Berlin day 2!

So, did not realize it was daylight savings here... woke up a bit confused, but that's okay. got an extra hour of sleep.  I started my morning off with the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. It had lots of information, very interesting. After Checkpoint Charlie, I decided I would check out the East Side Gallery, which is a section of the Berlin wall that was left standing, and artists in the early 90s took a section and painted it. It wasvery cool.  East Berlin is pretty shady though, so didn't do anything else in that area. From there I went to see the Neue Synagogue. the actual synagogue was destroyed in the war, and was not rebuilt. The facade and the front half of the building are still there. the dome of the building had to be rebuilt. The synagogue has actually been there since around the 1800s, and it was huge, seating around 3,000 people. the last service was in 1942 in a smaller section of the building.
After the synagogue I thought I would check out a street in Berlin that was supposed to have shopping. well, stores are actually closed on Sundays, so that didnt happen. I walked from there, through parts of the Tiergarten to a street market I saw from the train on the way. It was an antique market, and they had very interesting stuff, lots of dishware. not much I could really take back with me. It was pretty cool. the one pair of earrings I did like were €2,000. yeah not happening.

After the street market I went back to the Brandenburg gate to do a little bit more of souvenier shopping, and then walked down Unter den Linden again, and found somewhere to eat. Had a delicious meal, and now Im back at the hostel , getting to bed early. have to get up at 4:30 am tomorrow. It was a short trip but I definitely crammed in quite a lot. If (aka when) I come back I want to check out some of the art museums and smaller galleries.

I'll be posting pictures the next few days. I took a lot.

Berlin day 1

No pictures till I get back sorry. ´
I got into Berlin last night, and found the hostel easily. it wasn't that late but the people in my room were already sleeping. instead of staying up and packing the night before, they decided to get up and pack at 5 am and then leave. thanks for getting me up. Fell back asleep, and I had set my alarm the night before for 8:40, then I changed the time an hour ahead. apparently my phone decided to go off at 9:40 am . oh well.

anyway. a few things I noticed last night on my first U-bahn ride... guys were pulling out beers out of their pockets and just drinkin on the train
-the underground trains in london have open buttons on the doors, but the doors open automatically anyway. Here you get to actually press the button, and the doors don't open otherwise when you get to a stop
-Unlike in DC and London where the driver of the train makes a lot of announcements and there are automated announcements constantly, there's hardly any on the trains here.  It's nice and quiet .
-There's hardly any staff at the u-bahn stations besides the people working in news stalls. There are no information or ticket booths , and there are no gates to go through. It works on an honor system. not sure how many people use it. there are only two ticket machines at an entrance, and never any lines. it does make riding the tube less stressfull-sometimes waiting on ticket lines is annoying and dealing with metro cards that don't work. Even though its less stressful, I can't imagine how the train service stays in business. I guess they don't have to employ as many people in the first place. ´
-you can tell Berlin went through a lot. the stations are a bit outdated and in some cases covered in grafiti. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that you can get in without tickets and there's no staff watching you.

Anyway...to my day. First I went to see the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. All right next to each other. it was a beautiful day and the sites were pretty cool. I enjozed the Memorial very much. you will see photos and a video in the future.

After that I made my way down Unter den Linden which is the main street coming from the gate. Unter den Linden means Under the Linden and Linden are the type of trees that line the streets. Well, Fall has hit Berlin because most of the trees had shed their leaves, but the ones that did have some left were very pretty -bright yellow leaves.
I walked down to the German History museum- was glad they had the information in english. It was interesting. it had a lot of information and was well laid out.

After the museum I started to continue down the street and came upon a street market. walked down that...it had lots of books. very cool but of course I can't read them.
After the street market I came upon the Berlin Dome- a church, and then Alexanderplatz-which wasnt too exciting but i did a little shopping-not really impressed with their clothes shopping. i have to research where else to go .
And then after Alexanderplatz, i stopped at checkpoint charlie, but the museum was crowded so I'm going to do it tomorrow, so I went to the Jewish Museum. Also very interesting to find out the whole history of Jewish people in germany, not just the Holocaust.

That was the end of my day. and now i'm back at the lovely hostel , having dinner and relaxing before i do a million more things tomorrow.

cheers!

Shoes!

Thursday's is the day we review the paper. So far we've been only practicing, and producing "dummy" issues, and we haven't really seen if our photographs were chosen. They haven't updated the online site much either. Next week we are going "live" so papers will be coming out, and the online site should have more things on it. We looked at the dummy today and one of the articles I took pictures for got a whole spread...including 3/4 of my pictures! I'm very excited. They mentioned they were probably going to use it in the paper next week too. I hope so! so exciting!

Anyway, so today I was given a very vague assignment. New Look ( a very popular store here) is collaborating with 5 students from the London College of Fashion to design footwear for next year. That's about all the information I had. So I went to the building that listed footwear, and I found the studios. Lots and lots of machinery. very interesting place. I happened to find two students who were chosen and got shots of one working. It was pretty cool to see how shoes are made! This article is for next weeks "live" edition, and I'm pretty confident it will get published.

Ruth Jones...one of the students chosen. She was working on a pair of interesting boots. 

Chang Seok Ko shows off shoes he was working on before the New Look project

Field Hockey

Today I went "on assignment" to the school's women's hockey game. It was interesting. Not my favorite sport, I definitely like the slow-paced-ness of baseball.

Tate Britain

One of the journalists was doing an article on the possibility of the arts funding getting cut during all the budget cuts. A lot of the museums and other galleries are free because they get funding right now. So I was sent off to the Tate Britain, White Chapel Gallery, and two theatres. Not sure why they needed me to go to four different places so they could use  one picture...four different places on different sides of the city, and when I was trying to find the last one (soho theatre) they were bugging me to get the pictures in. I think they need to refine their photo requests. ANYWAY, I enjoyed going to the Tate Britain again. could not take pictures in the gallery, and could not go inside the theatre.

 Special Exhibit 

really neat mirror in the modern art, first of all you're upside down, and when you get close it's really hard to look at, hurts your eyes. so cool.

A bonus of the Thames with the sun setting

Notting Hill

This morning I started my day with a Vintage Wedding Fair. It was nice, but I didn't find anything I really liked. After the fair, I didn't know what to do , so I walked up Portobello road, which runs on Saturday so it was nice and quiet and there was a stall here and there. I was determined to find some wedding jewelry so I checked out some shops on Oxford St. but I shopped till I dropped, didn't find anything, and came back exhausted. I think I need to find another vintage/antique section, or check out Portobello road on an On day with that in mind.

The venue that the Vintage Wedding Fair was taking place

Pink door! cute!

 Since I can't go to Italy, I'm finding good Italian food here instead

An elephant leftover from the London Elephant Parade!

http://www.elephantparadelondon.org/

London's all ready for Christmas

 a giant sparkly shoe at Selfridge's new Shoe Gallery

firemen to greyhounds

I had quite a random Saturday, but I enjoyed myself. First I went to check out one of the local fire stations because they were planning a strike today. I was hoping to catch them walking out. I found a bunch of guys and some firemen yelling at the people hired to take over the fire brigade during the strike as they pulled the trucks out of the lot. It was quite interesting and they were all fairly angry which was fun, but it was definitely hard to get shots. In order to get a view of their faces yelling I would have been run over by the trucks, and some other photographers got really close to the trucks , so they were in the way. It was fun though, and I got one or two shots. It was good practice.

After that, I took a train out to Hersham, England- a suburb town of London. I walked about 40 minutes to a Greyhound kennel that takes in retired racing dogs, and has a sanctuary for dogs who can not be placed in homes. They invite visitors in the middle of the day to come walk the dogs. It was quite a strange setup, but after checking your ID they handed over a dog to you to walk in some fields they have. I walked three lovely greyhounds. Two big guys who kicked up the grass after they went to the bathroom-thought that was pretty funny. It's amazing, I pet them and everything, but my allergies did not bother me at all. Maybe because I'm outside? or I'm just allergic to my own dog.... it is encouraging though. 

When I got back, I was pretty exhausted, so I slept for a few hours-exciting Saturday night. I'm planning my trip to Berlin for next weekend, so I thought I would try to organize that, and figure out what I want to see.

an overall shot of the station 

waving his umbrella at the truck and yelling

They are angry these people are breaking the strike 

a fire truck parked. I read that some were situated around the city just incase. Of course they still had people to respond. I am kind of unclear if the people in the trucks above are part of the London Fire Brigade or the outsiders coming in to take over for the day

This one's for Kristen

Couldn't really take pictures of the greyhounds while I was holding their leashes. They weren't the best at walking on a leash so they pulled a lot. I think this one was Timmy. He had gotten a home, but they took him back because he was too big and "passed gas" but they were feeding him crap. Some people should just not own dogs.

and I almost got caught in a bad rainstorm, but only got a drizzle. 

Liberty of London

Today after class I went to Liberty of London, a fancy alternative approach to a department store. I went when I came to London with my mom years ago. I enjoyed walking around window shopping. Was a bit surprised to see a dress on sale for £600. Anyway, they have lots of neat things, clothes, shoes, accessories,  gifts, tableware, furniture, fabrics, lights, toys, candy, and a lovely Christmas shop. I actually ended up getting 8 ornaments. Thought it was time to start my own collection.

Saw this on the way there-bit dramatic for me, but pretty

Liberty of London

Breakdancing

Wednesday night I photographed a breakdancing class. The school offers sports societies that you can join, and breakdancing seemed to be pretty popular! It looked like hard work-glad I was only there photographing it.

Museum of London

Went to visit the Museum of London. I really enjoyed it. Basically went from pre-London, to Roman London, to Medieval London and so on...victorian... and then current.

To start, the museum was on London Wall Road, named after these walls that were discovered. They are from the Roman London time.

Just incase I couldn't take pictures inside

eh-simple dress :)

Clocks

Really awesome hat

Obviously my wedding cake needs to be this big

Awesome dress

My new wheels

Some more walls...pretty neat