Three Languages

So this week has been really… I can’t pick just one word, it is really impossible to pick just one. It has been really good, and stressful and intense and exhausting and really all around rewarding. So now that I have thrown out every adjective in the book, I will have to elaborate on why this week has been all of those things for me, and then to get some stuff off my mind I will talk about what is coming up (and to help myself organize my own thoughts about what I need to do, and how I am going to go about accomplishing all of these things.

But first of all, this week. This week is the week of my week long intensive Arabic class that I am taking. It is six hours of Arabic for five days in a row to equal 30 hours of Arabic. I have finished day four, which means I have put in 24 hours of my thirty… and let’s just say my brain is reeling. I have been working on my second language (French) since I was about seven years old I would say… and I have really come as close to perfecting it this semester as I ever have, although as always I have a long way to go. But throwing this third language into the mix has been really interesting and challenging as well. First of all there is a completely new alphabet to learn, with 29 letters, 26 of which are consonants and which is read from right to left instead of left to right. Ok, by day two I had that down (ok sorta, at least I can write recognize and verbalize all of the letters. It is the pronunciation that I really need to work on, but I don’t know when that might happen.

There are so many new sounds, and learning a new language involves learning new grammar rules etc… I have really been fascinated this week by language itself and how there are so many different responses to the same problem that all humans face: the need to communicate. There have been thousands of languages, thousands of answers to the same problem, and learning about language I think I have to say that it is really a testament to human creativity and ingenuity that people have come up with so many and so complicated responses to the same problem. Wow. I could never learn them all, but I am certainly awed by the very existence of so many different languages!

It has also been very different for me to learn a new language in foreign language. Learning Arabic in French has been challenging at times too, when we are trying to sound things out phonetically and they are French words or French names, or when the prof discusses points of grammar and I have to ask, wait what? There is a guy in my class who is Australian, so I have a fellow Anglophone to help me if I need it, but it is really crazy to learn a very foreign language in a foreign language. I am definitely on my toes all the time… which is good, but part of the reason why this week has been so absolutely exhausting…

But there are other reasons too. As promised Marie and I moved this weekend. To an apartment with one room. And one bed. Oh dear. It is actually a great apartment for one person (or two people if those two people don’t mind sharing a bed) in a great location with a really nice sized bathroom and enough space for one person. But for two people? Oh dear. At first I was really stressed about the whole thing because I get up earlier than her, and in the next month I will be going to bed later I am sure etc etc. But moving to a foyer would be a really big hassle too, although that was an option. But Marie I guess was planning on going and visiting some people etc and she has other things to do so she wont be there all that much, so I will have the place to myself mostly I guess. The only down side is that there is no internet there… and the situation is still kinda strange to me, but I am going to London this weekend, and then I only have three weeks left to live there (holy crap where did the time go!) so I think for only three weeks we can def make it work. It might be a little stressful, but I am trying to roll with the punches…

But yeah! I am going to London this weekend! Even though my mom and grandma won’t be there I am going to see Annie and visit this awesome city! So look forward to some cool pictures coming up next week! And then after my little trip to London it is going to be time to buckle down and focus. Next Tuesday my débat is due, Wednesday we have a conference at IFE and Thursday I have to present my paper and my research thus far… then I have 15 days to finish my 30 page paper in French 1.5 spacing 11 point font. Oh dear. So I will really have to focus and get to work. I have done a lot of work in two weeks before and I can do it again for sure, but I just need to get my life together and do it. So there. But after that there is going to be three weeks of travelling which I am super excited about… but I have to get through all the hard stuff first! And tonight I am going to do laundry and have clean clothes again which will be nice… So look for London pictures soon!

A bientôt!

The upcoming week

So I just wanted to write a quick paragraph to update what is going on in my life currently that does not involve me sitting outside loving the sun… but rather involves my life at the IMA and with IFE. This week at the IMA is my stage intensif where I will be spending 6 hours a day for the next five days learning the basics of the Arabic language, which I am very excited for, but also a bit nervous for as well. I will let everyone know how that goes… Inshallah. (God willing in Arabic, at least I know one word.) I am also in the throes of doing research for my Memoire du stage which is about representations of a man called Saladin in the 12th century up to the present. I will write a much more detailed post about what it is about and what it entails in about a week, but for now just know it is underway… and this weekend I will be in London with Annie and I just can’t wait! I also wanted to write this post… so that I could put a few more pics from this weekend, of Paris in the Spring! So enjoy the pics and I will update this again soon talking about how everything is going! A bientot!

Rediscovering Paris

So I suddenly found myself with a lot more time this week and this weekend than I was planning on having…mostly because I was not running around Paris with my family and doing all of the things we had planned to do together. How somehow, as it always is in this city, I am never ever at a loss of things to do, and the free time actually found me slowing down a bit, and as one can when they open their eyes and take a bit of a slower pace, I found myself seeing Paris with slightly different eyes.
Or perhaps it is not my eyes that have changed, but the city itself. Paris has quite literally transformed itself into a new place I think. It is not cold and dreary and rainy (although I loved it just as much then) but warm and the sunlight seems endless and the trees and flowers are blooming and turning green everywhere. People are outside and tourists are around, and this city that I fell in love with in the months of February and March, when I couldn’t stand to go outside without eight layers and a POS umbrella, has asked me to fall in love with it again, this time in a whole new way. I can appreciate it for its wonderfulness now, for its parks and greenspaces so carefully planned by Haussman in the late 19th century. I can appreciate walks along the Seine, and picnics by the water and afternoons exploring new quartiers that I have not had the time or the will to explore in the depths of winter. I feel like I really got to experience Paris in the Spring this weekend, which is not the experience I was hoping to have this weekend (since I really wanted my mom and grandma to be here) but I will cherish this weekend for a long time to come I think.

Friday afternoon for my lunch break I sat on the grass on the bank of the Seine and had a picnic and read my book for a while and wrote postcards to people at home. You can see here my views of the Seine and the Institute and me looking insanely happy to be right where I was, in the sun by the water and enjoying every minute of it!

Saturday afternoon Matt and I set out to picnic and read and work on our memoires in the park at the end of the Promenade plantee that we discovered last weekend with Annie, and we spent the afternoon doing work, and reading (ok Matt did a lot more work that I did) enjoying the sun because it was 75 degrees outside for the first time this year, and people watching. I love people watching. It seemed like people from all woks of life were out in the park for the afternoon. Families with small children (who I am completely obsessed with watching and ooohing and awwwing over, and lovers with bottles of wine (we might have been those people too!) and girls in bathing suits trying to look less pasty, and old couples sitting in the shade, watching the young people.
Everyone was there, but not really tourists which was nice. Real genuine Parisians spending the first genuinely warm day outside, doing exactly what we were doing. We had a picnic of sandwhiches and cheese and oranges and chips, with a bottle of wine (and some water to keep hydrated) and we literally basked in the sun, and in our afternoon. It was really really wonderful. I could have been more productive, but it was a wonderful afternoon. We then went to find an afternoon treat (gelato from our favorite place at Bastille!) and explore an art market that is out at Bastille every weekend.

We continued our romantic evening and went to a really cool wine store that we found, where you can go down into the huge wine store, pick your bottle of wine, ranging in price from 9euro to 665 euro in price, and then you can take the bottle to the café upstairs and for only the price of the bottle they will open it and serve it to you, and you can be as fancy or not as you like. Needless to say we chose one of the less expensive bottles, but sitting in the café it is easy to pretend you are high French society drinking fancy French wine… even if the bottle only cost 10euro. It was really fun! We then ventured over to a place near the IMA in the quartier latin and had a cheap Panini for dinner (so yummy!) and went to one of our favorite hangout spots to watch a soccer game. It was a lovely day, and I really felt like Paris was new, the same but new, fresher and prettier, and more exciting than ever.

Sunday was just another day of exploring. Matt and I made our way to the Musee D’Orsay to see the paintings I studied in my modern art and modernity class freshman year. From there we walked all the way down along the Seine, admiring the wears the bouquinistes have to sell in their little carts and breathing in the warm Spring air. It was lovely!
We sat outside and ate dinner at our favorite Breton Crepe restaurant near Centre Pompidou, and talked about how Paris has become home, how it has really become our city, and how much fun it is to rediscover it in this way as the seasons have changed and I find myself changing with it, and turning my eyes to the future, knowing that I will be back, I will have to be back in this country and in this city again, and nothing could stand in my way.

I'll just have to come back again

So if anyone has been following me on twitter or is friends with me on facebook then you probably know that because of the stupid volcanic eruption in Iceland my mom and grandma’s eagerly awaited visit had to be canceled. At the very least you could say that everyone was very disappointed since planning this visit has been in the works for months and I really wanted to show my mom and my grandma all of my favorite places and things here in Paris. Although I have come to the conclusion already that I simply have not had enough time here in France during this sejour. I have not had enough time to travel and not had enough time to perfect my French the way I want to, thus there is only one solution to this problem. I will have to come back and spend another significant amount of time here… in the near future, and then my mom and grandma will have to come visit me then!

My grandma says she is getting a bit old to travel that far, but I think any 79 year old woman who makes it her goal to ride at least 100 miles a week on her bike in the summer is in perfect condition to come and visit me in France sometime within the next five years, and my mom is just in her prime of retirement, and everyone here is very intrigued by our story and really wants to meet her. (By our story I mean the story of the donor insemination and raising twins and working two jobs on her own, all the things that make my mom the wonderful strong and fantastic woman she is… why wouldn’t everyone want to meet her?) But after several days of stressfully watching the news and compulsively reading the New York Times and BBC articles it became very clear that their trip was going to be cancelled, since the earliest flight they could get after that would be on the 27th of April, and my mom and Susan had to go back to work, and really just couldn’t work around the volcanic eruption. I would be lying if I didn’t say that tears were shed… tears of frustration and disappointment, and downright missing my mom. I may be 21 years old, but I still miss my mom, and I don’t think that is really all that strange.

But after the tears were shed, I realized that maybe it just wasn’t supposed to work out this time around, and the future is wide open for more opportunities for my family to be here together, and maybe Mirandy will be able to come too, and all of the Moberg women will be in France together, enjoying the city that I have come to know as my second home away from home (DePauw being my first) and travelling around this country that is so different in so many ways… and yet not all that different at all. So yes, trying to keep everything in perspective can be very trying at times, especially when I think of all the fun we were going to have, but it has not been cancelled, just postponed I am just sure of it! Plus I think my mom is spending next week on Seabrook Island with her friends, which might be second only to visiting me in Europe, so that will be great for her!

I am still planning on going to London next weekend, I will just have to stay with Annie (which I am of course looking forward to!) and find things for my family to do when they come to visit me in the future. And Matt's parents are coming to visit as well, and Mrs. Brauer promised me a really good mom hug... so that will be fun as well! Look forward to posts about London (and a few others before that) coming soon!

The first nice weekend!

Do not be misled by the title of this post... I have had many nice dare I say wonderful weekends here in Paris, but this past weekend was really the first weekend that the weather was really beautiful, and it was probably 75 degrees and sunny without a doubt! I was also lucky enough to be graced by the presence of my wonderful friend Annie Greene who is getting her masters degree in London currently, and she jumped across the channel (ok she took the Eurostar across the channel) and spent the weekend with me in Paris! There were lots of museums we could have gone to, lots of places we could have checked out (my list continues to get longer as my time gets shorter!) but we just couldnt bring ourselves to go inside! So on Saturday we went out to the Promenade Plantée which is a set of old train tracks that has been turned into a beautiful walk way with a garden on the end of it... and then we went from there to have a picnic on the bank of the river. Even then we could not go inside so we went to the Jardin des Plantes where we saw more wonderful things in bloom! I wanted to go to the menagerie too... but I think everyone in Paris under the age of 5 wanted to do the same thing (shows you a little bit about my mental state!) and the line was too long so we just enjoyed the garden.

Then we went off to find some gelato, and coffee in le quartier latin... and we explored all over. On Sunday once again not being able to stay indoors we went to the cemetary in Montparnasse and paid a little visit to people like Jean-Paul Sartre and his lover Simone de Beauvoir as well as to Emile Durkheim and Serge Gainsbourg. From there we went up to Montmartre, which was gorgeous, and enjoyed a late lunch before heading back to Saint-Mandé to cook dinner with Tati and enjoy good food and good wine! So here are the pictures from the weekend, at least my favorite pics... and you can have your mind be as boggled as mine about how it is almost impossible to believe that there is a cloud of ash floating 10km above the city preventing all planes from flying, and preventing my mom and grandma from coming to visit me. But more on that later...

It was a truly wonderful weekend!

La vie à Paris

Life here in Paris is going well. I am in the seventh week of my internship here at the IMA, and I can’t believe that I am more than halfway done! My memoire is sort of underway, but will really begin to develop tomorrow I think… still so many things to look forward to! Annie is coming to visit this weekend, then next Tuesday my mom and Grandma are going to arrive! Then the weekend after that I will be in London and Matt’s parents are coming to visit which will be fun as well! Spring has definitely sprung, and it is getting warmer and the flowers and trees are popping out all over the place! I just love it! I just wanted to say that things here are going well along with all the fun trips I am taking and places I am seeing… all the posts are written now, but I have to wait to be at my computer to post them with the pictures for everyone to see! So today I will just write this little bit saying life is good, and post my favourite poem in the entire world by e.e. cummings for all to enjoy!

i thank You God for most this amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~ e.e. cummings

bisous!

Reims et Loan

So April has finally arrived in France, and what more could anyone want to do in April than go tromping around the French countryside a bit since the weather is lovely and the flowers are blooming? Paris is becoming lovelier and lovelier by the day as well, but last weekend I set off to the French countryside to a little town called Reims, in the Champagne region (where real champagne comes from!) I left Saturday morning and spent the day outside in Reims… checking out the Cathedral and seeing everything there was to see. I also went on a champagne tour, and saw the caves where they make Taittanger Champagne, which was very interesting… and they gave me a glass at the end which was cool… and probably the most expensive drink I will every drink! The sun was lovely and it was a great day… then on Sunday I spent time exploring the countryside a bit more in Loan… it as a bit cooler, but still a good day! Here are some of the pics I took, since it was just a very easy going and leisurely paced trip. Enjoy the pics of the countryside, and you will see why I wanted to go check it out!

Berlin: Monday

I was excited Monday morning to head out into the city… but also sort of dreading what was inevitably going to end the day… another 13 hour train ride back to Paris which would arrive in Paris at 9:30 Tuesday morning… and I would then go from Gare de l’Est straight to work at L’institut du monde arabe. It was not going to be my first choice of ways and places to sleep before work on Tuesday, but that was rather far away and the excitement for the day far out weighed the slight dread I was feeling about the end of our time in Berlin.

The sky was very grey and as we took our breakfast on the road, it started to rain… however I had with me this time the umbrella that I brought to Europe with me from home in the first place. (who knew I had enough brains to actually bring an umbrella since generally we Moberg’s regard them as being superfluous to life…) but needless to say this means that the POS umbrella did not come with us to Berlin. In fact the last picture you saw of the POS umbrella you might remember was when Alana was in Paris and Matt was displaying its shit-tastic-ness in a photo… that was the last time that the POS umbrella made an appearance in public, it is currently living out its retirement in Matt’s room next to his refrigerator because I cant stand to throw it away just yet.

But after that little aside about the ongoing (and rather ended saga of the POS umbrella) it was raining as we walked through the park that morning, making our way from out hostel to the Bauhaus museum so that I could fulfil one of my life goals which was to make a pilgrimage there to complete my experience of Mac’s first year seminar which was about modernist architecture… which was perpetuated and purported by the Bauhaus, along with other modern ideas and art and objects and chairs. Lots of chairs. The only reason that I really minded the rain on Monday was because we were dragging our bags along with us all day so as to avoid losing time and trekking all the way back across the city to pick up our bags before we had to leave for the train. I and my coat are waterproof, and my backpack is only kind of water-proof… thus I was not thrilled by the rainy day. But the park we walked through was still lovely, and it is so nice because the promise of spring is everywhere as the trees begin to turn green, and flowers are popping up everywhere left and right! I am spent several days trying to come up with the French equivalent of the saying “April Showers bring May flowers” but I just haven’t been able to do it yet… so if you Francophones out there have any suggestions… it would be much appreciated.

We found the Bauhaus museum without much trouble at all, and it was very distinctive from the moment we saw it. The building itself was designed by Walter Gropius himself who was an integral part of founding the Bauhaus after World War I. We dropped our stuff in the lockers which all of the museums provide for free (a deposit of one euro but you get it back!) and grabbed our audio guide things. Sadly you can’t take pics in the museum at all, which made me kinda sad, but that is ok. I was thrilled to realize that I knew a lot of what the audio guide was teaching me, and I remember almost everything from my class, and I rattled off the five main concepts to be incorporated into modernist architecture to Matt like I just finished the class yesterday. Can you believe that Matt’s dad is an architect, and they live in Illinois, and he has never been to see the Farnsworth house designed by Mies van der Rohe in Illinois? Gasp! I know, you are floored. We will be going up there next semester you can bet on it. But we thoroughly enjoyed the museum, seeing all the art and pottery and metal work and architecture and all the chairs… the Bauhaus guys really liked to design chairs. And before we left I made my first purchase yet from a museum gift shop! I bought buttons for myself and my beloved Alana… because even though she couldn’t come on the pilgrimage to the museum with me, she was there in spirit I know.


But during our visit I was really struck for the first time during that day (but not the last since our next stop was the Jewish History Museum) by how very deeply the Nazi party and their fascist regime of hate injured Germany at this time. Almost all of the minds who made the Bauhaus a brilliant reality during the 1920’s were forced to leave Germany by the end of the 1930’s. Their modernist ideas were not welcome under the Nazi regime, and they either had to stop producing cutting edge everything and go back to the 18th century, or go to the place where their ideas and cutting edge minds were very welcome… the United States. Germany’s “Brain Drain” as we called it in my high school European history class was very real, as they forced out anyone who was not in keeping with their ideas…and the human resources they lost are really unimaginable. And while it doesn’t do one much good to look at history and ask the question “what if things had be different” I can’t help but wonder how Germany and Berlin would be different, if the greatest minds of the time had not taken their mental resources elsewhere.

But we left the museum there and headed across the city a little bit to go and see another (controversial) building that we studied in my Modernist architecture class—the Jewish History Museum which was designed by Daniel Libeskind Jewish American architect to commemorate all of Jewish history. The museum itself starts in the fourth century CE and goes up to the present day (sort of, but I am getting there). So first I will talk about the architecture and what I think of the building… then what I think of what is inside the museum. The architecture of the building is definitely striking. I could only take pictures of the side of the building, but check out the wikipedia article if you want to see what it looks like from above which is probably one of the most interesting aspects of it. It is in a zigzag shape, the entire building. Then when you go inside the shape is easy to make out when you are in the basement of the building which is divided up into three axes called the Continuity axis (I think) and then one for the exodus (out of Israel I assume it is sort of ambiguous) and then one for the Holocaust, which ends in the chamber of memory… a stark room with no heat and a hole in the ceiling which lets light in… here is my pic of it, but it doesn’t look like much because it was so dark. I think in general the building captures the spirit of the museum, of the story it is trying to tell, and that is always up for interpretation. But I am not so sure that I am overly fond of the narrative the museum presents in terms of Jewish History.

I said this same thing freshman year when we learned about the museum and its goals in Mac’s class, but I tried to reserve total judgement until I had gone to see the museum for myself… and now I still think the same thing. I am not sure that the museum focuses on the aspects of Jewish history in the way that it should. Disclaimer here, I am not Jewish, nor am I a scholar of Jewish history, so I am not particularly qualified or justified in having this opinion. This is simply my opinion, and I would like someone to tell me otherwise so that I can change it. I just think that the museum has the attitude of “look what the world has done to us, it hates us, over and over again…” which is true, they Jews have not had an easy time of it in Europe. But it seems to me that they could have spun their larger narrative in a way that would say, “look the world has not been kind to us, but we as a people and a culture have persevered, and we are here triumphant to tell the tale toady;” Like I said I don’t get to really have an opinion on the issue, it just seems that overall this would be a more positive way for them to spin their history, and still be able to talk about the centuries of persecution they have been subject too… and overcome.

Although based on current Israeli politics, perhaps this is not actually how they feel about their history, and they do not seem to have learned from the persecution they have faced as they actively persecute the Palestinians… but this blog is not a political one… In fact the final thing that I found very interesting about the museum was that there is no display about Israel… they don’t even mention it. I feel like they could be trying to avoid the politics of it… but is no statement the same as making a statement in favour of Israeli politics? I don’t know. I just thought it was really interesting that they didn’t mention the state of Israel at all. The other thing about the museum was that for the second time during that day I was made aware again of how deeply the brain drain of the 1930’s injured Germany. Thousands of Jews and non Jews alike fled in the years preceding the Second World War, minds like Einstein and others who changed the world… but they had to do it from British or American soil. It just blows my mind.

On our way to the train station we came upon an outside exhibit and stopped to look at it briefly. It turns out they are finally working on building a museum where the headquarters of the SS used to be… which has been neglected for so long because it happens to be located right on the border where the wall used to be, and it was sort of lost in the shuffle and the tension that surrounded the wall for so many years. In this place there is also the only part of the wall that still remains… and it was pretty torn up, but it was there just the same, which I thought was very interesting to see.

Then we headed to have dinner at a place that was almost like Casa Grande… but not quite before we got back on the train to head to Paris. Only the train ride back we had beds to sleep in rather than just seats… which made life much more comfortable, and it made Tuesday at work much more pleasant as well! Over all Berlin was wonderful, and going there helped me to ask as many questions as it answered… and I would love to go back to explore even more.

Berlin: Sunday

So we woke up to the chiming of Easter Church bells on Sunday Morning, calling us out into the sunshine of Berlin… to explore the city even more, and to go to the places that Dr. Bruggeman had written us so much about. However, we had a very important stop to make before we continued our adventures on Museum Isle… a place that the slightly homesick for America in us just couldn’t pass up. Dunkin Donuts. They have Dunkin’ Donuts all over the place in Berlin… as well as Starbucks and other American type places, but really the only one that was of interest to us was Dunkin’ Donuts. Matt has many fond memories of the place from when he used to go with his Grandpa for breakfast as a small child (we all have places like that you know… my Grandpa always used to take Mirandy and I to Walmart with him)and so clearly a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts was on the agenda for the morning. Yes we did eat three donuts each in one sitting (you can see all six in the picture of Matt here where he looks like he is going to explode with happiness) but could really only stomach down about half the coffee… not good coffee like in the states. I think they just don’t understand drip coffee on this continent. That is ok with me because I have become extremely fond of my little shots of espresso with sugar in them that I drink almost every morning… and maybe Europeans should just stick to that. The people at Matt’s internship call American style coffee “sock water” and it is no wonder because if they think that all American style coffee tastes like the coffee we had at Dunkin’ Donuts then it did taste like sock water. Not good coffee, but you can’t mess up donuts! It was lovely!

After breakfast we still had a lot of time before we had our appt at the New Museum, so we set off to explore parts of the city that had been recommended to us both by Dr. Burggeman and by Mac. We wandered over to an artsy part of down town called Tacheles on Oranienburger Strasse in the ruin of an old department store, where there were all kinds of artsy things to see. Near there we went and saw the New Synagogue which was really lovely, but there was a line to go inside so we just took some pictures and imagined what it must have looked like after Kristalnacht where in it was completely destroyed. We then walked down the street even more to find some courtyards that were lovely, with tiled walls and all kinds of little gardens and things called Hackesche Höfe. It was really very lovely, and it makes it very hard to even imagine how the city must have felt when it looked the way it did in my grandpa’s pictures. We had to take another coffee break and get some espresso since our nasty sock water just didn’t cut it for our caffeine fix for the morning… and the sun shone really nicely so we just wanted to keep walking and discovering new courtyards and little shops forever!

Fully sugared up from the donuts and caffeinated from the espresso stop, we set off to explore Museum Island a little bit more before our reservation at the Neus museum. (the new museum, which used to be the old museum…) at 1:30. This museum was actually very interesting because it was the last museum to reopen after WWII, and it did so very recently. When it reopened, it officially marked the end of the period of destruction after the war, and finally, all five museums on the Island were open again to the public since their existence had been interrupted starting in 1933. We always think about how Europe was destroyed during both of the World Wars, but Germany had it very hard near the end of the Second World War…and then the division of the country and everything,it really is no wonder it has taken them close to sixty years to fully recover from the devastation of the war. And many of the objects that were once in their collections were destroyed, either by bombings or by exposure to the elements for many months after the bombings before the country could even begin to get itself back together. I can imagine that there is much mixed sentiment about whether or not the country could really be upset after the war because they fought long and hard for a very large force of evil… but I still hate to think of Allied bombs dropping on Berlin and destroying archaeological findings that once documented a species of prehistoric humans… so much knowledge was lost, and irreplaceable things as well. It makes me rather sick to think that war destroys so much… and that it continues to go on in the 21st century. The same think happened in Iraq in 2003, when the US forces neglected to protect the one of the most prominent museums in Baghdad, and the museum was bombed and looted, and some many priceless things were lost to the known world of knowledge probably forever. It makes me feel like crying and vomiting just to think about it… are we ever going to get our priorities straight? I just don’t know.

On really nice thing about museums in Berlin, is that included in the price of your ticket (or in our cases our three day passes) is an audio tour in your own language which allows you to learn and understand much more about what you are seeing. The guides also tell you about the history of the buildings and how they were rebuilt after the war, and what happened to a lot of things that were lost… it was really fascinating. One of the coolest things we saw in the New Museum was a bust of Neffretiti which is more than 3000 years old and in near perfect condition. It is a wonder that anything like this survives to this day, considering time wears on things in general, but we are also really good at destroying ourselves… but it was really very cool to see.

After this museum, we set out to find some lunch, even though it was like four o’clock. We had some brats on the side of the street near a little market, as you can see in this picture… I had currywurst which is a strange combination of flavours involving hotdog, ketchup and curry powder… random but delicious! We then set out to do some neighbourhood exploring on Easter Sunday… and first we headed down to the Berlin equivalent of the Champs de Lycee called Kurfurstendamm and walked and walked, but most of the shops were closed either because it was easter, or because it was Sunday, it was hard to say. But we weren’t really all that interested in shopping; just walking and looking so it was perfect. Then we jumped on the metro and headed up to the Alexanderplatz where we discovered a lovely little Easterfest thing going on… we walked around in it, but made our way just beyond it on the tram into the old east neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg near the Kollwitzplatz, where we found a side walk café which offered us blankets so that we could sit outside and enjoy the evening without freezing! It was lovely, and here is a pic of the night sky and the café!

But as the sun set our stomachs were certainly growling again after all of the walking we had done. We were so hungry, that anything and everything sounded good… and the only solution to that kind of hungry is clearly to find some cheap Indian food! Yum yum! Why does Paris not have cheap Indian food? They have Indian food, don’t get me wrong, but why is it not cheap? Why God Why? Anyway, we filled our bellies for sure on curry and naan (thanks for the recommendation Mac!) and discussed the days events, and plans for the following day. If I were going to live in Berlin (which would be difficult since I don’t speak a word of German beyond bitta and danke and nine) I would want to live in this little neighbourhood because it had so many yummy looking restaurants and nice apartment buildings and little shops that I am sure I could have spent hours looking in, if it hadn’t been close to 11:30pm and everything was closed… and my eyes kept wanting to close too, and we made the trek back across the quiet city to our hostel, with many of the sites and sounds and smells of the day swirling around in our heads with high hopes for tomorrow to explore the Bauhaus Museum and the Jewish History Museum… and after walking all day around the city, I slept very well that night.

Berlin: Saturday

The pics might not line up perfectly but you can figure everything out I am sure…

So easter in Europe is a big holiday. I find it very ironic the France, the country which prides itself on “laicite”- that is secularism and separation of church and state, has completely shuts down for one of the days which is traditionally one of the most religiously based holidays, well, ever. Easter, the day that celebrates one of the most debated aspects of Christianity, that the celebration of would confirm or throw out your belief of the miracle of the resurrection, is a huge holiday… but they are completely secular… don’t get me started on that.

But on the plus side, I did not have to work the Monday after Easter, so Matt and I decided to take advantage of the long weekend, and make the 13 hour trek by overnight train to Berlin for three days, to see everything we could possibly see between Saturday morning and Monday night. We then planned on getting back on the overnight train and heading back to Paris to go to work on Tuesday morning. We just wanted to make the most of the weekend, and spend as much time in Berlin as possible, and this plan allowed us to do just that.

So when work was over on Friday, we went over to the train station and had a nice dinner before we left so we wouldn’t be hungry on the way, then boarded the train at about 8:00pm for Berlin. Thirteen hours spent on any mode of transportation is a long time to spend, but if I have to pick one form, I think I would pick a train for long trips. You can move around the easiest, and you have the most room in the bathroom. The train we rode to Berlin was another Harry Potter train… we sat in a compartment that had eight seats that really should have been going to Hogwarts, but the thing was we only had seats (the cheapest way of course) and it made for a strange night of sleep, but there is nothing in the world a little Melatonin can’t help you sleep through, at least in my opinion, and we arrived in Berlin, a little sleepy eyed, but not feeling horrible at around 9am, ready for a day of adventures! We trekked over to our hostel, which was actually a huge youth hostel. I haven’t stayed at a ton of hostels in my life, but this one was pretty big, but clean and pretty quiet. So we dropped off our bags since our room wasn’t ready, picked up a couple maps and went to find some coffee (much needed) and a little breakfast and to let our adventures begin.

There were several things we knew that we wanted to do for sure, and those included the visiting the Holocaust memorial which Matt wrote a research paper about for our post World War II Honour Scholar seminar second semester freshman year, and we wanted to see the Jewish history museum which was designed by the Jewish architect Daniel Liebskind that I studied in my Modernist architecture seminar first semester freshman year. Side note: This is why being a HoScho is awesome… you study so many different things! I could go and see things I learned about in my Evolution and Human Nature seminar in Italy, and go see the memorials we learned about in my Germany seminar and the architects and buildings I learned about in another seminar. I love being a hoscho… don’t ask me next year at this time when I am finishing my thesis…

But we also had in our possession an email from the wonderful Professor Julia Bruggeman in our hands, which was really better than any guide book we could have ever even dreamed of buying! She told us about cool buildings and great restaurants and entire neighbourhoods not to miss! It was really great. We were worried a little that a lot of things would be closed for Easter, as they were in France, but because Germany does not have quite the catholic history that France has everything was open. A lot of the stores were closed on Sunday, but I think that is normal… and understandably nothing having to do with Jewish history ect. was closed on Easter either, so we did not have a problem with that!
We had a coffee and some yummy pastries and headed out to find the Museum Island which is home to five large museums which have all kinds of things from all different ages and places in them. We started with the Perggamonn museum which is home to the Pergamon alter and the Ishtar gate, and a really old wall from Babylon… lots of really cool historical things. But in my opinion, just as cool as the stuff in the museums,
are the museums themselves, who were almost all badly damaged during World War II and a lot of the artifacts that are still housed in them suffered during wars, and have had to be restored because they were damaged by rain and bombs and fires. I find all of that to be very interesting personally.

The museum was cool, and then we headed out to find some other sights of the city… the Brandenburg gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial and we wanted to see if there was anything left of the Berlin Wall that we could see. This was the first time I have ever been to Berlin, and all I know of it are from the pictures my grandfather took when he was there to help execute the Marshall plan in the late 1940’s. (He turned 18 in May of 1945 so he was just a little too young to have fought in the war in Europe, but he did serve two years in Germany.)
My grandpa’s pictures are absolutely amazing, and they show a Berlin that has not only been ravaged by war, and is almost completely rubble, but they also show a divided city, with signs pointing you in different directions to different sectors. I really like those pictures… but needless to say the Berlin I visited looked nothing like the pictures my Grandpa took of Germany immediately post World War II. I saw the Brandenburg Gate, and stood close to where he must have stood, and looked into a city that is now different from any other European city, more modern feeling and very open and green and clean. It is also amazing to think, that when I was born in 1989 the city was divided into to, and I could not have gone to see half the city I saw, which is very strange to imagine.

But the sun was shining and it was a gorgeous spring Saturday, and we walked over to the Reichstag and took a bit of a rest on the green grass in front of it, people watching and enjoying the sun (also trying to imagine the fact that Hitler burned the building down in the 1930’s to show who was in charge, in case anyone was un sure. We then went over to the Holocaust memorial, which is something Matt has been waiting to do since freshman year, and it really was a very interesting experience. I am not an expert on it like he is, and if you want to read more about it I would suggest looking it up on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe) but it is definitely a very interesting experience to have, and I am still not sure how I feel about it. At the time we were there it seemed a lot more like it could have been a park of some sort, rather than a memorial to one of the most tragic events in the modern world.
But at the same time, it is hard to see at first how large and deep it goes, and how quickly you could lose your way… as it seems Europe and Germany did during this time period in History… it is all very hard to say, but it was a very worthwhile visit for sure. The question of memory and how we memorialize things is a very big one, and as I mentioned before I took an entire class on how Germany today remembers and deals with the memory of World War II. There are no easy answers and everyone has a different opinion… very interesting and if you want to discuss it with me in person I would be more than happy to! Skype me or ill talk to you this summer!

But to lighten the mood a bit we walked over to Potsdammer Platz where we found the gelato that Dr. Bruggeman recommended to us… so yummy! But we were once again faced with the dilemma of being in a country where the language is so very foreign… I don’t know a word of German, just like I don’t know a word of Italian… and it always is a challenge to just speak English and hope that the person you want to communicate with will speak it back… since that is about all you can do. But at this point, our not very good night of sleep on the train was catching up with us, and we made our way back to the hostel for a bit of a nap break…

Then we headed out to find dinner near our hostel. We were in a very quiet part of the city, and we were trying to find a place that served German food and German beer for dinner, since when in Berlin… but all we could find was a random Irish pub type place that served German food and beer, so that is where we settled on eating, and we had a good dinner of Weinershintel (ok I can’t spell that) and beer and apple strudel. It was very good, but our eyes were drooping, and so we headed back to the hostel to have a good nights sleep. I will write about Sunday and Monday in the next posts so get ready for that!