Well, yes, I am back from Berlin, and I must say that I have a very different impression of it than what I thought it would be like.
Firstly, it is still recuperating from the Soviet era, is an extremely industrial city, with an immense amount of street art, grunge, and grafitti. However, I don´t see it as a completely negative thing, because there is a huge art and music movement influenced by this street culture. It´s actually being geared towards children directing their anger or frustration in another manner: to art.
It´s definitely more grey and colder there (freeeeeezing, to be exact!), but I guess in this way, the city is warmed up by all the brilliant colors of the street art. We also learned that there is a kind of unwritten code to the way artists and groups go about their street art. Only certain areas are open to over drawing or writing, and it´s known as ´tagging´ all the rest are to be conserved for at least a while.
The Berliners prefer not to dwell on their dark past, because, the whole world knows what happened, so the best to do while in Berlin is to recognize what happened, but to understand the current culture as the present.
The food there is awesome, theyre very organically aware, enviornmentally progressive, and there are so many different types of cusines there , oh and AFFORDABLE! actually, almost cheap for a big city!
Next stop for me after I´m in Barça is KIEV!!
so excited to finally see the place I was born!!
Hasta luego,
val
