Posted on August 3, 2014 at. August 3, 2014 by Drea Fekety

In a previous post, I described my visit to the Hasso Plattner Institute outside of Berlin and the time I spent with Dominik Schmidt in his lab. In the current post, I’ll discuss the other parts of the IRES team’s weekend trip to Berlin.

The first thing we did, after checking into our hotel and dropping off our things, was visit the Berlin TV Tower observatory. We got a really good view of the city in every direction, accompanied by helpful displays within the observatory which pointed out noteworthy locations in the city.

That same day, we walked a long distance to view an area where the Berlin Wall used to stand from 1961 to 1989. Today, it’s covered in very detailed and intricate graffiti designs; some are political in nature, some are not. We spent a good deal of time walking the length of the Wall and observing the art on both sides of it. We didn’t quite make it to Brandenburg Gate because it was getting late, but we were able to see it way off in the distance by the time we decided to turn around and head back to the hotel.

The next day we traveled to the site of the Olympic Stadium which hosted the 1936 Olympics as well as matches in the 1974 and 2006 World Cup. We walked through the stadium itself as well as the surrounding complex, and also got to see the original “old” Olympiastadion next to the newer facility.

After the visit to the Olympic Stadium, we stopped by the Salvador Dali museum (which I didn’t even know existed!) and spent some time there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take any photos while I was inside but I did snap this photo outside the entrance. When I was an art student in high school and some of college I went through a period where I admired and tried to emulate Dali’s work. Surrealist art always appealed to me, although I can’t entirely understand some of the work produced by other artists in that movement. Either way, discovering a Dali museum in Berlin was a nice surprise, and I’m very glad I was able to go there. I only wish that it was larger and had a wider selection of pieces.