What an exhausting day! First of all, Solomon got here today!
Last night, by pure coincidence, I checked my facebook and saw a message from him saying that no one at the dorms was there to let him in or give him his keys, so he checked in at the Best Western down the street. I left him another message giving him my phone number. So this morning, at 7:45 am he called me, and walked down to the dorms. I met him there and eventually it all got sorted out. I was surprised that after all that, he was still not tired and still up for exploring the city of Berlin with us!
So Irene, Solomon, Marcus, and I left around noon to go explore Berlin! Marcus is from another city in Germany, near Poland, but he’s been living here for 6 months or so, so he knows his way around. He showed us the way on the bus and the train. It’s nice to have someone to show us the way like that right when we first get here. The train system looks a bit complicated, having to know exactly which train to get on. I need to start paying closer attention so that I can start doing it on my own.
So we got to the city, and the first thing we did was see the famous Brandenburg gate. I took a bunch of pictures the whole time. After that, we sat on the grass in front of the Reichstag government building, where the Chancellor of Germany works. Then, we walked to the Holocaust memorial, which was really beautiful and cool. But the thing about that, is that even though this is the main memorial in Berlin, to me it doesn’t seem like enough! As Irene and Solomon commented, if one didn’t know better, you’d think it was just a cool piece of modern art. You don’t really know what the significance of it is.
The columns start out very small, and as you get deeper in, the columns get bigger and bigger. I think it symbolizes the Holocaust in that at the beginning, it was just very small things, which escalated to bigger and bigger poroblems. Jews were banned from certain places, then forced to wear arm bands, then they were thrown out of their homes and forced into ghettos, then finally, they were shipped off to die in concentration camps as the final solution. It started out small, but the situation got so out of control that millions of people died. Similarly, in the memorial, I think the columns are so tall and overwhelming to express the magnitude of the event.
I saw so much, but I would love to go back and explore everything fully. After that, we walked down a street and saw a little crafts fair, sort of thing. I fell in love with these colored pencil things that were made out of thick tree branches. I’ve seen them before and always wanted some. I bought 6 for 10 euros. When I first passed them, I thought, oh I can probably go back and buy them later. But on my way back down the street, I thought, why not? I definitely want them, I don’t need to think about it, I want them now! I’m sure they’ll still have them later, but why would I need to wait? The crafts fair was actually quite good, Berlin is supposed to have a lot of amazing artists. I’m grinning right now because I just took out my colored pencils and they make me really happy!
Anyway, then we wandered to some church and saw the big needle tower thing more close up. The thing about Berlin is that with most of these monuments, I’m not sure how they became important or why.
No one has been more surprised than me to find out how much I actually know about the city! I’m not so great with the language, but in terms of knowledge of history and culture, I keep being surprised at the extent of little tidbits of knowledge I already know. Just for example, I find myself explaining to Solomon who Knut is, and how germany had hyperinflation after world war 1.
So we went back after lunch of pizza because we were all pretty tired by then. We stopped at the grocery store because everyone else needed stuff. Haha, this is my third day in a row going to the grocery store! And my third day going to the phone store. The phone guy, Andreas, and I are becoming good friends. HA! I told him to order more phones because I may be referring more customers to him.
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