We started our morning at 8 o’clock this morning and headed
to the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the parliament building of the German Empire
and was burned severely in 1933. The building was not fully restored until
1990. They kept the outside of the building with its own architecture but the
inside is all new architecture. We got to walk up a ramp that went around the
outside of the dome and look out on the city and we had an audio tour that told
us about different buildings we could see and details about the rebuilding
process of the Reichstag, which was really cool.
After we went to he Reichstag we went to see the Brandenburg
Gates. We didn’t spend much time there but it was really cool to see them. We
also saw where the Berlin Wall was. It is marked by cobblestone that looks
different from the rest in the street and sidewalks.
Next we walked down the street a little ways to the Berlin Holocaust
Museum. Its official name is The Monument
of the Murdered Jews in Europe. From the outside it looks like a bunch of
concrete slabs on the ground that are all different heights. On the outside
that’s what it is supposed to look like. The monument was built on a wave
shaped piece of land and it was designed this way so that when you are walking
through the monument you feel a sense of groundlessness and instability. There
aren’t any names or religious identifiers on the plaques either this way it honors
every single person that went through the holocaust. There is an underground
part of the monument too that is more like a museum. The first room we went in
was a long room and had a timeline of the events of the holocaust then when you
get to the end of the room you go into the next room. The second room is dark
and has screens in the ground that are the same size as the slabs of rock above
you. On each screen there is an excerpt of a letter or postcard from someone
that was in the holocaust. The one that got my attention the most was a man
that was forced to work in a crematorium and said that when the bodies where
burned they had to shovel out the ashes into a sieve over a river and sift for
anything in the ashes. The next room you go into has a bunch of slabs coming
down from the ceiling. They all had stories of individual families that went
through the holocaust. There was usually a paragraph about the family and a lot
of pictures with descriptions and then on the side there was an individual
picture of each person and what happened to them. The next room you go into is
completely dark with some benches and one name projected onto all four walls at
one time, then the story of the person whose name is projected comes on over
the speakers. The final room you go into has a lot of information about
specific regions. There are four screens on the walls and each one starts on a
map and zooms into a specific region and then there are some pictures of Jews
and concentration camps and some details about what life was like in each
region. I really liked the perspective that this monument gave me on the
holocaust. A lot of teachers I’ve had that have taught the holocaust seemed to
spend a lot of time just focusing on Auschwitz and that 6 million Jews were
killed. But this monument gave us more of a European perspective and gave a lot
of names of specific camps along with a lot of places that were affected.
After the Holocaust Monument we went to exchange our money
and get some lunch.
After lunch we went to see the Berlin Wall. It was really
interesting to get to see in person where the wall was and how it was set up.
We got to climb up a staircase and get a rooftop view of a part of the wall
that has been really well maintained.
Our professor wants to take us to the top of a T.V. tower
but we don’t want to until we can get a really good view. After we saw the
Berlin Wall we went to the KaDaWe which is basically just a really really big
department store. We walked around a little bit and then we went up to the top floor,
which is all food. It was incredible.
To end our day we went to a German restaurant that pretends
to have been there for hundreds of years. I ordered the 2 fried sausages with
sauerkraut and boiled potatoes in brown sauce.
The Reichstag
view from the Reichstag
No comments:
Post a Comment