Barry

Saturday, June 8th

We decided that we should take a walking tour of Berlin. Jocelyn let me choose between the Cold War and Essential Berlin. I picked the latter. I figured Essential Berlin would include some of the Cold War and also other stuff. Jocelyn's work friend, Sheraka, joined us for the tour. It turns out I had basically given myself the tour the day before but in reverse.

Our tour guide's name was Barry and he is a masters student, studying borders and memory. You can guess why he's in Berlin. He is Irish and he was a great guide. It was interesting to back track where I had been the day before and find out all the stuff I had missed. In a way, the tour was a history of Berlin by way of monuments. I had fun listening to Barry because a lot of the time you could see his academic nerdy side through his comments on the monuments, what they meant, and how well they were done.

 

This was one of my favorite things from the day. I had walked through this plaza the day before and not know this was there. The plaza was one of the sites of the book burning on 10 May 1933, just across from Humboldt university. This window in the ground looks down into a room lined with empty bookshelves.

 

We also went back along the wall. These bricks follow the path of the wall through the city. Barry pointed out that all of the metal plates which say Berlin Wall face to the west, none towards the east.

 

And we went to the Holocaust memorial. You can see how tall these things really get. I learned later that there is an information center underneath the memorial with a room that shows a picture of each Jewish person who died and tells a little about them. If you stood in the room and watched each picture it would take six years, seven months and twenty seven days with no breaks and no sleeping. And that is only the Jews who were killed.

Barry also took us to the car park which now exists over the bunker where Hilter killed himself. Another place I certainly didn't find on my walk.

 

We ended the tour at Brandenburger Tor. Barry had told us he'd give one euro to anyone who could remember a certain German word by the end of the tour. I wish I could say I remembered the word by the end. I can actually remember when I forgot part of the middle of the word. The word is: fargagenheitzbervertkun. I obviously have not spelled that properly. It means "the process of coming to terms with the past". I thought it was a cool word.

We ended the day by checking out this giant shopping center, KaDaWe. Then we took a stroll down Kufurstendom which is like the champs élysées of Berlin. Our last stop was the bratwurst tent for dinner. I think I could live in Berlin based on the availability of bratwurst alone.