Last Day in Berlin

For a while, I was tempted to call this post "God Damn Obama," but things finally worked out.

I try to not to cram too many text-intensive events, one after another.  This morning, we visited the Wannsee Conference House, but then I gave them several hours off before we met again to tour the information center under the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

While the grounds of the villa are lovely, the museum is very text intense, with lots of charts, documents, and information.

I wasn't permitted to lecture, but I spoke individually with students, talking about specific exhibits.  As far as I could tell, all the students read the copy of the protocol, on display in the former dining room where the conference was held:

Afterwards, we walked around outside and enjoyed the views of the villa and the lake.

These stone lions show up in Lanzmann's Shoah:

Afterwards we returned to Wannsee, where yet again, I had a crappy lunch. This time it wasn't an inedible Turkish "pizza," but some very dry, oddly spiced meat balls.

The students were free to do what they liked on the break.  I told them to meet up at the fake Berlin Wall on Potsdamer Platz at 5 pm.  One headed off to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's house, where it sounds as if she had a fabulous and productive time.  Another headed up to check out the art museums near the Charlottenburg Palace, but got lost and never found them.  The rest went to the Pergamon Museum.  Originally, I was just going to help them get there, but when I found that as their professor, I could get them all in for free, I couldn't pass that up.

The students seemed suitably impressed with the size and grandeur of the exhibits.

We finished with plenty of time to run some errands and get to Potsdamer Platz by 5 pm.  Unfortunately, the area of Potsdamer Platz where we wanted to go wasn't open.

President Obama is staying at the Ritz Carlton, and so they've closed off the entire street in front of it, including the place we were supposed to meet.  Even worse by closing the road, they forced us to take a six block detour, in high heat, to get to the memorial.  The memorial will be closed tomorrow, but thankfully was still open today.

The students were quite moved by the somberness of the information center.

Afterwards, most of us went out to dinner at a small restaurant/cafe near the hostel.  The walls were decorated in stenciled zebras with arrows coming at them.  I asked the bar tender what they meant, but it turned out they borrowed the idea from a bar in Manhattan.

Two of the students and I decided to try the beers with syrup.  I had this one with "Waldmeister" syrup.

It was very sweet, green, and more like a soda than anything herbal.

This one had raspberry syrup, which looked even worse.

Tomorrow morning, we leave for Prague on what is supposed to be one of the hottest days of the year.  I hope the train is well air conditioned.

Lots of Sun

This morning's breakfast was much quieter.  Also, the students are slowly adjusting to the new time zone; they are waking up at 5 am instead of 4 am.  Their bodies should be up to speed by the time we get to Prague on Wednesday.

My graduate student had an appointment to visit some archives this morning, so we made arrangements to meet in the afternoon.  Meanwhile, the other 7 students and I headed up to Sachsenhausen.  The camp is at the end of the line and then a 20-minute walk, but I saw there was a bus.  When the bus was late, I asked a German standing nearby if this was the stop for the bus to Sachsenhausen.  He said yes, and then added, "it's not so punctual."  I told him I thought Germans were always punctual, and he laughed and said, "maybe in Berlin."

The skies were clear, bright, sunny and hot, so we stuck to the shade as much as possible.

In the past, I usually turn right and head right to the so-called Jewish barracks built in 1938 to house the thousands of Jewish men arrested during the November Pogrom.  The problem is that these barracks are so full of texts that the students never have much time to see anything else.  This time we turned left to go to the sites of execution.

This was the execution trench, where prisoners were either lined up to be shot or were hanged.  There were a variety of gruesome ways of killing prisoners here.  The bodies were then cremated.  These are all that remain of the crematorium.

The memorial statue here is from the East German government and looks like it was done by the same artist who did the main camp monument.  The statue is really a secular pietá, a communist version of Christ's descent from the cross.

After taking them to the main communist-era camp memorial, we headed at last to the Jewish barracks, but I limited their time there to half an hour.

I wanted to catch the 1:10 bus back to Oranienburg (they only run hourly), and so we did manage to get back to the station where we had a quick bite in an Imbiss, a whole-in-the-wall food shop.  I tried the "Polish-style" sausage, curious as to what I would get.  Here it is:

Basically, a large boiled hot dog drowning in a sea of mustard (it helped).

We got back to the hostel around 2:30, and I gave the students about half an hour to get ready if they wanted to go to Cafe Einstein Stammhaus.  My student was back from the archives so I heard about her adventures there.  Finally, we headed out (sans one student who was feeling light headed from the sun and jet lag and wanted to sleep).

No problem finding enough seats for us in the cafe's garden:

We relaxed in the shade and chatted for a while.  Then one student went off to meet friends near the Brandenburg Gate and the rest of us headed to KaDeWe.  After showing them the cafeteria we hit the food courts.  This is their display on American food items.  It's embarrassing:  we are primarily known around the world for Pop Tarts, Oreos, and cheese in a can:

Then it was on to the toy department.  This little, oddly biographied stuffed animal, ran a mere 59 euros.

After that we headed over to Mustafa's for some dönör kebap.  There's no place to sit, so some of the students waited on a ledge by a neighboring bank:

We got back 'round 9 pm and it was clear that we've all had a lot of sun today.  I've had a lot of water to drink and the back of my neck feels red.  Some of them went right to sleep, but several have decided to go out exploring.  I've encouraged the students to venture out on their own, so I'm glad they are trying new things.

I let them look through my guide book for interesting places in the neighborhood, and they settled on "Eschloraque Rümschrümp."  Here's what my guide book says about it:

Bonus marks if you can pronounce the name of this Mitte classic.  More bonus points if you can find it -- it's hidden away in one of the courtyards of hte Hackescher Höfe.  Steel yourself for the eccentric monster-obsessed interior design.

It sounds like it should be a fun place (if they find it).  They plan on being back by midnight and I've told them they need to be ready to leave tomorrow morning at 9 am for Wannsee.  That's all for now.

Second-Longest Day of the Trip

Yesterday was the first full day of the class and, I realized later, the second-longest day of the trip.

Most of the students woke up too early due to jet lag and were waiting for me to come down to help them get breakfast.  There were a pair of still drunk Englishmen having breakfast at the table next to us, which led to some odd, if interesting conversations.

There was a big group of high school students staying (there are a lot of student groups staying here), but after a while they cleared out leaving just us and the drunk Englishmen.

Here are three of the eight students at breakfast:

At 9:30 we left for the Topography of Terror.  This site is built on the location of the SS and Gestapo headquarters and is dedicated to covering their role in Hitler's totalitarian governance and crimes.  Here's the memorial in the building.

I snapped a few shots inside of students and of the exhibits. Here are four of the students:

These are from an exhibit on Nazi propaganda:

Afterwards, we went out to see the fragment of the Berlin wall that ran just to the north of the site.  Here are all the students on the trip:

Afterwards, I took them to the Schliesches Tor stop where there were lots of options for lunch.  Irene and I went to the hamburger place and had a nice conversation with two students (from Switzerland and the U.S.):

While the rest of the students had kebaps across the street.

We went back to the hostel for a short break and then started a walking tour of downtown Mitte.  I had printed out and laminated a photograph installation by the artist Shimon Attie.  In 1991, he went to the newly opened east Berlin and projected slide images from the 1920s onto the places where they were photographed and then documented the installation.  I took the students on a tour of those places.

Along the way we stopped at this very understated memorial in Koppenplatz, called The Deserted Room, and we talked about the juxtaposition of violence (in the memorial with the knocked over chair) and the beauty of the surrounding park.

Eventually, we made our way to Alexanderplatz for a coffee break, and then one of my graduate students taught the class about the Rosenstraße protests, where the Aryan wives of Jewish prisoners demonstrated outside the building where they were building held and succeeded in getting them released.

Afterwards we visited Bebelplatz, where they burned the books in 1933, and then the Brandenburger Tor.  On the eastern edge of the Tiergarten there are three memorials.  Instead of having one general memorial to Holocaust victims, there are specific memorials to individual victim groups:  the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; the Memorial to Homosexual Victims of the Holocaust; and the newest memorial, to Roma and Sinti Murdered in the Holocaust. 

The memorial has a large, reflecting pool with a triangle in the middle.  The triangle has a single flower, but on closer look, it appears to be pinned to the triangle.

Surrounding the pool are the words a short poem by a Roma poet.  Here is the text posted on the wall outside the memorial:

After visiting the other memorials, we walked about 15 minutes to Fassbender &  Rausch chocolaterie, but by the time we got there (7:30 pm), it was only a half hour from closing, so we couldn't eat in the cafe, though we could buy some chocolate.

I only saw the Titanic; I didn't buy it.

It was getting kind of late, so I took the students up to Prenzlauer Berg for the punk-anarchistic Italian pizzeria.  They had big tables out front, so we easily found a place to eat.

The pizzas are very Italian:  thin, crispy, and baked in a wood-fired stone oven.

Most of the dinners ate their pizza with fork and knife, but that just seemed too odd to me.  Everyone loved their pizzas.

By the time we finished it was nearly 10 pm and the sun was just setting.

We headed back to the hostel, where thank God, the student whose luggage was misplaced had arrived.  I went upstairs and collapsed into bed and fell asleep.

The Next Part of the Trip

Today, the first part of the trip ended and the main part of the trip began.  I've finished (for the time being) my research in Berlin, and today my students arrived.

The first arrived just before 8, so I left the pension early and made my way to Tegel Aiport to meet her flight.  We came back to the pension, had a nice breakfast, and then I checked out and we went to the new location, a hostel in the Mitte neighborhood on Oranienburger Straße.  I decided to help the students remember the location of the hostel, they should remember it as being on Orange Burger Street.  It's not quite right, but if they ever got lost, that would be enough for a German to figure out where they were trying to go.

It was only 10 am and we couldn't check into the hostel before 2pm, so I took the student up to see the whole Berlin Wall installation on Bernauer Straße, which is only one S-bahn stop away.  Then we headed down to the Pariser Platz and the Brandenburger Tor, where they are setting up seats and risers for President Obama's speech on Wednesday.

Early forecast:  chance of thunderstorms.  And a certainty of Republican denunciation.

I wanted to try to find the Ritter Sport chocolaterie and we eventually found it near the Gendarmemarkt, but they didn't have lunch food, so we went to a cafe near by.  We both ordered sausage.  Her's was boiled and served with sweet mustard.

I decided to try the Munich veal sausage, which came with carmelized onions, sauerkraut, potatoes, and spicy mustard.  It was quite good.

We got back to the hostel a little after 2 pm, but check in took longer than expected (all these different forms).  I needed to leave by 2:40 to pick up the next two students who were arriving, but I wanted to make sure the first got her room.  I barely made the train in time, but the bus transfer was slow.  By the time I got to Tegel, I discovered the flight had landed early. I rushed to the gate, but I had misread the sign and had gone to the wrong one.  I had to walk the way back to the entrance to discover that I had missed the gate by only two and then had to walk all the way around.  Very frustrated.

Thankfully, I ran into the two students near the gate.  One's luggage was lost and they had to go to lost and found.  I went went them and we discovered the missing luggage was in Denver. They are supposed to deliver it tomorrow.  By the time I got them back to the hotel, I barely had time to check into my own room before I went back to Tegel a third time to pick up the last group of students.

Here's my partially unpacked room.  It was really stuffy, but I finally figured out how to open the windows:

After all that rushing, it turned out that the last plane was delayed a half an hour.  Thankfully, all the students were in one piece, though several were clearly dazed from lack of sleep.  I got them back to the hostel and suggested we meet at 7:15 to go to dinner.

It turned out that most needed money, so I took them to the nearest ATM, and then we went to a traditional German-style cafe near the hostel.  I went with the Swiss-style veal strips with spaetzle.  Very good:

The students seemed to enjoy themselves.  On the way home, we ran into a hen party (they are like stag/bachelor parties, but for women). We had run into them earlier, but now they were walking, blowing whistles, and carrying a 6 foot tall inflatable penis.  Coming from the other direction was a much larger tour group, which also seemed to be blowing whistles and drinking.  They were on a collision course.  I didn't stay to watch.  I can still hear them whistling on the 5th floor.  My room faces west and the back, but they're really trying to make noise.

I'm letting them sleep in.  We meet tomorrow for our first day of touring at 9:30 am, after breakfast.  I've strongly suggested good walking shoes.

Last Minute Preparations

With some students already in flight to Germany and the rest about to leave, I spent today finishing up.

In the morning, that meant one last visit to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin to check out a last newspaper.

I then headed out to Oberschöneweide in the hope of finding these Holocaust memorials created by the local technical school, but instead, all I found were the remnants of Emil Rathenau's electric factory.

After two hours of walking, I headed off to KaDeWe for a lunch in their overpriced but still gorgeous top floor cafeteria.  As always, the food halls bring back memories of Harrods in London.

Here are some of the main course options.

Anyone like matjes herring?

Of course, it's the dessert selections that always grab my attention, like these:

For myself, I chose to go with the sauteed Zanderfilet (pike-perch), along with some veggies and a dessert I can never make at home.

Afterwards, I headed downstairs to my favorite chocolate shop in the world: Neuhaus, and bought some treats for later.

Since it's only one stop to Nollendorfplatz, I headed to check out the new Schwules Museum.  For years, they had rented a small space in Kreutzberg, but they finally have their own place. It turns out that I walked right past it yesterday, and today I see why:  it's still under construction (though open). 



For example, I stopped by the archives to see what they had on Bruno Balz.  Here's the entryway:

They only had a few press clippings (which I asked to have copied) and a book with a small entry.  It did have this nice photo from 1926 of the album cover of Balz's hit song "Bubi, lass uns Freunde sein" ("Bubi, Let's be Friends").

After that it was back to the pension to do one last load of laundry while I still can and start sorting through my receipts to see which I should keep and which I should toss.  I had a bit of a scare when I misplaced my metro passes for my students, but I finally found them tucked away in my German-English dictionary (after I had unpacked my suitcase twice looking for them).

The first student arrives at 7:55 am tomorrow, so I have to be up early to meet her at Tegel Airport.