Berlin, Part 1

Berlin, Day 1

We arrived in Berlin midday Wednesday, and headed over to my friend's apartment where most of us were staying.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside, but the early flight had left us all tired and grumpy, and we trudged along the streets of Berlin feeling very sorry for ourselves.  Then we got to Parker's apartment and immediately brightened up a bit--it was such a nice place!
     Immediately after this observation, we proceeded to decimate his room.  Huge suitcases, backpacks, coats, purses--all the necessary belongings of four girls became his new carpet.  You literally could not walk across the floor.  Parker took it all in good cheer, though, and headed back to his internship while Kelsey, Caitlyn, and I hopped on a free walking tour of the city.
    Our guide for the walking tour was fantastic.  Rob S., I want to steal you and make you tell me stories all day long.  He made history interesting, which is something that almost nobody can do for me.  While my knowledge of German history is pretty much limited to World War II, we learned about centuries of German history that everyone forgets because the Nazi regime had such an enormous impact. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures to show you.  I did, however, steal some from my friends.
    The first place we visited was the Holocaust Memorial.  It was composed of a whole lot of vertically aligned granite blocks of different heights arranged in a grid formation.  As a piece of "modern art," we kind of rolled our eyes at first, but as we explored it became more interesting and meaningful.  Some people, our guide told us, feel oppressed in the maze-like memorial, in some kind of fiercely rigid scheme.  The stones reminded me of tombstones.

    Our guide said that Germans have not forgotten this awful heritage; they're almost ashamed to be German.  Berlin is now a hippie city where pretty much anything goes--you can be whoever you want, and everyone accepts it.
    We also saw the Brandenburg Gate, a triumphal arch in the middle of the city. Rob showed us an unassuming car park where (12 m below the ground) Hitler's bunker still remains, where he committed suicide in 1945.  We went around to many of the famous buildings that were used during the Nazi era, and saw what remains of the Berlin Wall.  At the end of our tour, the guide brought us to a restaurant where we ate traditional German food--currywurst, essentially a sausage with some curry on top.  Little did I know that I would eat more sausage in the next 7 days in Germany than I had eaten in my whole life.  I would also discover that Germans do not believe in vegetables--only sausage, pork, and maybe some potatoes on the side.
    That night we made a run to Netto's (officially my favorite grocery store--so many things under 1 euro! It also made me realize just how expensive Dublin is) and went to bed.

Berlin, Day 2

Our second day in Berlin, Kelsey, Caitlyn, and I decided to visit Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin.  (If you're wondering what happened to the others, they were still alive, but wanted to take things a bit more slowly).  We weren't allowed to take pictures in the camp.
    Sachsenhausen was not an extermination camp; instead, it functioned more as a organizational base and transit camp.  (An extermination camp is like Auschwitz, with many gas chambers, which essentially murdered everyone who walked through its gates.)  SS guard were also trained there.  Sachsenhausen was also the model for many other concentration camps, both in its layout and its treatment of prisoners.  While thousands and thousands of people died there, most were not Jews.  Sachsenhausen mostly sent those condemned prisoners to Auschwitz or other death camps, because they did not have the capability to exterminate on such a grand scale.
     Much of Sachsenhausen was destroyed by the Nazis to hide their crimes, but what does remain is an eerie reminder to the wretchedness of the human soul.  The most awful place was the execution trench where thousands of Soviet prisoners were murdered.  You can walk down into the trench, and at one end is a room where the crematorium once was.  There is a small pane of glass so that you can look inside, and when I leaned up close against it I could smell the wood--it was awful.  It smelled like death.  I don't know how it still reeks after almost eighty years, but it does, and it's nauseating and frightening.

The execution trench. (Picture stolen from Wikipedia.)

    We took the train back from Sachsenhausen, and met up with the other girls at the German history museum.  Now, I like history if it's told to me, but just reading about history for two hours is unutterably boring.  This museum was not my favorite.  However, I soldiered through it, and afterwards we lazed around in a nearby park and took some fake hipster pictures.

I fail at being hipster.  Too much smiling.

 I kept mixing up "hipster" and "hippie," which are apparently drastically different things despite the very similar names.  Hipster, for those of you who don't know, is a degenerate version of preppy; you wear sweaters and skinny jeans, aviator glasses, and walk around with a permanent sulky face that your mother would scold you for.  It also comes with greasy hair and an occasional cigarette. You're too cool to smile, or really care about anything.  Hippie is the 70s flowy-skirt, dangly jewelry, peace-and-love thing that doesn't actually exist any more, but people try to copy anyway.  Why the two styles have such similar names is beyond me.

     Kelsey and Caitlyn left for Dublin that night, and the next day we planned to picnic in the nearby forest of Grundewalde....