Madame Tussauds: Adolf Hitler to return to Berlin soon

by Jeffrey White on

Madame Tussauds, the world’s most overpriced, not to say overrated, tourist attraction, is bucking popular sentiment in Germany and elsewhere by vowing to return a wax statue of Adolf Hitler to its newest museum in Berlin as soon as possible.

I posted last week about a protester who managed to rip the head off the wax statue just minutes after Madame Tussauds officially opened to the public last Saturday.

The museum tells German media that it is working quick to reattach the head, after which it will return the statue to its place in the museum, a display that showed a replica of Hitler’s underground Berlin bunker during the final days of WWII.

“Despite the incident, Madame Tussauds will again show the wax figure of Adolf Hitler in the exhibition. Madame Tussauds is apolitical and neither comments on nor judges the people shown in the exhibition or what they did in the course of their life,” the museum tells the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The Hitler statue has generated controversy since the museum announced its initial inclusion in the Berlin museum, alongside the likes of other German speaking notables like Boris Becker, Angela Merkel and Albert Einstein.

Not only is it in bad taste to immortalize the architect of millions of deaths in wax, protesters say, but the very location of the museum on Berlin’s posh Unter den Linden, near the Brandenburg Gate, means that the small Hitler exhibit is a stone’s throw from Berlin’s three-year-old Memorial to the Murder Jews of Europe, a massive sea of gray stone less than a two block walk away.

The Hitler display at Tussauds cost about $300,000. No word yet whether the museum is planning heightened security around it when it returns.

Originally the statue was to be positioned next to a wax likeness of Winston Churchill. However, the museum decided to isolate the Hitler statue in a different area of the museum, behind both a desk and a set of ropes to keep neo Nazis from posing for pictures next to it.

Being in Berlin: Graffiti, graffiti, graffiti

by Iva Skoch on

One of the things you cannot not notice in Berlin is graffiti. You’d be hard-pressed to find an abandoned wall or building without it. Somehow, it works here.

Of course, there is graffiti and there is graffiti. While I hate when vandals ruin the facades of baroque building by spray-painting something on them, I have become a big fan of graffiti in Berlin. I guess you can’t underestimate the legacy of the Berlin Wall; place where graffiti street art was taken to perfection.

Check out this NY Times video piece on graffiti in Berlin to get a glimpse of what Berlin feels like today. I do think that graffiti represents well what Berlin is becoming within Germany and within Europe: an avantgarde metropolis. Rent in Berlin is cheaper than in Prague, while unemployment is 5 times as high. There is no better place for a struggling artist to live. (Oh yeah, those generous social benefits help.)

Being in Berlin: The 12 most beautiful cities in the world (according to Die Welt)

by Iva Skoch on

Walking along the last remaining piece of the Berlin Wall on Friday, I was a little disturbed by this billboard advertising Die Welt city guides. I had to take a picture of it.

It says: “Visit the 12 most beautiful cities in the world.”

It lists them:

  1. Barcelona
  2. Berlin
  3. Rome
  4. Paris
  5. Amsterdam
  6. Munich
  7. Venice
  8. London
  9. Hamburg
  10. New York
  11. Vienna
  12. Milan

I realize it’s just stupid ad for city guides, but I found it a little odd that: A) All, but one of the most beautiful cities (New York) are supposed to be in Europe, and B) Four of these cities are German-speaking; three are in Germany. Call me overly sensitive, but that’s a cocky statement if I have ever seen one.

What about Sydney, Cape Town, San Francisco, or Hong Kong, to name a few?

Being in Berlin: Are you a Currywurst or Döner person?

by Iva Skoch on

Greetings from Berlin, the capital of sausage. (Yes, there is arguably more than one capital of sausage out there. I don’t want to be getting hate mail from Munich and other seasoned capitals of sausage!)

Horror of all horrors. In the field of fast food and street food in Berlin, the famous Currywurst (consisting of hot pork sausage cut into slices and seasoned with curry sauce, consisting of ketchup with curry) is being overtaken by Döner kebab, pieces of lamb, beef or chicken (or falafel) served with a salad made from shredded lettuce, tomatoes and onions, often also with cabbage and cucumbers. Because of German’s large Turkish population, there are now Döner stands everywhere. Statistically, the Germans are supposed to consume 200 to 300 metric tonnes of Döner Kebab per day. Man, that’s a lot of kebab.

I tried both – Currywurst and Döner. And so should you. There is no better way to stretch the weak dollar than turning to street food!

The currywurst is great after a night of drinking, if you really need something greasy. Truth to be told, I have had better sausages in my life. Actually, I even like the German wine sausage better.

A currywurst has sentimental value though. If you, like me, are a sucker for a good story, you might want to give it a chance just for that. Apparently, the currywurst was invented shortly after World War II by a sausage stall owner in Essen, who accidentally dropped a can with curry powder into some ketchup. Something tells me this is how a lot of fast food is invented. I wonder who dropped what where before they invented McDonald’s, but I sincerely hope that it didn’t involve a toilet.

Back to Germany though. I loved the Döner kebab sandwich I got. It had lots of fresh veggies in it. It has got to be one of the healthier fast food options out there. I only went with falafel, not meat. The whole meat-spinning-on-stick for hours and hours (in the sun) never really looked super-appetizing to me. It always screamed “food poisoning waiting to happen”. I don’t know. I might be overreacting. How do you feel about kebab?

Being in Berlin: First impressions

by Iva Skoch on

Greetings from Berlin.

I don’t have much to report yet, but when has that ever stopped me from blogging! It is a beautiful, sunny day and I am excited to finally experience Berlin in the summer. Every other time I visited this place was in the middle of the winter. And let me tell you, it gets bone-chilling cold in this city. Berlin is pretty psychologically cold to begin with. You add 10F to the mix and it is just barely bearable. Berlin in the summer is going to be a whole new experience for me.

It already looks totally different than I remember it. I am staying with a friend in Kreuzberg, which is the hip area of Berlin, I am told. There are great little cafes, sushi bars and thrift stores all around us. Using Wiki lingo, Kreuzberg is an “unusual mix of left-wing punks, anarchists, gays, creative artists and Turkish immigrants, the last of which make up a third of the population and have earned the area its occasional nickname Little Istanbul.” Can’t wait to try my first falafel.

One thing I can’t figure out is that all these cafes are packed all day long. How Berlin sustains a vibrant cafe culture and a whopping 17% unemployment rate is beyond me. Does the state literally pay people to sit in cafes all day?