We had a company offsite/conference this weekend, in Berlin. My first overnight trip without Ingrid.

The weekend was an interesting experience in many ways.
Interesting to spend almost three whole days in only adult company.
Interesting to be out on town after dark.
Interesting to sleep alone in a bed.
Interesting to meet my colleagues outside of work. Some of them turned out to be not at all like I had expected, in a very positive way.

On Friday we flew to Berlin, had a sightseeing bus tour, and dinner together. Saturday morning we had the official “conference” part of the weekend, and then a free afternoon, and then dinner again, plus nightclubbing for those who were interested. Sunday, a few free hours and then flying back home.

The free afternoon and morning were meant to be spent together, but 3 days of constant socialising would have been more work for me than my actual work, so I skipped that and wandered off on my own. I felt a bit guilty at first but only for a short while – I really enjoyed exploring Berlin on my own. (I suspect I wasn’t the only one doing that, there’s at least one other odd guy in the company.)

Mostly I did a lot of walking. The highlight of the trip was Hackeschen Höfe, an area with eight small linked courtyards, filled with small shops and cafés. I also had time to see

  • quite a lot of the S-bahn
  • the Holocaust memorial (which was sort of impressive but didn’t feel like much of a memorial)
  • the park of Tiergarten
  • a few remaining bits of the Wall
  • the Siegessäule (that landmark pillar with a golden statue of Victory on top – the one in Wings of Desire), including climbing up to the top of it (285 steps)
  • the quarters around the parliament, Brandenburger Tor, etc
  • one nice church (St. Hedwig’s) and another nice church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche)
  • a replica of the world’s first traffic light

One afternoon and one short morning is far from enough to get a good feeling for a city, of course. But from what I had time to see, Berlin as a whole wasn’t really my kind of town. Too large, too flat. It’s full of broad straight boulevards, lined by flat facades. There were some interesting houses but even those had been placed in straight lines. And too much grey stone, too little colour.

The one thing that struck me about Berlin is how full it is of history. There are monuments, plaques, exhibitions in parks and along streets. There’s the Wall, of course. There is history everywhere, and it is so present, so close to the surface. I could not walk through the city without thinking about all that has happened there. I wonder if Berliners think as much about history all the time. After all, what’s history for me is just “the past” for many of them – they’ve lived through it themselves.

PS: Photos here.