Stätte der Bärn und Luther

We just got back yesterday from a trip to Berlin and Wittemberg. It was a ten day trip all in all, so there is a lot to talk about. Here are some highlights.

One of the first places we went in Berlin is the Sankt Michaelis Gedächtniskirche. It's a church that got bombed in WWII, but they decided not to repair it but instead to keep it as a monument. Unfortunately, the famous part about this church, the tower with a hole in it, is under construction right now, so it is completely hidden from view by scaffolding. However, they did add two pieces to it, one of which is in the picture below. From the outside they look like really boring ugly concrete buildings with lots of little windows. From the inside, however, they look like this:

Sankt Michaelis Gedächtniskirche

After that, we went to the huge department store KaDeWe and looked at the food there. It is a high class department store, so all of the food is really fancy. Plus the food section is huge. After that we were done with everything planned for the day, so Jake and I went walking around and eventually made it back to the hostel, eating some curry wurst on the way there.

The next day we started off by going to the Siegessäule. It is a really big monument from the 19th century that was built to celebrate the victory of three separate wars. It was not initially planned this way, but they kept on having more victories, so they kept on adding to the monument. The picture below is not very indicative of how large the thing actually is. It's right in the middle of a huge roundabout and would be several stories high. We went up inside and climbed up to the top. Once you get up there, you realize that it it one of the highest things in Berlin.

The Siegessäule. It's pretty neat.

After this, we went off to the center of Berlin, ate, and then went to the Jewish museum. We had a tour there, but before it started, we had a while to sit around. So some of us wandered a little bit in the garden right behind the museum. It was kind of cool although it would have been much better if the fountains were working. The tour was interesting mostly because our guide was kind of strange. He was very into the architecture of the place and how it makes you feel. He talked quite a lot, but we somehow did not actually cover all that much. He seemed very knowledgeable, jut a little different and kind of distractable.

The garden of the Jewish museum.

After this, we were done with the day's planned activities so, again, Jake and I went off to explore the city. This time we saw quite a lot more. We walked all around the downtown, seeing the Brandenburger Tor, lots of bit of wall stuff (like in the next picture), the Bundestag, Potsdammer Platz, Alexanderplatz, Unter den Linden, the memorial to the murdered Jews of the holocaust, and some other things. The Jew memorial was interesting because we did not actually know what it was until we got to the other side and saw a sign. All we knew at first was that there were small paper signs on wooden posts saying "enter at your own risk." This did not seem like the most inviting thing, and the steles looked a lot like tombs in the dark. Also, it was not possible to tell what the ground was doing, so walking through it was very much surprising as you could never see what you were about to come across.

Me standing right over the border of east and west Germany!

 We also saw some of the little sections of wall that are scattered all over the city. Here is one with a more modern political statement:

"Next wall to fall wall street" painted on a section of the Berlin wall at Potsdammer Platz

The next day we started by getting a walking tour of some of the more famous parts of the city. It was in simple German, done by a Berliner and former Luther student. It was very interesting, and it seemed to go pretty fast. We started in Alexanderplatz and worked our way through Nikolaiviertel, the reconstructed "old city," down the Museuminsel, Unter den Linden, and finally we ended at the Brandenburger Tor. She seemed very knowledgeable and even told Jake where to find the best curry wurst in Berlin. We were not disappointed when we went there.

The memorial to fallen soldiers (at least that's how I understood it). It's kind of neat because right above the sculpture is a hole in the ceiling, so when it rains, the lady cries.

After the tour we went over and had a tour of the memorial to the murdered Jews of the Holocaust. It is a very interesting memorial, shown in the next picture, with a little museum below the ground. Something that picture does not really portray is that the ground is sloped so that in the middle, the concrete blocks are around 20 feet tall. Also, no two blocks are the same. They are all different heights and they all are tipped just a little bit.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of the Holocaust.

After this, we went to see a Blue Man Group show. It was very entertaining, although we did have to pay a bit extra for it.

Herr Steding got a group picture of us with this guy, but this is the only picture I have of the entire deal. It was pretty funny.

The next day we went to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. It wasn't very good, I thought, because everything was gone. All we did was walk around and listen to dry descriptions of what was there. That afternoon we had free though, so Jake and I went wandering around more. We had to get the best curry wurst in Berlin of course, so we wandered up in that direction. Jake had also found out from our tour guide where some sections of the wall are still standing. They were in the area, so we walked by those as well. On the way there, however, in a kind of seedy looking industrial yard sort of place, we found this:

Some chunks of Berlin Wall with world dictators on them. Of course two of these are no more.

This day we had the morning to go to a museum of our choice. Jake and I and some others chose to go to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. It ended up being not very much about wall or GDR stuff, which was disappointing, and instead mostly about escape attempts, with a random wall that was devoted to Picasso and modern art. The others went through the museum really quickly, so after that we went alone to see some other things. We went to a memorial to the Berlin Airlift, the Ritter Sport store, and some other chocolate store which had really ornate chocolate sculptures of various Berlin landmarks. That evening we met up with the rest of the group for a tour of the Reichstag building (the capitol building). That was really interesting although I still don't really understand German politics.

The Reichstag building.

The next day we went to Hohenschönhausen, a former Stasi prison. It was pretty interesting and, unlike Sachsenhausen, there was actually a prison to see still. After that, we had the rest of the day to do what we wanted. Everyone else was doing lame things like going shopping, so we decided to go to a landmark that we had not yet seen that was listed on the map, and to walk back to the hostel from there. I think it ended up being about 10 miles or so, although I'm only saying this based on how my feet felt by the end. On the way, we saw the East Side Gallery (picture below), various famous landmarks again, and the Tiergarten at night. The East Side Gallery is a section of wall that has been preserved and now is used as an art gallery. Various artists are given a chunk of wall to use as their canvas and they can do anything they want on it. I believe it is redone every year. Just outside the Tiergarten we saw two street performers. Instead of playing instruments, though, they were spinning and juggling fire in front of cars stopped at a red light. It was pretty cool although they didn't seem to be making much.

A bit of East Side Gallery. It says "He who wants the world to say how it is doesn't want the world to stay." The full gallery is perhaps half a mile or so long.

The next day we went to Wittemberg. We took an ICE train there. Those are really cool because they are more modern than the others and they go extremely fast. This one got up to 200 kph. Once in Wittemberg, we got a tour of the city. This was again done by a very knowledgeable guide, who, despite the tiny size of the city, managed to give an almost 3 hour tour that was very interesting.

Here is us on the tour being told about the public water system that still exists after 500 years.

The next day we went to the DDR Museum in Wittemberg. It was interesting. It consists basically of different rooms from a house furnished as they would have been in Wittemberg in each decade since the 20's. This tour was entirely in German.

A Nena poster from the Wittemberg Geschichte Museum. This is part of the furnishing of the room supposed to be for a teenager in the 80's.

That afternoon we went to a school that was remodeled according to the plans by the architect Hudertwasser. It is thus appropriately known as the Hundertwasser Schule. It is kind of interesting architecture to some people I guess, but it was still just a couple of blocks, so I thought it was pretty boring.

The next day we did a service project. We had a choice between weeding and taking care of a garden or dusting out an old church tower. To me, there was no debate: I most certainly did not want to breath in gallons full of dust. So we took care of this garden. It is actually called the Luthergarten because it is in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, which is happening in 2017 (because of this the whole town of Wittemberg is currently experiencing a sort of face-lift). But this garden is special because it will have 500 trees. Each tree will be donated as part of a partnership with 500 other churches of all denominations all over the world. We got to weed around the trees and hedges.

The other group, as I said, was dusting out a 500 year old church tower. After we both finished, we all went up in the tower to see the city. This is not something that is normally allowed for the public. It turns out that until the 30's there was actually a family living up at the top. For quite a while, it was their job to watch over the city and ring the bells if there was ever a fire. But living at the top of a church tower couldn't have been easy. They had to bring everything up and down, for instance, using a hand-winch. Also, the children would only go down for the first time when they were four or five years old. Then they would be amazed at how large the world really is.

The church tower.

After this we had the rest of the afternoon free. I really wanted to walk over to the next town which I had seen from the church tower, and Jake and Jennifer were willing to join. So we did just that. There wasn't much to see there, but it was kind of cool all the same.

A cool little roundabout seen from the top of a little hill-park.

We met up again at about 6:00 to go to eat. The program was paying for a traditional German meal at a nice restaurant. It was very good and it was kind of fun to just sit around and talk with everyone. After that, because Kirk just got the urge, a few of us watched O Brother Where Art Thou on Youtube.

A cool little roundabout seen from the top of a little hill-park. I don't know what's going on with the bottom bit of this picture. Blogger is being really mean today.

The next day, Sunday, we left at about 9:00. We arrived back in Münster at about 4:00. Es war schön.

Bis später,

Marcus