The street art of Berlin

For my class trip in Germany, we also went on a bike tour of Berlin. It was focused on the street art of Berlin and the resistance among young adults during the time of the wall. It was the most interesting guided tour I have ever taken, and I feel like I got to see a side of the city that most people don't get to see.




This was my favorite thing we saw. The man featured with the large 'member' was the editor of a newspaper that was described as the German version of FOX news. After he got a botched penis enlargement, a liberal paper published an article about it. He sued for libel, but the story was true, so he lost and actually had to pay the paper for court fees. An artist approached the liberal paper and offered to make this lovely piece of art for the cost of what they won in court from him. The best part, he could see it clearly from his office window. The other little bits on it are teasing articles that the paper published.










These pieces were seen in a place called RAW, which used to be a train station and is now an area with a lot of NGO's aimed toward helping get kids off the street and encouraging the arts. There was a lot of different street art to see there, and these were a couple of my favorites.
























This was another of my favorite things we saw. It's definitely.... interesting. In case it is hard to see, his body is made up of thousands of other bodies. We referred to him as giant baby-man.
















See that big black swatch on the building to the left? It used to be a piece of street art of a man in a pair of Rolex watch handcuffs. After that building was converted to high-end apartments, the artist himself covered the piece in black paint out of spite. Another street art group added the hand flipping the bird.











We also biked through the landing field of the airport Hitler built, which has now been converted to a park. It was so surreal biking across a tarmac because you just feel insignificantly small. The most interesting thing about the park is that it exists purely because of people petitioned for it to remain as such instead of getting demolished.