Day 9: Graffiti, Street Art, and Cats

Today, as always, was a long day. I'll try to make this post a little more like an actual account of events rather than a picture dump but we'll see. So below are a few more pictures of this house where we're staying because Casey and I find it fascinating. It's a strange and magical place. 

We woke up earlyish because we wanted to do the graffiti tour of Berlin. It came highly recommended and there was a workshop at the end that sounded way fun. The tour started at Alexanderplatz at noon, however, which is about a 20 minute train ride on the U-bahn so long story short, it was an earlier morning than usual. Had some delicious German bread for breakfast, wrote some post cards, and we were on our way.

 The tour was very informative and put graffiti and street art into perspective for me. Not really knowing much about it at all, I was surprised to learn that the penalty in Berlin for putting a paste-up somewhere was like 15 Euro. Seriously? Apparently, the city is really underfunded for non-essential crime prevention due to unification still, so most graffiti and street artists get at most a slap on the wrist.

Also, if the city wants to press charges against a graffiti artist who paints on a private building, it has to get the building's owner to agree to press charges if and only if the graffiti artist is caught in the act. This was crazy for me but it explains a lot about why graffiti tends to stay up in this city versus others.

At night, this astronaut is holding a flag because of the way a spotlight hits a flag in the car dealership across the street.

 I know this probably sounds naive and narrow-minded but I never thought of street art as..well..accessible art before I took this tour. I mean, I thought about it in a vague sort of way, as in, "Oh, that building is pretty with that picture on it. Cool," but not in terms of the theoretical elements of the art form. These pieces are literally public art made by ordinary people for ordinary people as a way of accessing their city in a more meaningful way. It's a way of humanizing the rigid and bureaucratic elements of the world and poking fun at people with power. Graffiti is also a good way to interact with the idea of fame, branding, and advertising. It's ultimate crowd sourcing for reputation and renown.

Cool tags and a Po sticker. It's supposed to be a butt but, as our guide explained, most people think it's testicles.

 We walked all around the city on this tour and took some interesting and new forms of public transportation. As we walked, our guide told us more about the different types of street art, some of the local artists, and history about street art and graffiti in general. I won't parrot everything back because I really recommend doing the tour if you're ever in Berlin and telling you everything would spoil it but everything was great.

Our group consisted of a really random assortment of people. There was one couple from Australia, a family from the UK, a couple of German men who live in Berlin, a fellow from the UK who seems to go on every tour ever and was on his way to Kazakstan tomorrow, and a Dutch tour guide visiting from The Netherlands. When we told the guide we were from Colorado, he said he's had a lot of Colorodans in the last week, mainly from Boulder. Of course, people from Boulder would go on the graffiti tour of Berlin. Anyway, it's odd how people tend to show up in groups to new places.

The googly eyes on this keyhole reminded me of the googly eyes on the UNC bears all over campus

 Shortly after the above picture was taken, a very angry German bouncer popped out of nowhere and chased us away. We played dumb American tourists but apparently this area is "Verbotten," which is clearly written in German at the entrance. Whoops. Totally worth the photo, though. If you can't tell, it's a sticker of Berlin and the sticker has some graffiti on one of the buildings.

This was one of my favorites, by a Portuguese artist who goes by Alice, pronounced Al-ee-che

This piece is about East and West Berlin demystifying one another and is also adorable

This one is also by Alice and was my favorite. You can't tell but some of the skin tones are actually bare wall.

 My favorite thing about the street art we saw was how it interacts with its environment. Street art is temporary and organic, related to a specific moment and a specific place. Due to the somewhat relaxed laws against it in Berlin, artists are better able to interact with their city and react to the pulse of the political climate. I couldn't tell you how many anti-Fifa things I've seen, or how many anti-fascist spray-ups, etc. Street art is immediately accessible by people on their ways to work or school and introduces an element of beauty in an otherwise banal moment.

 So the 1up crew thing probably bears repeating. 1 up was a really famous crew that was originally a bunch of different crews that banded together to do bigger and better projects. Once, they decided to paint a train in 4 minutes 35 seconds. They posted a video about it on YouTube. It's definitely worth watching.

 Just is also an important graffiti artist out of Berlin. The tour guide knows Just personally and says he's a pretty cool guy. Judging by some of his stories, I'd agree. He's also all over the city but 1up is all over the world. They seem to have made it their personal mission to go around the globe and tag everything they see. That's one way of getting famous, I guess.

After the tour, the guide took us back to a studio and we made our own stencil art with spray paint. They turned out pretty well, though I don't have any pictures because it's not my picture day as I forgot my phone. Bummer.

An advertisement. It's surprising how many of them are in English considering this is Germany

 After the tour, we went to get donuts and coffee because art makes you hungry or something. While at the donut shop, I entertained the person behind us with my silly questions about what all the fillings were in English. The attendant was very nice and patient, in the grand tradition of German people being far too nice and patient with us stupid American tourists. There were two British guys in front of us in line, one of whom ordered an Americano and was very put out when the man at the counter gave him what looked like a double shot of espresso. The British guy said he just wanted a coffee and that's what Americano means in the UK. Maybe. Or maybe the British guy doesn't know what he's ordering when he orders and Americano.

This made me think about how severely limited we all are by our upbringing and specific perspective on the world. We all have just a tiny corner of this great big place to call our own. It's up to us to make it as wonderful and meaningful as possible. We should also remember how many different and equally-valid ways of seeing the world there are. The more I expose myself to the world (no nudie jokes, please and thank you) the more I realize how little of it I know and how much there still is to learn. That's another great thing about travel, particularly somewhere you don't speak the language and have very few ideas about the culture. This is why we travel.

We went back to the apartment to drop off our art and donuts and found the girl whose room we've been staying in is back so we moved rooms in this honeycomb of hippie awesomeness, dropped off our things, and went out to dinner. I feel constantly hungry here and there was not nearly enough eating today so there needed to be more. On the way, we found a friendly German cat who came up to each of us individually, said hello, submitted to petting, and went on its way.

 Then we bought beers and walked around the neighborhood with an eye out for some of the crew names we saw, trying to piece together the artwork we've been experiencing all along and haven't had the language for decoding.

So this 1973 thing is confusing and pervasive all over the city. Our guide couldn't tell us anything about him/her/them but their tag is all over our part of town.

Also, the beer I'm holding and legally drinking in public cost the equivalent of 75 cents. That's literally cheaper than a bottle of water here. Jealous?

There were also a lot of skulls all over the place. Not sure what that's about but they're cool.

This is that piece I posted a picture of a few days ago, this time in the daylight. It's by an artist who generally caters to kids with his art and features all kinds of characters. This also continues the Maria Looking Away from the Camera as Casey Takes a Picture series

That's a genuine fuzzy mustache and real rhinestones in case you were wondering. This piece is also right next to a magic shop.

We got dinner at an Asian restaurant. I had chow mien with tofu and we talked about art and languages and how excited I am about Prague tomorrow. I can't wait to see the city again--it's literally my favorite place in the world and we're staying in the middle of town so we'll be by everything historic and wonderful. Berlin is amazing and I definitely want to come back here some day. It was unexpected, gritty, beautiful, welcoming, and I had some of the best ethnic food I've ever tasted. Beer is cheaper than water and everything is much less expensive than I would expect for a city this size. There are historic things to do, cool modern things to do, and the entire city is a canvas for some of the most interesting modern art in the world. I loved my time here but it's time to move onward to Prague.

Check in with you later,

Maria