This past Saturday I flew out to Berlin Shoenefeld Flughafen (that's german for airport if you didn't know, fun fact) and I must say that it has to be one of the most surreal and emotional experiences of my life thus far. Which isn't very long compared to the wrinkled, charactered German seniors I passed on the street who had lived through two earth-shattering wars and a complete and devastating divide of their nation, but still. It was a time.
The trip was a smooth one, my hostel (
Heart of Gold) was very easy to find, near the well-served train station Friedrichstrasse (I hope you appreciate the fact that I have to look up all these outlandish spellings), which I later found out was the last stop on the major east-west train that was shut off here during the cold war, which made it a final goodbye spot and a very emotional landmark.
The hostel was Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed which was tres cool. Although they could have gone more all-out. I shared my dorm with three friendly Spanish travelers for the first night and the second night I **praise the lord** had the room to myself. For the great price of nine euro fifty.
After dropping my bags at the hostel, I hit the town running. Quite literally. For a couple of reasons: A) I couldn't afford metro tickets because I had a total budget of under 150 euros, and B) I have an incessant and insatiable need to see. everything. possible. So walking it was. Which quickly translated to me abandoning my fashionable Parisian vintage leather boots in favour of my wonderful, dirt-covered New Balance runners. Because blisters.
So on that first day, after briefly stopping at an awesome flea market, I found Unter Den Linden, which is the main glitzy avenue of Berlin, translating to "under the linden trees". The avenue stretches roughly from the Brandenburg Gate to Alexanderplatz, to which I walked.
On the way to Alexanderplatz (a huge east-side metropolitan shopping center-esque area), I passed the Neue Wache, a very emotional sculpture of a mother holding her dead son, a tribute to the first, and later the second and cold wars that devastated Germany.
Following this memorial I passed the Berliner Dom, a huge cathedral in the museum square off the avenue. It was stunning. I then saw the TV Tower and Alexanderplatz itself, stopping for a dunkin' doughnut and an apple turnover. And water.
On the way back I found the Spree Side Gallery, which is a spin-off of the East Side Gallery I would find the next day. The Spree Side Gallery is an exhibition of 20th century photographs along the side of the Spree river that runs through Berlin. The photos were breathtaking, and conveyed people's lives around the world during different crucial, historical points in the hundred years. It was interesting to see how the conflicts and resolutions affected the lives of people from different countries and different cultures.
Following my excursion to Alexanderplatz, I headed west towards the Brandenburg Gate, which I had been longing to see. This gate marked the old entrance into the German capital and was the site of so many turning points in the country's history, including when President Ronald Reagan pleaded with the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to "tear down this wall". I had basically plunged headfirst into my History 12 textbook (thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Torres).
After passing through the gate, I dabbled in the most beautiful park (or should I say small and well-organized forest) I have ever laid eyes on. Yes, it beats Luxembourg Gardens out of the park (heh pun not intended). This beautiful and unearthly creation goes by the name of Tiergarten and stretches from the gate to just past the towering, golden victory column to the west. Just to my left after exiting the gate was the Holocaust Memorial, a very simple and extremely powerful representation of the murdered jews during the holocaust. The memorial consisted of stone slabs of varying heights over rolling terrain, which sometimes dipped so far below the rising towers of concrete that one couldn't see their surroundings and felt utterly trapped in a labyrinth of black.
After returning to the hostel to check in and rest my aching limbs and bruised feet, I ventured towards Potsdamerplatz, a more western version of its Alexander counterpart. I was just casually strolling towards the vibrant square when I happened upon another memorial, this one outside the Federal Ministry of Finance's building, and dedicated to the East Berlin Uprisings of 17 June 1953. I will not go into detail about these uprisings as you, dear reader, are in the possession of Google and there is already far too much writing in this post, but it was around this time, as I read of the violence and slaughter, the desperate and seemingly futile attempts at achieving freedom, as I looked around me at the Berlin night, that I realized the realness of it all. The recency of it all. It is all well and good to study dates and statistics in a textbook, to write emotional essays and correctly bubble test sheets, but it is an entirely different experience to be there. There, in that small and tangible square outside a very real building, on the surface of which is painted a remembrance mural. It is an entirely different experience to feel so close to something which feels so far away, a trick of the mind, a bend of time courtesy of oceans and borders and governments distancing
us from
them. I looked at the senior citizens of Berlin differently after this, wondering what their eyes had seen and what their weathered skin had felt.
Having reached Potsdamerplatz, I stumbled upon a thing that would later influence how I viewed Berlin and its many tributes to its array of injustices and inequalities. The "Rainbow Flame Berlin" was a white booth sheltering a blazing flame surrounded by pride flags blowing gently in the early evening wind, around which volunteers were handing out flyers. The side of the tent read: "When did you decide to become heterosexual?" It was such a blatant question, staring out at the citizens and tourists who passed by, either glancing up and brushing it off or stopping, as I did, to read about its mission: to battle homophobia and anti-gay legislation in Russia during the Sochi Winter Olympics. It was then that I realized that there will always be an injustice to battle, an oppression to fight, whether it be misogyny or abortion-banning or laws that ban love. And I was sad, sad that it was obvious how little we had learned from the past, and yet hopeful. Because here was this fire, and here were these people in the freezing night pleading with others to join us in our fight for equality, as so many victims of oppression had fought on these same streets. And there was a great hope in that. A hope that one day this might fade to the removed, almost unbelievable veil that had shrouded the civil rights movement and the persons case and the holocaust and the wall and all the protests and uprisings and the dictators and tyrants. I hope that one day we will look back on ourselves, shaking our heads at our blindness to the obvious answer that love isn't propaganda or a thing that can be banned. As Mr. Torres would say, hindsight is 20/20. I just hope that day comes soon.
After sipping a beer and finding some salvaged pieces of wall on the way back to the hostel, I slept soundly and woke at 7:30 for Day Two.
(and this is where you read the next post.)
Love always,
Coral
