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!