Dan Stutzbach’s blog

I just got back from my week long trip to Berlin where I attended the International Conference on Network Protocols. Wow. What a great trip! (Pictures will be forthcoming at a later time)

The conference itself was pretty good. I confess I had difficulty staying awake during presentations in the afternoon; a 9-hour time zone shift is tough to adapt to! I got to meet several other researchers in my field and developed a better sense of the research culture, community, and what sorts of papers get accepted. That was the main purpose of the trip anyway, so that’s good.

Conference aside, Berlin rocks! What a beautiful city! I could definitely spend more time there; I could even see myself living there for a time, though I don’t that is likely to ever happen.

Berlin is interesting because it has so much recent history packed into one place. World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War. It’s a tumultuous history.

I visited the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament. At the end of World War I, the creation of the first German republic was proclaimed from its balconies. Some years later, the Reichstag was burned. Hitler blamed the fire on the leaders of Communist Party, causing them a major defeat in the next election. Hitler and the Nazis then had a large enough majority to simply suspend human rights and plunge Germany back into a dictatorship. The Reichstag was not restored until after the Cold War ended.

I also visited the Brandenburg Gate, a grand arch originally built long ago when Berlin was a walled city and a handful of gates were in place as points to enforce taxes on imports and exports. The gate is now the symbolic entrance to Berlin. Napoleon marched through the gate when he conquered Berlin, and brought the statue atop the gate back to Paris as a symbol of his victory. The statue was returned after the fall of Napoleon.

The Nazis used the gate as a symbol of their power, acting as the starting point of parades. After World War II, the gate was incorporated into the Berlin Wall and became a prominent symbol of the Cold War. West Berlin was a small pocket of democracy completely surrounded by East Germany, the Berlin Wall the most physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain, and the Brandenburg Gate sat at the center of it all. President Kennedy stood before the Wall and gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech (worth reading). President Reagan stood before Brandenburg Gate and said “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!”

In 1989, after essentially 40 years of being surrounded by a hostile power, the Berlin Wall finally toppled, the Brandenburg Gate opened, and East and West began to reunite.

Berlin is a beautiful city. Wow.

They have spent a lot of time in the past 15 years rebuilding and restoring Berlin. So many of the buildings are new, and the architecture is beautiful.

I noticed several interesting things about the people. For one, I didn’t encounter any panhandlers, and I used the subway to get around. This felt a little odd to me in a city of more than 3 million people when I see people on the corners looking for money here in Eugene all the time.

Everyone seemed to speak at least some English. On a number of occasions strangers would say something incomprehensible to me, notice my expression, then say “English? I was wondering if you happened to have a cigarette that I could have”. I am envious of their multilingual ability and the education system that creates it.

I have always heard that Americans are more overweight than Europeans, and this was very apparent to me on this trip. I think I could count the number of overweight Germans I saw who were under the age of 40 on one hand. They also dress better, with more style and class than the average American.

Speaking of dress, Berlin has a phenomenal number of clothing stores. Most of them cater to women, so this was not so interesting for me personally, but I kept thinking that if I were a woman with an unlimited clothing budget, Berlin is definitely where I’d want to go. There also seemed to be a disproportionate number of lingerie stores. I’m not sure what that means. Germans really like lingerie? Based on the window displays, even their lingerie is more stylish and classy than typical American fair.

And there is some other difference that’s hard for me to pin down. When I got back to the States, and I looked at the people riding the bus, I felt like there was something missing in most of them, some light in their eyes, some greater awareness of the world, some sense of intellectualism. Perhaps it is just a cynical imagination, but I am not sure…