, and they had to wait 2–3 hours assessing the situation. Movement became impossible. Oxygen slowly ran out. Panic set in. No ventilation—there was no time to install any. A room labelled "24 people" was roughly the size of my 6-tatami dormitory room.

Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof

Apparently a citizen movement kept this decommissioned airport as-is and turned it into a big park. The city already has a fairly large park (Tiergarten) in the center, and they kept another one—that's significant. I was impressed walking the runway, just as it started raining heavily, so I retreated. Germany also had wind farms on an enormous scale. I also wanted to go to Schleswig-Holstein or Denmark…

Moving to Dessau

Took a train from Südkreuz at 2:30 PM to Dessau. About 2 hours. Sleepy. Germany's wind farms are huge. Arrived at Bauhaus around 5 PM. There's something funny about thinking that everyone here has made their way to this modest-sized town specifically to stay in a 100-year-old building (which really doesn't look it).

A very red room. Quiet. Minimal. Nothing there. No clock, no Wi-Fi. Just a lamp on the desk. No amenities either. As a hotel, there's something to be desired, but after the awful Berlin hostel, being able to sleep alone in a clean bed with a cute red desk is heaven. Toilet and shower are shared but clean. White and silver only—minimalist design means dirt shows up easily and cleaning must be a nightmare. The hostel wasn't like it had visible grime—it was more the subtle things like vague smells or a wet toilet seat (Italians!) accumulating into quiet daily stress.

No food here so I got supplies from Penny. Should have bought beer… forgot.

Got tired, showered, lazed around, and suddenly it was 11 PM.

2/24

Had some lovely dream but forgot it. When I have complex dreams it feels like daytime impressions are being stored in memory, which makes me happy. I must have been tired from all the travel—showered and fell asleep immediately. 9 AM. Checkout is in an hour and a half.

I was boiling the leftover instant noodles in the kitchen (communal, of course) when a couple spoke to me. I was still half asleep and replied vaguely, but they turned out to be Japanese. They run an architecture firm. Someone with expertise would pick up so much more just from looking at the building. I wish I'd seen the other rooms too. By the way, only Asian people seemed to be staying here. The Paul Klee Center in Bern also had lots of Japanese visitors—there must be something that draws them in…

Trying to enjoy whatever time was left, I ate on the tiny balcony—sitting on a railing at roughly chair height to eat. A railing this low obviously violates modern building codes and is genuinely dangerous. Permitted because it's a World Heritage Site. Fun. Nice view. I appreciate that they don't preemptively lock the door to stop you going out. That would be boring. But I was the only person on the balcony. Well, a balcony isn't unusual in itself, but a balcony so small you fill it up sitting cross-legged is unusual. For me, anyway. That's what matters. Checked out and toured the surroundings.

Main Building + Dormitory

The building is cool. Exhibits are limited. Done in under an hour. There happened to be an exhibition on the spread of electric lighting (ME 94) which was fairly interesting. A self-portrait of designer Marianne Brandt was particularly striking.

Meisterhaus

I assumed Meisterhaus was just a house—a side dish next to the main Bauhaus building and Museum—but it was actually the highlight.

The Kandinsky & Klee house was incredible. No matter how you look at the room, it becomes a Klee painting. The hallway near the staircase is something else. Open a door, close it, lie down—each position gives you a different picture. That feeling of wanting to experiment and test things—what I associate with Klee's paintings—arose in the building too. It's the first time architecture has given me that feeling. Painting the ceiling a deep red is bold. Even in what seems like a grey room, the wall colours are subtly different on closer inspection.

Gropius' house felt too black-and-white for me. Cool, but would I want to live there? The window shapes are strange and fun. I feel like I built something like this in Minecraft once (?).

Bauhaus Dessau Museum

Lots of explanation about it as a design school—teaching materials, student exercises from the time, and so on. As for actual works, my memory is more of furniture (chairs, shelves) and textiles than painting or architecture. I also saw a textile exhibition at the Paul Klee Center. Perhaps because patterns are easy to produce.

The teaching materials didn't stick in my memory much. More memorable was a small special exhibition of drawings of factories and heavy machinery—cool stuff. I end up photographing things like that too, so discovering someone who draws such things made me happy.

There are also scattered Bauhaus-designed buildings around Dessau itself. One more night there would have been worthwhile. The town may be small, but it's more populated than Lausanne.

Return Journey

Back to Berlin. I had a little time, so I detoured to a housing estate (Siedlungsettlement) in the city designed by Gropius.

Then headed to the airport. Times like these you have 2 hours to spare and could write a blog or something, but I ended up just wandering and scrolling my phone.

Boarded at 8:30 PM. Delayed again, obviously. I had bought an A1 poster at Bauhaus. It doesn't fit in carry-on luggage, and paying €40 for a tube to carry a €10 piece of paper felt excessive, so I hid the poster under my jacket and boarded. Lucky the seat next to me was empty. I ended up walking like a robot. Then plane, train, and home.

The next day I talked Bauhaus with my German mentor and we got excited. I didn't expect that to happen. Was it just because he happened to like it, or does Bauhaus come up in German education as a standard cultural touchstone?

Wrap-up

I got a good feel for what a major European city is really like. Tokyo is abnormally huge, Lausanne is still provincial, Zürich still feels small by comparison. From an artistic standpoint, I think I got quite a lot out of it. Of the museums, I barely visited any outside of East German-related ones. There's apparently something with Greek artefacts and such, but I don't know enough about that topic to get beyond "oh, interesting."

As you'd expect with Museum Island, there are plenty of fine-art museums. At the same time, the south and east sides have murals on buildings, and there are artworks and posters in places like East Side Gallery where no entry fee is charged. There were even more posters with a sense of play and strangeness than in Lausanne.

Throughout the city, records and facilities related to WWII and the Cold War (East-West division) are scattered everywhere. Student groups frequently come for field trips. Not only in dedicated facilities, but also in everyday places—wall murals at Savignyplatz station, Stolpersteine (stumbling stones)—there are many devices to prompt historical reflection.

Splitting the trip between Berlin (a major city) and Dessau (a smaller one) was a good decision. I started running out of steam partway through, so maybe a Berlin-to-Dessau ratio of 3:1 would have been better. It might also have been nice to slot Dessau in the middle of the Berlin stay. As the days pile up your motivation to visit even museums tends to wane, but if you properly research what's on, something genuinely exciting tends to come up. There's also a part of me that wants to arrive with nothing in mind, face things I've never seen with a "I've come this far, I'd better look" mentality, spend some time staring at works, and wait to see if an interesting way of experiencing them emerges.

Plenty of things I'd do differently. I wish I'd dug deeper into food and music. Could have splurged on one more proper restaurant meal. Should have looked into the music scene instead of just randomly searching for bars. Still don't really understand club culture. I'd heard Berghain was essentially off-limits unless you're a techno devotee, so I skipped it—but what would it actually have been like? European restaurants tend to be pricey (which is itself an attitude toward life, a culture), so I kept hesitating, but still—delicious food makes you happy.

I should have gone to more independent theatres too. But I've barely been to arthouse cinemas in Japan either, so I wouldn't know how to navigate it. Just going through museum after museum isn't that fulfilling anyway. To have a breadth of experiences you need a kind of cultural literacy—an overview of various fields. Without that knowledge you rely on emotional curiosity, but curiosity doesn't flow naturally when you're not well-rested.

I slightly mismanaged the hostel—ended up somewhere I didn't want to linger, so I was outside virtually all day, and got exhausted… Even with a cheap hostel, escaping to cafés adds roughly +€5/day, so I should think about the trade-off more carefully. I can't shake the feeling that things left at the hostel will get stolen, so I ended up carrying everything but clothes. The bag was heavy. The distances aren't far and the U-Bahn is convenient, but it's just so cold.

After about 6 days of solo sightseeing things get lonely, which is unavoidable. I don't know whether I'm strong or weak when it comes to solitude—or whether I have any courage at all. I think I compensate for a timid personality with curiosity.

Research lab trip (2 nights in rural France), Japan Impact (Switzerland's Comic Market), then Berlin—all back-to-back, so I've had no time to reflect. It took about 2 weeks after returning from Berlin to finally write this. By the way, I'm going to London tomorrow.