Soaking it all up: the second half of berlin

When I left for Europe, my dad told me several times to "drink deeply." Now, while some people might interpret that as a reason for sampling pint after pint of europe's beer, he was referring to something else. He was talking about something more, immersing myself in the sights, sounds, culture, and everything else in Europe that is so very different from the US. Well, I have been trying to keep this on mind. The past two days alone I feel as though I have squeezed things into every waking hour.

I started yesterday with a hearty breakfast of fruit, jellied toast, three bowls of cereal, a sandwich, coffee and orange juice. It's hard to go wrong with that sort of beginning. And, sure enough, I had a great day. I took a train about an hour north to sachenhausen concentration camp, the first of Nazi germany's camps for the "Jewish problem." It was opened in 1936 to be a model for other internment and death camps. Although it is not as notorious as some of the other camps, it housed more than 200,000 people over the years. After the war, the camp was converted into a soviet prison camp. Sachenhausen was finally closed in 1950, after 14 years of horror and oppression.

The camp was largely intact and I was free to wander around the inmate barracks, the cellblocks, the infirmary, the crematorium and execution trench, the morgue, and the watch towers. The whole time I was there I kept envisioning how I was going to describe the camp on my blog post. I finally realized that words would never be able to completely encompass all that I saw. One moment in particular made an impression on me. I was walking past the autopsy tables where patients were experimented on and I saw the entrance to the morgue. It was in the basement, with a ramp where the bodies could be rolled down into one of the three large rooms. The building was preserved just as it would have appeared 70 years ago, and I sensed a tangible feeling of evil. I wanted to leave; after all, hadn't I seen enough to last a lifetime? It was at that moment, though, that I realized something. I realized that even though i felt uncomfortable, I needed to confront the entire exhibit - to understand and remember. George Santayana famously stated, "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is quite true, I think.

I next segued to a less depressing scene, the pergamon museum. Founded during the early 20th century by max Von openheimer, it housed a colossal collection of classical, near eastern and Islamic art and artifacts. There was an entire Greek temple inside, cut into blocks and reassembled piece-by-piece in back in Berlin. There were also Assyrian sculptures and absolutely beautiful Arabic pieces: colored lithographs with the most intricate calligraphy, ancient wooden doors with thousands of tiny dots and scrollwork, and more. The centerpiece of the museum were the Ishtar gates from babylon. I would highly recommend visiting there.

Alright, so I realize that this post is approaching yawn-length, so I will try to wrap it up. Today I again had a long breakfast and read a newspaper, in English! That was nice of course, and so was my trip to nearby potsdam. This city was the site of the hapsburg emperors and is home to the sans souci palace system. I toured one, the new palace, and it was very fancy. It made my wonder, how much wealth did these people have to construct such a massive complex of palaces. Nothing in the US really compares in terms of sheer size alone.

Tomorrow I am scheduled to travel to Munich, where I hope to have many more things to write about.

The very interesting city that is berlin

Hello once again,

So I must apologize for the slight lapse in my blog updates as I spent two of the last three days on trains. Getting from Barcelona to Berlin was supposed to be relatively simple. I would take one train to Paris, go to the louvre (which I missed the first time around), and then go the next day to Berlin. As it turned out, the first two trains out of barcelona were completely full, the regional train I wound up taking had a connection that was cancelled due to a worker's strike, and so I travelled to Berlin via an uncomfortable night train and a very long train ride through Germany. It actually was not that bad, but I definitely would rather not have a repeat.

[On a side note, I am unable to edit my postings on my iPad, so I apologize for the spelling errors that may have occasionally cropped up. Also, the architect of park guell and the sagrada familia was named gaudi, not guell.]

Berlin itself has been great so far. The first thing I noticed were the people. I got into town late in the afternoon, and was hungry. A lady I passed on the sidewalk recommended I go to a nearby Portuguese sandwich shop - the best in town. It was indeed good, but the folks inside really made it enjoyable. As a lone American in a foreign country, it is so nice to meet locals who make me feel at home. It seems this characteristic wasn't just limited to the sandwich shops though; everywhere I have been Berliners have been helpful, friendly, and generally spoke impeccable English.

Alright, here is what I have actually seen. Yesterday I went on a free, tips-only walking tour of the city, and it was top-notch. We walked to the Brandenburg gate and down to where the Reich chancellory and hitler's bunker once stood. Interestingly enough, there is only a gravel parking lot and apartment buildings there now, and Berlin city code asks dog walkers to take their dogs to this spot. From there, our guide led us to the former luftwaffe headquarters, which was saved from the bombs of ww2 by the soviets. Apparently, the soviets wanted to keep the building for themselves after the war, and it was subsequently home to the GDR secret police ( the Stasi). Now it is germany's administrative center for taxes, so it appears that the building's evil legacy endures even today.

Continuing the tour, we walked to one of the few remaining sections of the Berlin wall, and then made our way to checkpoint Charlie and its famous, "you are now leaving the American sector" sign. It was lunchtime by now so I stopped at a sidewalk stand and ordered some currywurst. It was pretty tasty, but nothing phenomenal. The second half of the tour was spent visiting the Berlin opera house, the plaza where German students burned 20,000 "forbidden" books in 1933, the Berlin war memorial and holocaust memorial, and the main boulevard, unter den linden. Overall, the guide was incredibly knowledgeable and provided a great sense of coherence to the different places around Berlin. I really appreciated how he made each of the buildings come to life with a story of their own.

I completed my day with a side trip through the GDR museum, a look at the Reichstag, and a walk through the Tiergarten (a small forest with gravel walking trails and a couple of lakes, a very natural-like place).