R.O.O.T. Webzine

Friday. Berlin is getting on us. Like Jim said, each time you get out of a subway station, it feels like you’re discovering a new town. Berlin is magic.

But today, we woke up like real zombies. As if, after an afternoon visiting independent artists at the Tacheles, we landed on a different planet. If you thought the world would end in 2012 because of the Mayan calendar ending, you were wrong. The apocalypse is now.

First sign is that Jim left the hotel room without brushing his teeth. For real. Fact is that Jim has a real ritual: the blue one on the morning and the red one on the evening. Toothpaste is the key to a good social life. What was his plan at this moment? His only excuse: “i just had a zombie poo. The smell is so hardcore in the bathroom that I cannot stand it and go wash my teeth.” Oh. Okay. So we left.

Blue or Red

Our plan for today was the visit of the” Topography of Terror”. It’s a historic site. Between 1933 and 1945, the central institutions of Nazi persecution and terror were located on the grounds of the presen-day Topography of Terror. Gestapo headquarters were set up at the Prinz-Albrecht-Str. 8, as was the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in 1939, while the neighboring Hotel Prinz Albrecht housed the administrative leadership of the SS. There, were planned genocides, were located the infamous “House Prison” for detainess who were interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo.

House Prison

Daily and free admissions, the site is an open-air exhibition that presents portraits and documents about the people who used to be prisoners there. Some were tortured, some were executed, some were tortured and executed. The site is emotionally heavy. Some photographs, beside the portraits, are really shocking. Like the big ones showing some public executions. Some show hanged people on trees’ streets. One presents a man, standing in front of a ditch (communal grave), who is about to be shot in the head by a Nazi. “Quite a few of them got away forever.”

To make it perfect, it started raining. I left the place very confused. How could it turn out so badly? Did it start well? As a name, National-socialism doesn’t sound so bad, but it lead to Nazism. Then communism lead to Stalinism. One century, two people, same “errors” (concentration camps, genocides…). One sentence of the exhibition says that violence became so ordinary that people were used to it. At which stage should we stand up and yell: “Fuck your cultural madness! You’re humanly wrong!”?

Save Our Planet

Bordering the site is a short piece of the Wall of Berlin. Interesting drawing: “Save Our Planet”. Yes, please! We walked along it under a heavy rain. I felt so pathetic and out of my time. Plus, we were starving. So we started looking for a contemporary, reassuring place of our time: a Burger King. Which we never found. We ended eating a Thai menu in an Australian restaurant located in the perfect center of Berlin, Germany. Very cosmopolite city. The waiter was gay but disfigured (by a big nose), to quote Jim.

The rain didn’t seem to stop. So I suggested a movie. Jim wanted to watch Harry Potter so badly that I had to agree. Before we got there, we shared an ice cream and accidently got in the room 1 where Brüno was playing. One good thing about Harry Potter the movie is that it doesn’t matter how bad it can be because it is visually beautiful to watch. (I don’t like Harry Potter, books & movies). Fun fact: two men teasing each other in front of us. At some point, i saw Jim’s face merging from the dark and yelling “GET ME SOME PANCAKES!”

View From The Underground

What we didn’t know is that a storm was raging outside. When we got back to our hotel room, it was turned into a post-apocalyptic place. A window was broken and some of our stuffs were wet.

Broken Window

We ended our day like we started it: as zombies. In need of fresh blood, we eat two New York Hamburgers served by the awesome Hilde. 9.40€ each one of them.

Text: Raya B’Dull