[Editor’s note: I had an acoustics conference in Berlin in March of 1999, and Jackie came along to sightsee.]

There was a wonderful, huge, comes-with breakfast at the 4 star hotel (Hotel Berlin) we stayed at. That was perhaps the most noteworthy part of the stay, the big buffet every morning. Lots of fresh fruit, including pineapple, pastries, meat (including smoked salmon), juice, and more. I often didn't eat any lunch, then had a pretty good meal at night somewhere. Lots of meat in the diet.

Berlin is a good place to visit. There is a lot of history, old and new. The war flattened the city, so much of it is new. But there are also very old buildings and castles and historical places. Excellent public transit system (with a schedule right out of Tufte). No charm, really.

There is a _lot_ of construction going on. Potsdamer Platz, which was razed to make room for the Wall or the no-man's land, is now corporate HQ for Mercedes and several other companies, and there are half a dozen big buildings going up, continuing for several years. Friedrichstrasse, a N/S major thoroughfare through East Berlin and home of Checkpoint Charlie, has several ritzy department stores. There is a new parliament building going up near the Reichstag. Amazing that in a city that old and that crowded, that all those buildings can go up. Of course the collapse of the East is largely responsible, but still.

We went to a performance at the Philharmonie that I refused to clap my hands for. It was some new wave dissonance crap. 4 pieces, the first three being one set, the last one being the other. First one was this din punctuated by two (German) speakers saying something. It is tough enough understanding what a German is saying, but to have two going at the same time, while an orchestra tries to drown them out, well, I give up. Actually, I could sorta detect a general theme, which was, really, nothing other than some daily claptrap that goes on around us. 2 and 3 were similar. I fell asleep in each of them, as I was tired already and there was nothing to listen to other than a lot of things competing for attention. I find it very difficult to appreciate any music where if half the orchestra hits a wrong note at the same time, you can't tell. There was a tuba soloist for the final piece, and he used the biggest mute I ever saw (other than Chief from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). He also spent a lot of time just blowing into the tuba, really, just breathing in and out without trying to create a tone. There were also several (5?) percussionists scurrying about hitting things. There were two percussionists situated in the balcony, and they did some odd things, which included banging on music stands and rubbing together two pieces of styrofoam. The whole thing was unappealing, although it was certainly memorable. Several architectural acousticians were there as well, and had a field day discussing the performance. Damn architectural acousticians think they know everything. Anyway, we went because we heard the hall was one of the world's best, and it was either "Dissonant Noise" or "The Magic Flute" the next night, so, six of one, half dozen of the other.

Jackie got to do a lot more sight-seeing than I did, as I often went to lectures or was preparing my own talk. I did an incredibly small amount of preparation for sightseeing, barely learning a few tidbits about a few of the sites, and hence didn't even know what I wanted to see when I did have time. Actually, the most reviewing I did was on the plane flight home, as I looked through a good picture book of Berlin sights. The only thing I was really disappointed that I didn't go to see was the Sanssouci castle in nearby Pottsdam, created by Friedrich the 2nd.

We went to dinner one night in the castle at Spandau, where some big Nazis were locked up after the war. The castle had a moat around it, in fact (although no alligators), several towers, and a variety of things you'd expect to find in a castle. The feast was supposedly medieval, as they served lots of meat, passed around a bull's horn of mead (way too sweet to be enjoyable), and gave you a knife but no fork. At the end of the evening, they did a pleasant fireworks (backyard fireworks, not big boom way high fireworks) exhibition.

Also had a reception in another beautiful castle, although we only got to see a long, thin, loud, crowded hall, and none of the ornate function rooms or manicured gardens.

The cheap public goods were nice. A week transit pass cost 40 DM (~$25) and took me anywhere pretty quickly. They are having problems there with "schwarzfahren" (black riding), when individuals don't buy tickets. About half the time, I didn't bother showing the driver my ticket, I just walked on, and only a few times did they make me show it. The fine for riding black is 60 DM, but I didn't see a single Fahrkartkontrolle officer the whole week. However, all these cheaters are making the system lose a lot of money, and there is talk about doing something different.

The museums were also pretty cheap. You could get a one day pass for all the museums in Berlin run by the state that cost only 8 DM, and a 7 day pass for 25 DM. And there were many fine museums to choose from (although they probably coulda/shoulda combined a few of them. There were 3 non-overlapping galleries (4 if you include the two-room Guggenheim), a couple/three old artifact museums. I went to the Egyptian Museum, Pergamon, three almost connected art museums, and the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (not included in the state museums). The Pergamon had the recreation of a temple and surroundings from somewhere (Pergamon?) about 2000 years ago. On three walls were these wall-reliefs depicting a battle between the gods and the giants, and the other side was a big marble set of steps, columns on the side, leading up to a temple (not yet completed) with more reliefs on the wall. The rest of the museum I didn't really appreciate that much. I've seen a lot of busts in my life, and there weren't any ones there that made me glad that I saw another.

Checkpoint Charlie was pretty cool, except that every film and video was in German, although the wall pictures were in 4 languages. They had many of the escape vehicles, showing how some of the people made it across, but didn't focus on those who didn't make it. They also displayed other struggles for human rights from across the globe (mostly Commie places, but also India).

My language improved through the week, although every time a German looked confused after I said something, I panicked and reverted back to English. On several occasions, though, I was able to order and ask for directions and explain myself and understand responses. I was also unsure of my accent, which I think is pretty good, but the Germans might beg to differ. Lousy Krauts.

Conference had a bunch of boring lectures. Not too many ice people there, unfortunately. I only attended a couple worthwhile presentations. My own went pretty well, I think. I kept changing it through the week, moving slides back and forth, restructuring, omitting some, adding others (had to go make a color copy of one). I was kinda nervous, but went through it enough beforehand that I knew what I wanted to say more or less. I made some improvisations on stage. A useful thing I did was to write in a few key words on the white backing sheet for each slide, to remind myself to bring up that point when I might omit it otherwise. I also had a sorta written sheet with important words in all caps, and circled numbers in the margin indicating when slides go up or down. It could have been better, of course (most notable improvement would have been to face the crowd more instead of looking at the overhead), but I was pretty satisfied, overall.