Last Day in Berlin

Wow, it feels as though we have been away from home forever. Nevertheless, we have seen more of Germany than I ever imagined we could see in 10 days. From Munich to Wolfsburg to Berlin – we have seen ancient history, evidence of recent changes in history and modern art and technology. Today, the sun even came out for the first time since we arrived.

Our last day here was a free day for everyone. Many faculty and students spent the day on Museum Island. Museum Island is located in the Spree River, and it is home to five major museums:
1. The Altes Museum (the Old Museum): houses the Prussian Royal family’s art collection.
2. The Neues Museum (the New Museum): the big attraction is the Egyptian collection, which includes a famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.
3. The Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery): includes collections of Classical, Romantic, Biedermeier (more realistic type paintings), Impressionist, and early Modernist artwork.
4. The Bode Museum: includes sculptures, Byzantine art, coins and medals.
5. The Pergamom Museum: include several reconstructed huge and historically significant buildings such as the Pergamom Altar and the Istar Gate of Babylon. We hate that we missed this visit.

Sarah Veal and Sarah McCary planned to visit a concentration camp today, so we are interested to hear more about their adventures today. We saw them briefly at dinner, but did not sit with them, so we have yet to hear what all they did, but they seemed to have fun. Several other students visited to the Berlin Zoo. We heard from Andrew Phillips that the visit was most interesting, and that they were extremely impressed with the quality of the zoo.

Tony, Sherry Walker and I started our day at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Checkpoint Charlie was the name that Allied Powers like the UK, US, France and other allied countries gave to the most famous Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War. Even though I had visited this museum 11 years, I am still amazed at how much I had forgotten about the brutality that people endured in their desperate attempts to escape East Germany. What struck me even more during our visit is that most of the students on our trip were not even born when the Berlin Wall came down! Yikes!

After our visit to Checkpoint Charlie and a few photos, we took Sherry with us to Mass at St. Hedwig Cathedral. The Cathedral had an extremely modern design inside for a church located inside such a beautiful old building. After Mass, we brought Sherry back to the hotel and moved onto the afternoon portion of our plans. Our first stop was the Sony Center, which is also home to the Filmmuseum Berlin. This was not our destination, however. Tony was determined to visit the Dunkin Donuts in the Sony Center. He continues to be put out that we only have one Dunkin Donuts in Chattanooga, and we have seen at least three in Berlin. Granted, Berlin is a much bigger city, but he argues that Chattanooga is so much closer to the home of Dunkin Donuts (Quincy, MA) that we should have more. Dunkin Donuts, are you reading this?

After a brief visit to Dunkin Donuts, we moved along to see remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall, then found the Führerbunker (Hitler’s Bunker). Hitler’s Bunker was tricky to find because it is essentially just a parking lot now marked with a simple plaque. The German government has purposely refused to more elaborately mark the bunker because it wanted to try and prevent neo-Nazi groups from making shrine out of the location. The bunker was very large, and the government placed a children’s playground on the area above where Hitler and Eva Braun’s burned bodies were allegedly discovered.

From Führerbunker, we trekked to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. In includes 2,711 concrete slabs of different sizes in a grid pattern on a slanted field. Walking amongst these slabs was very moving.

Beyond the Memorial was the United States Embassy and then the Brandenburg Gate. The Brandenburg Gate was built in 1791 and was once one the gates of Prussia. The gate served as the backdrop for many Nazi propaganda films, but it also served as the backdrop when US President Ronald Reagan demanded “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” We sauntered onto the Pariser Platz, which is a large city square that “celebrates” the German occupation of Paris in 1814. Now it house many banks, restaurants, hotels (included the Hotel Adelon where Michael Jackson infamously held his baby over the balcony), museums (including the Kennedy Museum – Berlin still loves the Kennedys evens 37 years later!) and cheesy photo ops like fake Indians, fake statues, re-enactors, etc.

The Reichstag – the seat of German Parliament – was our next stop. A mysterious fire in the building in 1993 (some believe it was started by the Nazis, but it was blamed on the Communists) resulted in increased power for the Nazis and decreased freedoms for the people. Despite many repairs and work on the building since reunification, the building has yet to be fully restored, and you can still see Soviet graffiti inside on the walls. Next door to the Reichstag building is a more modern structure that serves as a meeting place for Parliament as well as a personal residence for current German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

We stopped for a quick lunch at a small German restaurant on our route, and their special today was “fried chicken, cole slaw and chips.” We got a kick out of that. I ordered a baked potato (Germans LOVE potatoes), and Tony ordered a German favorite – currywurst. Currywurst is basically hot pork sausage with curry sauce.

We came back to the hotel to find that at least three more members of our group have come down with a stomach virus that seems to be making the rounds. Tony and I spent the rest of our afternoon buying multiple bottles of ginger ale at the hotel bar and delivering them to student rooms while waiting for the doctor in our group to return from museum visits. He has arranged with our guide to go to an Apotheke (drug store) and some prescription anti-nausea drugs that should help keep everyone hydrated. We are hopeful they will feel better before we leave tomorrow and that no one else will get sick. We are always glad to have an ER doctor with us for moments like this, but he does not think it is anything serious.

We enjoyed one last group dinner tonight, and now everyone is packing and getting ready for our flight out in the morning. Assuming everything runs on schedule, we should be back on campus between 10 and 10:30 tomorrow night, maybe a bit later. We can never tell, but I would predict about that time. Tony and I ready to sleep in our own bed and see our little Ruthie.

Thanks for following our adventure.

Joanie and Tony

Saturday in Berlin

Today has definitely been the dreariest day in Germany. First, it is cold, dark and raining. It is the coldest and wettest day since we have been here. We have honestly enjoyed the trip very much, but we have NOT seen sunshine at all since we have been here. Several people say the cloud cover is good because it is protecting people from the volcanic ash from the Icelandic volcano, but Tony and I are starting to get a little depressed with no sun.

Secondly, we embarked on the morning with a visit to the Jewish Museum of Berlin. This museum features 200 years of Jewish history, and it features one of the first buildings designed after German reunification. It may be of note to some that the director of the museum is W. Michael Blumenthal, who was President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of the Treasury.

The design of the museum is similar to the Star of David, and it includes many dark, empty places that the architect refers to as “voids” to represent to the many Jews missing from Berlin as a result of persecution and exile. One of the most jarring parts of the museum is the Holocaust Tower. This tower is a 79-foot somewhat angular empty silo made of concrete. It is neither heated nor cooled, and it is very dark. I remember standing in there with Tony when the large door slammed shut, and saying “this is really creepy,” and he responded, “I think that’s the point.” Point taken! We have included the pictures of the exterior view of the Holocaust Tower as well as the corridors of the Garden of Exile, which is another of the exhibits.

The museum not only taught a lot about the history of Jews as a people, but it also taught about the accomplishments of some individual Jews during the past 200 years. I am ashamed to admit that I learned more than I ever imagined I would about some truly accomplished human beings. I think the one who stood out for me during this tour was Nelly Sachs. Ms. Sachs was German poet and playwright. She was educated at home due to health issues, and she led a very sheltered life. As the Nazis took power, she became increasingly frightened – to the power of becoming mute for a period of time. For years, she had pursued a deep friendship (via letters) with Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was this friendship that ultimately saved Nelly’s life and the life of her mother when Lagerlöf pleaded with the Swedish royal family to secure their release from Germany, at which point they fled to Sweden. (Sorry for the really long sentence – I get excited!)

Nelly Sachs’ writings have been described as giving voice to the grief, despair and longings of Jews during and after the Nazi siege. After her mother’s death she suffered a nervous breakdown, but she continued to write. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.

In the same area where we learned about Nelly Sachs, the museum was showing a film of some of Hitler’s troops marching through Berlin. At the same time we were watching this film, the museum’s fire detector went wonky for about 10 minutes so we kept hearing the fire alarm blaring as we watched this film. Somehow, it felt appropriate to hear alarms blaring while watching Hitler’s troops marching.

All in all, the museum was a moving experience, but as one of our fellow travelers noted at the end of the tour, “It is amazing there are any Jews left when you consider the level of persecution they have had to endure.” Indeed.

The afternoon included several more student-led tours (in the rain).

BERLIN THEATRE: John Moser and Amanda Hand led the Berlin Theatre tour. In the 1920s, Bertolt Brecht changed the world of theatre forever with the introduction of “epic theatre”. His ensemble, the Berliner Ensemble, attempted (and still attempts today) to re-function theatre into a medium for social change. In this way Berlin’s theatre is best known for avant garde and “high art” theatre as opposed to popular, Broadway-style theatre. After World War II, a revival spread through Berlin’s theatres founded significantly in the developments of Brecht and his ensemble. Known today for alternative and non-traditional theatre, Berlin provides a unique historical and creative perspective with a significant amount of influence on today’s international theatre scene. Their tour included visits to Theater des Westens, the Deutsches Theatre, the Berliner Ensemble, Zoologischer Garten, Möckernbrücke, Oranienburger Tor, and Hebbel am Ufer, Hau 1. Rumor has is that this tour began with a song and dance by John Moser himself.

NAZI BERLIN: Christine Currens and Tyler Walker led this tour. The thematic thread that will be explored on this tour will highlight the presence of the Third Reich and the Nazi regime in the city of Berlin. Nazism was a unique variety of fascism that involved biological racism and anti-Semitism, which eventually resulted in the Holocaust. The Nazi party stressed the belief in supremacy of an Aryan master race, and they claimed that the German Nation represented the most racially pure Aryan peoples. Their ideologies were rooted in nationalism, the rejection of democracy, social Darwinism, and the supremacy of the state over the individual. Propaganda and censorship of books, broadcasting, and resistance groups helped them to control the masses of German people. Their influence on Europe during the 1940’s spurred the Allied Forces to enter World War II against the Axes. Still, their direct influence within the city of Berlin can be seen today. This tour will visit some of important landmarks that were left behind following the wake of the Third Reich and will include such places their military air force ministry, Hitler’s personal underground bunker, and a site where one of the first major book burnings took place. Among the places this tour group visited were Gestapo Headquarters, Topography of Terror, Documentation Center (a new exhibition center), Fuhrerbunker (Hitler’s Bunker), Reich Air Ministry Building/New Ministry of Finance Building, and Bebel Platz (where the Nazis held their first official book burning). Word is this tour was very effective but understandably depressing.

GERMAN REUNIFICATIONðBERLIN: Jessica McKinney and Cheryl Toomey led the tour on German Reunification. The German Reunification of 1990 is of huge significance to German history. Since the fall of Nazi Germany, the country had been divided into East and West Germany. This had resulted in not only huge cultural differences, but also economical differences. The East was dominated by Communist rule while the West was under Federal Parliamentary Republic rule. Under the influence of internal and external pressures, negotiations began for reunification between East and West Germany. East Germany had been on the decline due to internal issues such as the Peaceful Revolution and external issues such as the removal of the Hungarian portion of the Iron Curtain. In 1990, Germany was reunified and East Germany merged into West Germany. Western Germany’s government, economic systems, and culture overtook Eastern Germany. The divide is still seen today, but there is continual movement towards internal reunification. This topic is important because it influenced how German politics, culture, and economics are now practiced. It also greatly influenced the lives of the Eastern Germans because they had to adopt the Western German practices. Among the places this tour group had planned to visit were:

1) Brandenburg Gate: This gate is a symbol of the desire for the reunification and freedom of Berlin. The East German prime minister and West German chancellor met after the wall was torn down. Thousands of people came to celebrate the reunification and still come to celebrate its anniversaries such as the 20th anniversary last year. President Reagan gave his famous speech here about tearing down the wall. {Our friend, Tom Griscom, drafted that line “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”}

2) Reichstag Building: The ceremony for the reunification of East and West Germany took place here. The next day, they symbolically met as the Parliament of the newly united Germany.

3) Marienfelde Refugee Centre Memorial: This memorial has exhibits on the refugees that came from East Germany to West Germany and documents their flight. The Centre was one of the housing areas for the refugees.

4) DDR Museum: This museum takes people through the daily life of an average Eastern German before the reunification. These exhibits will show how an Eastern German lived and how different their lives were before the reunification.

5) Berlin Wall Memorial: This museum documents the history of the Berlin Wall and discusses the events of the Bernauer Strasse. The exhibits detail international politics that influenced the divide and reunification of Germany as well as local life.

Word on the street, however, was that the entire group did not make to all of these stops because the rain and the cold cut the tour short.

Saturday night was a night for everyone to enjoy one last evening to do whatever they wanted to do because our last evening in Berlin involves a group dinner.

As Tony and I retired for the evening, I discovered that Tony has developed a morbid fascination with this creepy guy on German television here named Daniel Kreibich. He is a psychic/artist/life coach. He has callers (99% women) who call in, and he cheers for them in a really high-pitched voice and gives them prophesies and calls them “super” and tells them he loves them. He is so bizarre, but Tony just cannot look away – like a train wreck, I suppose. I have included a picture of him just because he is funny to me.

As always, thanks for keeping up with us.

Joanie and Tony