East Berlin

I just came back from a long-weekend in Germany. Little boy and I went to Berlin to visit older boy, who is in Berlin for an internship this fall. We didn’t visit any of the conventional tourist attractions, except the Reichstag building, the parliament, from where Germany (and Greece) are being ruled. Most of the time we spent in East Berlin, the former Soviet sector.

We went to a suburb east of the city center to watch a football (soccer of course) game with FC Union in 2. Bundesliga. The game wasn’t too good, but it was really cool to be on the packed stand with 20.000 crazy people. The red shirts of FC Union bear a witness of the working-class background of the club. The supporters called their team Eisern Union (Iron Union). We were surrounded by factory workers who enjoyed their free weekend, and unemployed craftsmen who lost their jobs to the Polish and Lithuanians who do their work for a lower price. Citizens of the European Union.

Near the tram station in Warschauer Strasse (Warsaw Street), we passed a homeless young man sitting on the side walk with his sleeping bag and a filthy dog. In front of him, he had three cups labeled “food”, “weed” and “BMW”. In the “food” cup there were some coins, the other two were almost empty. I dropped 2 Euro in the “weed” cup and 3 Euro in his “BMW” cup. Homeless people have dreams for the future too. And in the meantime some weed may be good for the comport, in the brutal capitalist world.

At night we went to concerts in small obscure clubs in old East German industry buildings, to enjoy Berlin’s underground music scene. The beer was good, and people were nice and friendly. Some bands were good, some not so good. The lead guitar player in one of the garage-rock bands was a 48 yo professor at Humboldt University. He performed under a stage-name/pseudonym to avoid mixing business and pleasure. I immediately felt a connection with him; a guy with a PhD and some obscure and secret cultural interests on the side.

It was good to get away for a while. Nobody yelling at me. Nobody asking me difficult questions. Nobody interrogating me about scary thoughts in the darkest corners of my soul. It was a true feeling of freedom, for a while >:)

(Some pictures taken in Berlin, RAW Gelande, former train repair station and now subcultural center (top), football game with FC Union (2nd), East Berlin's famous Ampfelmann (3rd), and garage rock concert (bottom). The Humboldt professor is the guitar player to the right. Fortunately, the picture is to unfocused to see his face.)

A-Z Challenge 08: Helmholtz, Hilbert and Hörmander

Last summer, older boy and his buddies took our old Toyota and drove down to the French Alps, to ski on a glacier for three weeks. On the way back home, the transmission broke down on the autobahn somewhere in the former East Germany. Because the car was old, it took some time to get a new transmission and replace it.

So the boys took a plane back to the north. Two weeks later, my wife and I went down to Germany, to pick up the car and drive it back home.

Driving for hours and hours on the autobahn is boring. To entertain ourselves, I lectured my wife on the life and achievements of great mathematicians who lived and worked in the various cities we passed by:

Gustav Helmholtz (1821-1894) was a mathematician and physicist. He made important contributions to wave theory (Helmholtz equation) and thermodynamics (Helmholtz free energy), and had his last professor chair at the University of Berlin.

David Hilbert (1862-1943) worked most of his life in the University of Göttingen. He is famous for his contributions to axiomatic geometry and functional analysis (Hilbert space).

Lars Hörmander (1931-2012) was a professor at the University of Lund. He made important contributions to the theory of pseudo-differential operators, and is famous for his four-volume book on linear partial differential operators.

It might be that my wife found my lectures somewhat nerdy and tedious. At least, she wasn’t able to keep track of the details. Last night I went to a bar downtown to drink a beer with a math professor from the University Lund.

“Lund, that’s where Hilbert worked,” my wife said.

“No, Hilbert was in Göttingen, ” I replied. “Hörmander was in Lund.”

After all, my wife is just a chemical engineer. They make useful contributions to society too, but they just can’t keep track of the mathematics and the mathematicians >:)

A very special city

Last week we were on vacation. We traveled through DDR, or what used to be DDR during the cold war. Now, of course, it’s part of the re-united Germany. We spent most of the time in Berlin. It’s an awesome city, with a very special atmosphere.  

Berlin has been at the heart of European history for almost a century.  Berlin was the capital of the nazi regime before and during the 2^nd World War. The Berlin wall was an important border in the divided Europe during the cold war.  The fall of the Berlin wall marked the collapse of the communist block and the end of the cold war.

Today Berlin is the capital of the re-united Germany, which is the economic engine of the European Union.

There are plenty of interesting sights. The Reichstag building and the Brandenburger Tor, which was just inside the Soviet sector, and a few meters from the wall, where John F Kennedy gave his famous speech (“Ich bin ein Berliner”). 

The DDR museum gives an impression of everyday life in East Germany.

Checkpoint Charlie, manned by the US Army, was the site for many dramatic events, in real life, and in spy thrillers, such as “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” by LeCarre.

Today there is a big McDonald’s restaurant at Checkpoint Charlie, and for 2 Euros, you can get your picture taken with men in military uniforms at the checkpoint.  Capitalism vs. Communism 2-0.

I remember 1990 when the wall was taken down. Gorbachov was still the leader of the Soviet Union, and I was still a physics student in the university. Late August (or early September), I sat in a small apartment in Leningrad (presently St Petersburg) together with some Russian students. They had made borscht (the Russian soup) for us. We were drinking beer and smoking White Sea Channel  (Soviet cigarettes, terrible stuff) while watching Roger Waters on TV, performing The Wall live in Berlin. It was amazing.

Now I’m sitting in the airport waiting for the Aeroflot flight SU2175 to Moscow.  Here I go again. Business trip this time.     

(Picture taken last week at the Parisien Platz, by the Brandenburg Gate. During the Cold War, the Parisien Platz was was in The Soviet sector, and part of the so-called Death Zone. After the fall of the wall, the area has been re-built and taken over by the Americans; US Embassy to the left and Starbucks to the right.)