Posts Tagged ‘monument’

Berlin City Tour and Days of Döner

Saturday, May 17th, 2014

After a lazy morning at Cuccuma getting more cake and chai lattes and a brief freak out in a Pretzel Bar wherein I thought something was wrong with my passport, I headed into Mitte, the center of the city for a free tour. With the Sandeman’s free tour of Berlin, we started at the Brandenburg Gate right in the heart of Berlin. IMG_1760

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We wandered through Mitte in the rain, caught somewhere between sunshine and downpour at all times. After the Gate we went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews that is a somewhat eerie monumentalization of that the tragedy the Jews of Germany and Europe experienced during World War Two. What at first looks like gravestones of differing height and sizes reveals itself to be the embodiment of the feelings Jews went through in Europe during the Holocaust. You stand amidst the rows of high reaching walls, oppressed by the sheer uniformity and immensity of their structures, each wall reduced to a blank slate, like tombs with no names, that despite their orderliness retain individuality despite the conditions in which they find themselves. It is an interesting memorial, very abstract and left widely open to interpretation, which I think makes for an interesting memorial because whether one likes it or not, it gets people thinking about those who were murdered, remembering, feeling, and trying to understand what happened in that dark time.

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Our tour guide was smart to point out that he thought it was really great how the German people do not try to hide what happened during the Holocaust. What they could have tried to ignore or sweep under the rug as a dark past, they choose instead to monumentalize, to memorialize as an expression of their regret, their grief, and ultimately their humility and displaying past wrong actions. Many countries easily chose to hid or at least not bring to the attention of the world the atrocities they were at least in small part responsible for, so monuments such as this one in Berlin are a great show of regret and humility that makes someone such as myself who is Jewish, grateful for this memorial regardless of what I think it stands for.

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In great contrast, we then went to the place that now stands above the Fuhrer bunker, the place where Hitler and Ava Brown killed themselves at the end of the war when utter defeat was upon them. Now just a simple parking lot, no signs of what once was is made note of, only a little billboard on the street lets you know what once was. The contrast between the memorial to the Murder Jews and the utter lack of note of the Fuhrer bunker is greatly symbolic and interesting to experience.

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After that we continued on our walk around Berlin visiting various sights that once had Nazi buildings on them that do or do not stand any longer, learning about the history of Berlin.

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We saw a small section of the Berlin Wall within the city and heard some incredible stories about the wall and some escape attempts that either succeeded or failed. One of my favorites was a woman who sewed herself into a car seat and then had a person with proper credentials drive her over the border. The saddest attempt we were told about was when two young men attempted to cross the wall midday by jumping from their work building into the Death Strip (the space between the two walls that was left abandoned and open) but when trying to get over the final wall became tangled in the barbed wire and one was shot there while people in the west desperately tried to save him as he slowly bled to death and slid down onto the East side again to be left to die without aid for trying to escape as people in the West listened to his screams just on the other side of the wall. It was a heartbreaking story and crazy to listen to this while looking at the ruined façade of the wall that held so much history, misery, and pain.

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After that we passed Checkpoint Charlie, one of the major crossing points of the wall from East to West that is a clear example of the Capitalist tendencies on one side and the communist side on the other.

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We then wandered into a square with two really amazing churches and a concert hall that made for an impressive space with beautiful architecture.

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Humboldt University was next with the memorial to the book burning done in front of the university in World War Two. This is the university where Maiya is studying in Berlin and it was a beautiful structure right in the center of Berlin.

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After that our last stop on the tour, which when we finished, some friends that I made on the tour and I decided to continue on to Museum Island. I made some really fun Canadian friends who brought a wine skin along on the tour, which was fun because it meant getting to have wine during the tour. We went to Museum Island where we sat out in the grass enjoying the sun and the view of the Berliner Dom. It was a beautiful space I much enjoyed, sandwiched between museums and beautiful buildings and the Spree running on either side of us.

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I went up into the Berliner Dom and enjoyed a view of Berlin right from the center of the city, which was pretty fun. It wasn’t too high up but we got to hear the bells ring and afterwards I laid out in the grass for a long time just listening to them ringIMG_1915 IMG_1916 IMG_1920 IMG_1922 IMG_1928 IMG_1939 IMG_1943 IMG_1947IMG_1952

 

After my inner city adventure I returned to Kreuzberg, my favorite little neighborhood and we decided to go get Doner at the famous Mustafa’s, which had some really incredible food.

 

 

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We ate our doner while walking around, eventually finding ourselves at Viktoriapark which has an amazing waterfall looking up at the spire like monument in the center of the park.

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We sat there until the sun went down, got some ice cream and returned home after a long successful day of adventuring.

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The Colossus that is Rome

Thursday, May 15th, 2014

For my Ancient Roman Civilization class we had a couple of days where we did for our site visits some of the biggest and best of Rome, the things everyone from around the world comes to Rome to see. We saw the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum. IMG_0562 IMG_0623 IMG_0620

The doors of ancient temples, the archways of triumphant emperors, the fallen columns of once grand corridors, lie all around us in the Forum Valley.

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Moving up from the Roman Forum, we climbed to the Palatine Hill where back in 753 B.C. Rome was founded on the place where the twins Romulus and Remus were washed ashore after escaping near death to be nursed back to health by a wolf who saved their lives. This hilltop, riddled with the remains of Royal Imperial Palaces and the luxurious buildings that the biggest people of Roman history once lounged in and walked around.IMG_0660

It also had a fantastic view overlooking the Roman Forum and the rest of Rome, the buildings the color of the dawn rising and falling like the rolls of the tide.IMG_0663

Ivy covered buildings, plant covered terraces, and monuments of the Colossus that is Rome rising from the ground in every direction you can turn.

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Even the Vatican sits far in the distance, the dome of St. Peters visible from its perch far away from the Forum.

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The entire class sat and listen to the lecture about the places we had seen, were seeing, and were about to see. Sitting basically in the shade of Colosseum we were looking back and forth between the Colosseum and one of the biggest temples of ancient Rome dedicated to Roma and Venus.

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It was super strange finally going into the Colosseum, I had waited all semester for this site visit, knowing that we would see it eventually for class, but finally here I was, standing under the barrel vaulted roofs of the corridors of the Colosseum with the hoards of tourists bustling about.

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The sights you see in movies, the images of postcards of Rome was standing before me suddenly and it did not seem real whatsoever. Walking around and around the Flavian Amphitheater taking in the view from every angle. Knowing that people travel from all over the world to see this place makes it feel very strange to be there, to look down at your feet and wonder how many stood there before you and would stand there after you had gone. This structure has stood for almost 2,000 years and people have walked these corridors for almost that entire time, how many feet, how many people have stood here before me. Thinking of the people sitting in these sloping stadium seats, watching the gladiatorial games, watching humans kill each other for sport, watching animals fight to the death, or watching mock battles to entertain the masses of a once massive empire. To stand at the feet of history and wander what your part in it might be is a strange and humbling experience.IMG_0733 IMG_0731 IMG_0729 IMG_0721 IMG_0714 IMG_0710 IMG_0706

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This day was also just very strange because for so long I have looked at these monuments from the outside, never knowing what it looked like from the inside was something I had gotten really used to. I had become so accustomed to my one view point of things and to finally go inside these places, to see the Forum from within the pathways that are still lined with Basalt rocks that paved the ancient roman roadways. To walk the Via Sacra, the triumphal procession route that emperors and generals returning home successful campaigns stood where I stood. To see Rome from the Palatine Hill, where possibly Romulus once stood long before Rome became the wonder that it is today. Did he know? Did Romulus, the father of Rome, stand over his future empire and have any idea of what he little hut town would become? Could I stand there, where he once dwelled, and understand what it was that I was looking at?

Tomorrow I have my last final here in Rome which means I am done with my semester and standing on that Hill, standing on the Forum roads, standing in the Colosseum I still do not understand what it is I am seeing. I have been here for a whole semester and am still baffled every day by the wonders that are around every street corner. My time is going on and it is strange to be here in this eternal city, knowing, this city will continue on long after I leave as it has always continued on, eternal, changing but always the same. I will miss this deeply; Rome will remain the same, despite its decay, but I will never be the same.

 

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