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.

This is the only picture our professor (on the left) agreed to be in with us. And we had to beg.

Tschuss, mein freunds!

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

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

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.

In between the wall fragments are "before and after" pictures of the area from the Cold War.

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.

By the way, I'm the one in the white hat in all of these.

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.

I mean, how often do you get a chance to sit right on Hitler's office, eh?

That's all for now...today is the Jewish museum so there will be lots of interesting and sad photos soon.

Tschuss,

Anna

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:

Reichstag

 

 

Front of the Brandenburg Gate from Pariser Platz

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

Wilkommen!

Dear reader(s),

I have finally managed to get my hotel internet to work. At least for now. So, as promised, a real post.

Yesterday's travel was...well, typical travel. I think I can just sum it up by saying that I hate Newark airport. And also the overseas flight was long and made my butt hurt. But they did have little touch screens in the back of all the chairs that you could watch movies on - that was pretty cool. Also it would show you a map of your flight path and where the plane was, which I thought was exciting.

Anyway I eventually got to Berlin, through passport check and customs, and to my hotel. Myself and two of my classmates arrived earlier than almost everyone else so we decided to explore the neighborhood a bit. Some of the best things we found:

1) A German playground. Some of the many awesome things in this playground include ping pong tables and a little soccer court that looked kind of like a tennis court, only smaller and with little metal goals. I also discovered how brilliant Germans are. When I was a kid, I remember always sort of wishing the tire swings on the playground didn't have that big hole in the middle for me to fall through. Well...you guessed it, the Germans just board them up so you can sit in the middle and just enjoy the ride. Of course I had to test the swing out, which got me some weird looks from the German family nearby, but it was so worth it.

2) Among the cute stores and restaurants we found a Shell station. Curious as to what a German gas station would look like, we decided to go in. First of all, they had five different types of fuel, not three, and one of them for some reason is racing fuel. Apparently Berliners like to drive super fast. When we went inside and looked around, we discovered that not only did they sell beer and wine and liquor in the gas station, they had the Best Thing in a Can Ever. They actually sell cans of pre-mixed drinks; mostly rum and Coke but also a couple cans of Jack Daniels and Coke as well. It's just like a regular soda can, but with alcohol in it. Needless to say, I intend to purchase (and consume) at least one of these in the future, so I will post pictures of it. Apparently it's pretty popular because we found it in another store as well.

3) German grocery store down the block had many of flavors Ritter Sport, my favorite German chocolate bar for less than a euro. WIN.

I would post some pictures for y'all but it is now close to dinnertime so I don't want to bother figuring out how to attach images (and I don't have many pictures yet anyway), but I promise there will be some.

For now, Auf Wiedersehen,

Anna

Checking in

Dear reader(s),

I have arrived, safe and sound, in Berlin. There are a ton of things I want to say about it and about my trip but due to a bit of confusion I can only get Internet on my iTouch right now and it's really hard to type with.

For now I'll be waiting in a friend's hotel room (mine, of course, is the only one that isn't ready yet) and will fill you in on all the cool German things I've already seen later.

Til then, Auf Wiedersehen!
Anna

And the countdown begins...

Dear reader(s):

Tomorrow morning I leave my Chicago apartment and begin a day of horrible airline food in order to reach Europe by the following morning. When I think about how much waiting and sitting is in store for me, I am vaguely horrified, but I suppose it's a modern marvel that I can actually get from America to Germany in slightly less than a day and that I should be grateful.

I'll be grateful if I can sleep on the plane. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I should probably explain what's going on, for those who don't know.

So here's the plan: I'm heading to Berlin for ten days via a class I'm taking in grad school. No, I'm not a history or German Studies major. I'm actually getting a masters in writing, I just heard about this class and it sounded like fun and I've never been abroad before and how many chances am I gonna get while I'm in grad school? Right? So here I am. Also contained in this plan is a post-class, week-long excursion to Munich, London, and Dublin. I partly chose those locations so I wouldn't have to learn another language, and partly because my boyfriend will be joining me for that part of the trip and he only likes places that are cold and rainy.

The school portion begins on Saturday morning, when I arrive at 8:05 am (hopefully) in Berlin (hopefully) in one piece (knock on wood).  After months of planning and saving up money (all those months of hard work are now just a stack of odd-looking bills hidden in a secret pocket in my backpack) I'm pretty sure I've packed and re-packed and double checked and thought of everything. But knowing myself, I'm sure I'll forget something major anyway. (Yes, mom, I have my toothbrush.)

I'm going to try to post every day if I can...we have a journal assignment for class so I'll be writing daily anyway and hopefully I can just lump this in as well. After Berlin it might be harder; my boyfriend likes to sit around and poke/flick me when he gets bored and it's pretty hard to type when someone's doing that so we'll see.

I also promised many people that I would take and share TONS OF PICTURES so I will. Probably most will go on Facebook but some here too.

Also I have Skype, so anyone wanting to set up a Skype date while I am abroad should send me a message and we can do so.

But please, everyone DO NOT CALL MY PHONE WHILE I AM ABROAD. It'll cost me $1.30 a minute to talk and I think if I even turn my phone on it'll start international roaming which is probably worth my firstborn child so just...let's just not. The internet is beautiful and all my hotels have it. Problem solved. :)

And now I must sleep so I'm well rested for all that sitting. Wish me bon voyage! (and safety too)

Auf Wiedersehen,

Anna