Dear reader(s),
Having many Internet difficulties in London but wanted to let you know I'm alive and well. More later.
Cheerio,
Anna
Friday, March 4, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Zusammen in Munchen
Dear reader(s),
I left Berlin yesterday. It was quite sad. Partly because I'd gotten quite attached to the city in only ten days and partly because I had also grown fond of my classmates, most of whom will be in Bonn, Germany for the next five months.
But I met the boyfriend at the airport and we've spent the whole day in Munich. It's quite different from Berlin; Munich ended up on the West German side during the Cold War and has therefore had ample time to repair most of the damage from World War II, while Berlin of course just kept getting slammed with horrors until about 20 years ago. The difference is quite obvious.
It's really hard to see a city in one day. I spent ten in Berlin and still felt like I hadn't seen everything. So it'll be a little sad when we leave tomorrow, especially since I'll be leaving Germany until god-knows-when and will no longer be able to find the German things I love like carbonated apple juice (apfelschorle, they sell it everywhere) and super cheap beer and throwing random German words into my conversations.
But I am really excited to see London, the center of Renaissance theatre and all-around kickass locale.
So more tomorrow or the next day, when we're happily settled in the UK.
Tschuss (last time I can say that I guess),
Anna
I left Berlin yesterday. It was quite sad. Partly because I'd gotten quite attached to the city in only ten days and partly because I had also grown fond of my classmates, most of whom will be in Bonn, Germany for the next five months.
But I met the boyfriend at the airport and we've spent the whole day in Munich. It's quite different from Berlin; Munich ended up on the West German side during the Cold War and has therefore had ample time to repair most of the damage from World War II, while Berlin of course just kept getting slammed with horrors until about 20 years ago. The difference is quite obvious.
It's really hard to see a city in one day. I spent ten in Berlin and still felt like I hadn't seen everything. So it'll be a little sad when we leave tomorrow, especially since I'll be leaving Germany until god-knows-when and will no longer be able to find the German things I love like carbonated apple juice (apfelschorle, they sell it everywhere) and super cheap beer and throwing random German words into my conversations.
But I am really excited to see London, the center of Renaissance theatre and all-around kickass locale.
So more tomorrow or the next day, when we're happily settled in the UK.
Tschuss (last time I can say that I guess),
Anna
Sunday, February 27, 2011
An explanation and a photo
Dear reader(s),
One of my friends asked me a few days ago what the title of this blog meant and I realized I never explained it, so I probably should.
Back in the Cold War days JFK made a visit to West Berlin and gave a speech that basically expressed his support for West Germany and the importance of defending it in the name of not bowing to Communism. Or, you know, something like that. Anyway, at the end of that speech he said "Ich bin ein Berliner", or "I am a Berliner." Obviously he meant a citizen of Berlin, but there's also a type of jelly doughnut they sell here that is nicknamed the Berliner (and, I found out, one called the Amerikaner, which is covered in glaze and frosting), so some people joked that what he actually said was "I am a jelly doughnut", even though I think his German was, in fact, correct.
So since I'm in Berlin...I'm a jelly doughnut. And that's the joke.
Also just for shits and giggles here's a picture of my class in front of a huge leftover section of the Berlin Wall yesterday. Cuz I know y'all wanna see the Wall.
Tschuss, mein freunds!
Anna
One of my friends asked me a few days ago what the title of this blog meant and I realized I never explained it, so I probably should.
Back in the Cold War days JFK made a visit to West Berlin and gave a speech that basically expressed his support for West Germany and the importance of defending it in the name of not bowing to Communism. Or, you know, something like that. Anyway, at the end of that speech he said "Ich bin ein Berliner", or "I am a Berliner." Obviously he meant a citizen of Berlin, but there's also a type of jelly doughnut they sell here that is nicknamed the Berliner (and, I found out, one called the Amerikaner, which is covered in glaze and frosting), so some people joked that what he actually said was "I am a jelly doughnut", even though I think his German was, in fact, correct.
So since I'm in Berlin...I'm a jelly doughnut. And that's the joke.
Also just for shits and giggles here's a picture of my class in front of a huge leftover section of the Berlin Wall yesterday. Cuz I know y'all wanna see the Wall.
 | |
| This is the only picture our professor (on the left) agreed to be in with us. And we had to beg. |
Anna
Ich liebe Berlin
Dear reader(s),
Tomorrow is our last day in Berlin. Technically though I won't leave til the late evening on Tuesday so it's actually more like my second-to-last day, but still. In honor of how awesome Berlin is I'm going to list some things about it that are...well, awesome.
1) Public transit. Easily the best thing about the city. It's fast, it's clean, it always arrives right on time, and the seats are way more comfortable than the seats on the El.
2) Dogs. They're everywhere - people bring them on trains and to restaurants and everything - and they are super well-behaved. And cute, of course.
3) Alcohol. Beer is almost always cheaper than Coke. And since you can legally buy it here at 16, I've hardly ever gotten carded. Not that it matters anyway, but still.
4) "Green" thinking. Every time you buy something in a bottle at the store - like beer, or water - they charge you about 25 eurocents as a deposit, and when you bring the bottles back and recycle them you get your deposit back. Is that a great idea or what? Also the escalators in the train stations have motion sensors, so when no one is on them they turn off but when someone walks up to them they turn back on again. GENIUS.
5) History. Almost everywhere you look is a place where something major happened. Maybe the Berlin Wall used to be there, or there's a house with a little plaque outside of it because a Jewish person lived there who was deported by the Nazis, or you can see see where shells made dents in a building and they've been spackled over. But so many crazy things have happened in/to Berlin that there's an interesting fact to be learned nearly anywhere you go.
6) Free/cheap things. A lot of the museums and other places we've been to have been free, and most other ones are way cheaper than they would be in America. Germans place high priority on culture and making it accessible to everyone. That's pretty neat.
7) Okay, I'm going to apologize in advance for getting political on this one, but...gay marriage is legal here. The mayor of Berlin is gay and no one bats an eye when he and his partner go to functions together. And, as my professor said, "The government hasn't collapsed yet."
8) Food. Overall, way less oily and fatty than American food. I've definitely gotten less indigestion since I've been here.
9) Austrian punk bands. On Friday night one of my classmates took us to a bar where some Austrian kids he knew were playing in a show. They were super nice and knew English and were happy to have us obnoxious Americans there. And the show was great.
10) Language education. Most German kids start learning English in the 3rd grade. I wish my school had started teaching me a second language when I was that age. All the Germans seem so smart when they switch between languages, it makes me kind of feel like an idiot for only speaking one.
That's all I can think of for now but of course there are tons of awesome things about Berlin. I'm going to be so sad when we leave, but at least there's still Munich, London, and Dublin to look forward to.
Ciao,
Anna
Tomorrow is our last day in Berlin. Technically though I won't leave til the late evening on Tuesday so it's actually more like my second-to-last day, but still. In honor of how awesome Berlin is I'm going to list some things about it that are...well, awesome.
1) Public transit. Easily the best thing about the city. It's fast, it's clean, it always arrives right on time, and the seats are way more comfortable than the seats on the El.
2) Dogs. They're everywhere - people bring them on trains and to restaurants and everything - and they are super well-behaved. And cute, of course.
3) Alcohol. Beer is almost always cheaper than Coke. And since you can legally buy it here at 16, I've hardly ever gotten carded. Not that it matters anyway, but still.
4) "Green" thinking. Every time you buy something in a bottle at the store - like beer, or water - they charge you about 25 eurocents as a deposit, and when you bring the bottles back and recycle them you get your deposit back. Is that a great idea or what? Also the escalators in the train stations have motion sensors, so when no one is on them they turn off but when someone walks up to them they turn back on again. GENIUS.
5) History. Almost everywhere you look is a place where something major happened. Maybe the Berlin Wall used to be there, or there's a house with a little plaque outside of it because a Jewish person lived there who was deported by the Nazis, or you can see see where shells made dents in a building and they've been spackled over. But so many crazy things have happened in/to Berlin that there's an interesting fact to be learned nearly anywhere you go.
6) Free/cheap things. A lot of the museums and other places we've been to have been free, and most other ones are way cheaper than they would be in America. Germans place high priority on culture and making it accessible to everyone. That's pretty neat.
7) Okay, I'm going to apologize in advance for getting political on this one, but...gay marriage is legal here. The mayor of Berlin is gay and no one bats an eye when he and his partner go to functions together. And, as my professor said, "The government hasn't collapsed yet."
8) Food. Overall, way less oily and fatty than American food. I've definitely gotten less indigestion since I've been here.
9) Austrian punk bands. On Friday night one of my classmates took us to a bar where some Austrian kids he knew were playing in a show. They were super nice and knew English and were happy to have us obnoxious Americans there. And the show was great.
10) Language education. Most German kids start learning English in the 3rd grade. I wish my school had started teaching me a second language when I was that age. All the Germans seem so smart when they switch between languages, it makes me kind of feel like an idiot for only speaking one.
That's all I can think of for now but of course there are tons of awesome things about Berlin. I'm going to be so sad when we leave, but at least there's still Munich, London, and Dublin to look forward to.
Ciao,
Anna
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Sachsenhausen
Dear reader(s),
I know I haven't updated for a couple days. We've done of cool things and I've been trying to spend as much time as possible in the city and not on my computer. But I am alive and well, so no worries there.
My intention was to catch you all up on the events I haven't written about in here but I'm pretty tired and honestly, the events of today pretty much trump everything else, at least in the forefront of my mind, at this moment.
Today we went to a concentration camp, called Sachsenhausen, in a little suburb of Berlin called Oranienburg. I could go on and on about how horrifying and morbid and creepy and sad and thought-provoking it was, but there are really no words that can do it justice. I don't have any pictures of it either, partly because I left my SD card at the hotel again and partly because images couldn't really represent it any better than writing could. The feeling of walking around a place where over a hundred thousand people died is impossible to convey. And I don't feel like I need pictures for myself; there's no way I'm ever going to forget the experience whether I want to or not.
The big question I keep running into in Germany involves whether parts of the past should be memorialized and remembered or if people should try to move on with their lives and, in many instances, not re-create something that was destroyed and is really irreplaceable (for example, the old palace that used to be in the center of Berlin). There are apartments - with people living in them - literally looking out onto the stone walls topped with barbed wire that ring the concentration camp. People in Oranienburg must see it every day. Someone in our class wondered out loud what it would be like to live next to a concentration camp, and our professor gave them an interesting reply. He said, "Well, really everyone here lives next to a concentration camp." Everyone knows someone who fought in the war or was sent to a Nazi prison - sort of the same way everyone in America has a 9/11 story. Here in Berlin everyone sort of lives next to a concentration camp. They still have to see and think about this stuff all the time; they can't escape it. And really, what can they do besides keep on living?
So that's the big question of the week, really. I'm still trying to work through it in my head. Tomorrow we'll visit the former Berlin Wall, which is sure to raise all sorts of similar questions, so stay tuned.
Tschuss,
Anna
I know I haven't updated for a couple days. We've done of cool things and I've been trying to spend as much time as possible in the city and not on my computer. But I am alive and well, so no worries there.
My intention was to catch you all up on the events I haven't written about in here but I'm pretty tired and honestly, the events of today pretty much trump everything else, at least in the forefront of my mind, at this moment.
Today we went to a concentration camp, called Sachsenhausen, in a little suburb of Berlin called Oranienburg. I could go on and on about how horrifying and morbid and creepy and sad and thought-provoking it was, but there are really no words that can do it justice. I don't have any pictures of it either, partly because I left my SD card at the hotel again and partly because images couldn't really represent it any better than writing could. The feeling of walking around a place where over a hundred thousand people died is impossible to convey. And I don't feel like I need pictures for myself; there's no way I'm ever going to forget the experience whether I want to or not.
The big question I keep running into in Germany involves whether parts of the past should be memorialized and remembered or if people should try to move on with their lives and, in many instances, not re-create something that was destroyed and is really irreplaceable (for example, the old palace that used to be in the center of Berlin). There are apartments - with people living in them - literally looking out onto the stone walls topped with barbed wire that ring the concentration camp. People in Oranienburg must see it every day. Someone in our class wondered out loud what it would be like to live next to a concentration camp, and our professor gave them an interesting reply. He said, "Well, really everyone here lives next to a concentration camp." Everyone knows someone who fought in the war or was sent to a Nazi prison - sort of the same way everyone in America has a 9/11 story. Here in Berlin everyone sort of lives next to a concentration camp. They still have to see and think about this stuff all the time; they can't escape it. And really, what can they do besides keep on living?
So that's the big question of the week, really. I'm still trying to work through it in my head. Tomorrow we'll visit the former Berlin Wall, which is sure to raise all sorts of similar questions, so stay tuned.
Tschuss,
Anna
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Some photos from yesterday.
Dear reader(s),
I forgot my SD card yesterday and couldn't take any pictures, but my professor emailed us a couple so I thought I'd share them.
This one is our class in front of some pieces of the former Berlin wall in Potsdamer Platz.
The next is outside the huge former Luftwaffe building (which I wish I had pictures of). The DDR painted a huge mural on part of it that shows this idyllic socialist state - people smiling, dancing, laying railroads, farming - the perfect Communist life. Obviously it was propaganda; the DDR was nothing like that at all.
This subway station, Mohrenstrasse, has this gorgeous red marble all over the walls that was taken by the Russians from Hitler's former office in the Nazi Reichs Chancellory building and used to patch up the heavily bombed walls.
That's all for now...today is the Jewish museum so there will be lots of interesting and sad photos soon.
Tschuss,
Anna
I forgot my SD card yesterday and couldn't take any pictures, but my professor emailed us a couple so I thought I'd share them.
This one is our class in front of some pieces of the former Berlin wall in Potsdamer Platz.
 |
| In between the wall fragments are "before and after" pictures of the area from the Cold War. |
 |
| By the way, I'm the one in the white hat in all of these. |
 |
| I mean, how often do you get a chance to sit right on Hitler's office, eh? |
Tschuss,
Anna
Monday, February 21, 2011
Facists and Communists
Dear reader(s),
Today was my third day in the fair (but freezing!) city of Berlin. I apologize for not posting yesterday; I'm still a little jet-lagged so I chose sleep over blogging.
We've seen a lot in the past two days, so I'm going to be brief about most of it.
Yesterday we did the really big touristy things - namely, the Reichstag (central Berlin government building and home of the former Weimar Republic) and the Brandenburg Gate, a big gorgeous gate that used to be the entrance into Berlin from the Kaiser's hunting grounds (which are now a HUGE park, the Tiergarten). I got a couple good shots of them before the battery in my camera died:
The front of the Brandenburg Gate looks out over Pariser Platz, which is full of touristy things (and the American Embassy!) and then leads out onto Unter den Linden. The "Linden" refers to the Linden trees that are planted there, although our professor told us that all the trees there now are new because the Nazis tore them up in the 40's. Apparently they got in the way of their marches.
We went to the Deutches History Museum yesterday as well and saw the Hitler exhibit, which was super interesting. Today we also saw a lot of Nazi things, like the Gestapo Museum on the site of their former headquarters, the Luftwaffe building (a stunning example of Nazi architecture that I unfortunately do not have a picture of), and the site of Hitler's bunker. We actually stood on top of the room where Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves. It was pretty weird, especially since immediately afterward we saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It's hard to know how to feel towards the German people when you see all of those things, especially since there's a lot of things in the museums that make it pretty obvious that everyone either knew or could have easily found out what was really going on with the war and the Holocaust.
One of my favorite parts of today was that outside the Gestapo museum there was a big section of the Berlin Wall still intact with some old graffiti on it. My favorite message said (in English): "To Astrid: Maybe someday we will be together". I wonder if Astrid was the writer's girlfriend or sister or mother and if they ever found each other after the wall fell.
The impression that I get from Berlin overall is of a city that's still healing. There are lots of things still being renovated and fixed and rebuilt; it's like you can see the scars all over the city. And some of the Berliners (and tourists) don't even seem to notice. At the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, there were 27,000 of these concrete stellae that were supposed to represent graves - a really somber place - but people (mainly tourists) were running around, laughing, standing (even walking!) on the stellae, and I even saw a couple kissing in between them. I can't personally think of many things that are less romantic or comedic than twenty seven hundred stones that represent the graves of Holocaust victims, but apparently I'm in the minority. And the city just kind of goes on around it, because...what else can it do, really?
So I'm still working through a lot of mixed feelings about Berlin history, and in the meantime enjoying all the new and different German things (and trying to improve my meager German skills). Tonight I'll be going to the opera to see the Marriage of Figaro and the opera house is apparently gorgeous, so expect pictures of that soon.
Tschuss, mein fruends!
Anna
Today was my third day in the fair (but freezing!) city of Berlin. I apologize for not posting yesterday; I'm still a little jet-lagged so I chose sleep over blogging.
We've seen a lot in the past two days, so I'm going to be brief about most of it.
Yesterday we did the really big touristy things - namely, the Reichstag (central Berlin government building and home of the former Weimar Republic) and the Brandenburg Gate, a big gorgeous gate that used to be the entrance into Berlin from the Kaiser's hunting grounds (which are now a HUGE park, the Tiergarten). I got a couple good shots of them before the battery in my camera died:
 |
| Reichstag |
 | |
| Front of the Brandenburg Gate from Pariser Platz |
We went to the Deutches History Museum yesterday as well and saw the Hitler exhibit, which was super interesting. Today we also saw a lot of Nazi things, like the Gestapo Museum on the site of their former headquarters, the Luftwaffe building (a stunning example of Nazi architecture that I unfortunately do not have a picture of), and the site of Hitler's bunker. We actually stood on top of the room where Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves. It was pretty weird, especially since immediately afterward we saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It's hard to know how to feel towards the German people when you see all of those things, especially since there's a lot of things in the museums that make it pretty obvious that everyone either knew or could have easily found out what was really going on with the war and the Holocaust.
One of my favorite parts of today was that outside the Gestapo museum there was a big section of the Berlin Wall still intact with some old graffiti on it. My favorite message said (in English): "To Astrid: Maybe someday we will be together". I wonder if Astrid was the writer's girlfriend or sister or mother and if they ever found each other after the wall fell.
The impression that I get from Berlin overall is of a city that's still healing. There are lots of things still being renovated and fixed and rebuilt; it's like you can see the scars all over the city. And some of the Berliners (and tourists) don't even seem to notice. At the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, there were 27,000 of these concrete stellae that were supposed to represent graves - a really somber place - but people (mainly tourists) were running around, laughing, standing (even walking!) on the stellae, and I even saw a couple kissing in between them. I can't personally think of many things that are less romantic or comedic than twenty seven hundred stones that represent the graves of Holocaust victims, but apparently I'm in the minority. And the city just kind of goes on around it, because...what else can it do, really?
So I'm still working through a lot of mixed feelings about Berlin history, and in the meantime enjoying all the new and different German things (and trying to improve my meager German skills). Tonight I'll be going to the opera to see the Marriage of Figaro and the opera house is apparently gorgeous, so expect pictures of that soon.
Tschuss, mein fruends!
Anna
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