First day in Berlin

I’m a little behind on this whole blog thing, but here’s the latest from my trip:

Monday, June 30, 2008

We arrived at the hotel at about 9 am. Neil and Dvora wanted to take a rest, but since I had slept of the plane, I was raring to go. After freshening up, I headed down to have a bite to eat and then tried to track people down. I started with Eileen (because she had come into the city a few days earlier) and caught her as she was leaving for some sight-seeing. While we had a quick coffee we bumped into Leslie and the three of us set out for an adventure.

Our intention was to head over to the Museum of “Checkpoint Charlie”, which was the border crossing between East and West during the Cold War-era. Eileen got us there successfully by guiding us to the bus stop, helping us buy tickets and letting us know when to get off the bus. When we got there we decided to scout the area around the museum before heading inside. It was a real tourist-y bit, with a fee for everything (have your picture taken with guards, have your passport stamped with an E. Berlin stamp…) but there were some good free photo-ops as well. The museum was pricey (12.5 euro = $17), though, so we decided to forego it and instead proceeded to wander the streets of Berlin.

My initial impressions of Berlin are relative to my experience Vienna. As opposed to the latter, Berlin is a real city (a la the USA) with tall buildings, lots of traffic and a diversity of people. Most of the buildings are post-WWII because the US bombed the city pretty bad during the war. One colleague remarked that it reminded her of a typical Israeli city, only much bigger. Those of you who have been to Israel would probably agree with that statement.

But the city is full of history, having been ground zero for the Holocaust and the Cold War, etc. And we saw a whole bunch of that as we walked the streets and tried to match up some of the buildings with those described in the various guidebooks that we carried with us.

One unique experience that I had (and was hoping to have) was at the Bebelsplatz, which is where the Nazis held a huge bonfire to burn books that they deemed “subversive”. The memorial to the event is a window that looks down (underground) into a room of empty bookshelves (symbolizes/commemorate the lost books). But what really struck me was that as I turned to photograph the area a young person (German?) came up to me and tried to explain (in German?) the significance of the spot. And to do so he pointed to the book he was holding (which looked like – and I assumed – was a sourcebook on the Holocaust) and he excitedly pointed to the picture of the book-burning that he had in the book. And what I processed in my mind (and this is what really struck me) was that here was a young German who was walking around with a sourcebook about the rise of Nazism in Germany and was actually visiting the sites where the major historical events took place! To me, that’s very powerful. To think that no matter what happens, Berliners still have to live in the same place where the instigators/perpetrators of the Holocaust’s horrific crimes rose to power and implemented their policies – that’s got to be tough.

We moved on from this area and hopped on a bus to head towards Brandenburg Gate. This was the spot where “The Wall” first went up. But we were disappointed when we got there because we could not get through to see the gate. We wrote it off to bad luck and decided to head over to see the Reichstag (German parliament), and as we were taking in the scene we heard shouting and cheering coming from the near distance. We all commented on the eeriness of this experience (cheering Germans is something that most Jews still cringe at when they stand outside the Reichstag in Berlin) until we realized that the cheers were coming from the area of the Brandenburg Gate. It was then that we realized that there was indeed a rally going on, but it was to celebrate the return of the German soccer team, which had unexpectedly made it to the finals of the European Cup (they lost to Spain, 1 – 0). Once this was processed we decided to go check out the celebrations. Unfortunately we were too late to get into the festivities and too tired to wait for the imminent parade that would pass our way, so we hopped on the 200 bus and headed back to the hotel.

We got to rest up for a few hours before the program officially opened with a dinner at the hotel. Dinner was a chance for us to meet our European colleagues and hear about the progress of Ed’s program thus far. I met the director of the Wannsee House Museum, which is a Holocaust education museum. The Wannsee House was the site where the Nazis officially implemented the Final Solution. Eichmann was the note-taker at this meeting which estimated the number of Jews living in Nazi-occupied territories and laid out the plan for their extermination. The group goes there on Sunday but I will not be attending because I’m heading back to NYC for the COJS conference.

Most of the Centropa participants were jet-lagged and ready for bed after dinner. I. however, had slept for the majority of the flight over here, so I still had some energy left for a little exploring. When some of the European teachers said that they were going to go out for a beer, I decided to tag along. We shared a beer at an area pub and got to know each other a little bit. It was a good experience. Last year I spent most of the time connecting with the core group of Centropa teachers, so I’m making an effort to do the same with the EU participants.

Tomorrow is the real start to the program.