Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Well, it's officially Friday. (Actually, officially, it's Saturday now, but...) A full week of touring the beautiful city has come and gone, and so, of course, we celebrated. The morning began with an S-Bahn and an U-Bahn ride over to Peggy's apartment. Matthew and I were the first ones there, so we helped to set up the bountiful goods she had bought at the market. We had too many things to describe, so I won't list them. See for yourself:

And the party wouldn't have been complete without Berliners (AKA Pfannkuchen). Yes, indeed, this is what JFK erroneously called himself when, in Berlin in June 1963, he famously declared, "Ich bin ein Berliner." (He should have just said "Ich bin Berliner;" by adding the word "ein," he referred to the delicious jelly-filled donut you see above.)

But before eating, once everyone in our group had arrived, we filled out a Vanderbilt course evaluation and then proceeded to take our final exam, to assess the knowledge we've gained over the past week about the history and culture of Berlin. After we had written the tests, we finally dug in to all the food, and it was sehrrr leckerrr!

When we had sufficiently eaten, chatted, and napped, we decided at about 1 PM to go to the Jewish Museum. On the way there, though, we crossed through the formerly most-densely-Jewish-populated section of Berlin, where we came upon several memorial signs like the one below.

Auf Englisch, the sign reads:

Jews may use transportation only on the way to work. 13 September 1941.

Complete ban of use. 24 April 1942.

The use of ticket machines is forbidden for Jews. 26 June 1942.

After such a light-hearted party in the morning, the mood quickly grew more somber as we came across these signs. When we got to the Jewish Museum, we first had to pass through security. There were policemen standing out in front of the museum, which was yet another reminder of the gravity and the reality of the topic we were approaching.

My favorite parts of the museum were definitely the Holocaust Tower and the Memory Void, both dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. I don't want to post the pictures I have of the Holocaust Tower because I think it is something indescribable, the power of which no simple blog picture can truthfully convey. But essentially it's just an empty, concrete room, dark and cold, with one tiny light peeping through a crack at the top of the twenty-four-meter-high ceiling. The door is industrial and is like that covering a bomb shelter or a bank vault, almost. In small groups, visitors to the museum enter the Tower in silence and seem always to leave in silence, as well. It's a space that has no explicit significance; this is to be determined by the individual visitor. For me, the Holocaust Tower was an example of perfect architecture. It wasn't aesthetically pleasing at all--in fact, just the opposite--but I think it did a wonderful job of making me, as one visitor, feel the coldness, harshness, loneliness, darkness, hopelessness, trapped-ness that the victims undoubtedly felt.


The Memory Void, on the other hand, was an interactive exhibit in the sense that visitors are recommended to actually walk on it. In an open space there lay 10,000 iron (or some sort of metal) faces, all different shapes and sizes. These represent, in small scale, the innocent victims of the Holocaust. Whereas the Holocaust Tower elicited a withdrawn, forlorn, depressed response from me, the Memory Void made me feel angry. As my groupmates and I walked across this twenty-meter sea of faces, it was like we were acknowledging that we, as humanity, had indeed trampled the innocent, and by being forced to look at their faces, we were paying something due to their memory--even if, in reality, these faces were made of metal and had no historical identity. Furthermore, with all of us walking at the same time, plus some other visitors not in our group, it sounded like people were working on building a railroad or something, there was so much noise, such horrible sounds of the clanging metal. To me, as I said, this elicited an angry response, a feeling of, "How could we do this? How could we let this happen?" So for me as a human, the exhibit helped to personalize the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Other assorted pictures from the extensive, fascinating, and sobering Jewish Museum.

"Jews are not served here."

Der gelbe Stern, the golden star that Jews were forced to wear at different times throughout history--most notably, during the Holocaust years.

Me at another one of the permanent exhibits, hanging up the note I wrote to my Jewish ancestors, as well as to Anne Frank, whom many say is my Doppelgänger (look-alike). 

And so, after spending much time at the Jewish Museum, we finally left, many of us with plans to return in order to spend more time truly soaking in the copious information in the exhibits. We then hurried over to the Turkish Market in Kreuzberg, where it was just about closing time. It's basically a giant flea market, only not quite a flea market, so just a giant outdoor marketplace with hundreds and hundreds of street vendors. At the market, I searched long and hard, and I finally found... ::drum-roll:: ...the other famous Berlin snack, or Imbiss, the DÖNER KEBAB! Because of the large Turkish immigrant population in Berlin, the Döner has come into being, and I can attest that at least this one, authentic as it came from the Turkish Market, was really fantastic. The Döner is essentially like a gyro, only not greasy, and overall just better. I definitely look forward to getting many more of them in the weeks to come! :D

I got my Döner right as the market was closing. When the market did close, our group decided to head back to the apartments for a bit, meet back up at 9 PM, and then go out on the town for the first night of Berlin's enormous annual Karneval der Kulturen, Carnival of Cultures. We stayed out until midnight, so that's why I'm just now getting around to making a blog post for the day. I didn't get pictures, but it was dark and crowded and overwhelming and teeming with really drunk people, so pictures wouldn't have been a good idea anyway. Matthew and I found it funny that Latin American cultures occupied most of the spaces at this truly gigantic, multi-street festival, presumably because, to Germans over here in Europe, Latin America seems exotic, whereas for us Americans it seems merely commonplace.

Everyone was smoking and drinking there, there was loud music, and I even made a friend! Some drunk guy said something slurred and fast auf Deutsch, so I didn't catch it, asked him what he said, still didn't catch it, then he asked where I was from, we spoke ein bisschen (a bit) auf Deutsch, then switched to English, switched back to German, and he taught us a couple of new words. I've been really impressed by how nice everyone is here so far, but I have to say, Germans--when drunk--are even nicer. :-P

Also das ist alles für heute!

Gruß