September 18 — Berlin
Airport security in Copenhagen was very different from the States. Liquids have to be removed in a small see-through plastic container (cheerfully provided), no iPads in your luggage, and belts but no shoes removed. But like the rest of the Danes we have met, it was all done cheerfully and with good humor.
It was a bit of culture shock hitting Berlin and not just for the language. Many fewer people speak English and my German is minimal, but slightly helpful, especially when “talking” with little kids. It’s definitely grungier, the trains are showing signs of wear, and not many smiles around. We fortunately got some timely help from a newer Berliner, an IT guy from Odessa, who hasn’t learned German yet himself in the year he has been here.
It’s been really hard finding metro stations with working escalators or elevators and Deborah’s knees have been getting a painful workout. We crashed for a while after finally getting to the hotel and then grabbed a very late lunch from a sushi place across the street. I also went exploring and was pleasantly surprised to find interesting parks and playgrounds every couple of blocks. And plenty of friendly parents happy to talk about playgrounds. Plus I got in my kid fix!
While they don’t seem to have play areas inside their libraries, there is apparently an amazing kids playground at the Jewish Museum that is so popular you have to make reservations to get in. We’re heading there this morning and I can’t wait to check it out.
Last night, on an impulse, I bought tickets for us to see a museum of light that evening. We eventually found our way there (Berlin has almost parallel U- and S- metro systems), descending at the last end into a bizarre world of graffiti/mural covered warehouses that would have made the Haight-Ashbury district in the 1960s proud. The address we were given on the tickets was actually the name of the whole district and then it was hard to find the gallery. But it was so worth it.
The Khroma installation space is immense and artists found very unusual ways to manipulate the light, lasers, and holography into fascinating interactive exhibits. Our smaller bandwidth service here in Berlin won’t let me adequately show the extent of the works but hopefully these pictures will give a little glimpse into what it was like.
After the show, we went looking for a lite bite and found lots of options, all vegan. We settled on a Japanese fusion vegan which was delicious. And discovered another difference between Copenhagen and Berlin. In the former we could use our credit cards for almost every purchase, no matter how small. But in Berlin, almost everything has to be paid in cash, unless it is a large amount.
On the way back, the direct route took us to what turned out to be one of the grungiest Berlin metro stops. If it had been an American city, I would have been terrified. But we walk under the train tracks and along a canal/small river. In a gap in the abandoned site, I saw the most surprising site, three beautiful white swans!
September 19 — Berlin
While Deborah was getting ready, I took one of my morning walks, fascinated by the children’s playgrounds every couple of blocks. At the second one, a woman walked by while I was taking some pictures, including of a trashed trash can, and asked me what I was doing there. I was really puzzled until she said that during the day it is for the children in the Montessori school and she was just making sure who I was. I told her about my connections with the Montessori schools in Durham and asked if I could see the inside. She’s a social worker there and we talked in her office for a while.
The school was started by a group of local parents who proposed it as a public Montessori school in the very old building. They hired lots of experienced Montessori teachers and the school was a big hit. However, it is a neighborhood school (they don’t really have magnet schools) and over time families came to the school who were not drawn to the Montessori method. On top of that, the budgets have been very tight and they have had a very hard time recruiting teachers, much less any with Montessori experience. The public school situation has been getting so bad that the social worker said a number of “blond” families have started sending their children to private schools, which is unusual in Berlin.
After a while, I asked if I might see a classroom to compare how it is outfitted versus one of our schools. She said she would check and we walked upstairs together, apologizing along the way for the condition of the floors and walls, which didn’t seem that bad to me. I waited in the wide hallway with the huge ceiling while she went inside the classroom. Two teachers came out and enthusiastically invited me to sit and observe.
There were 18 students in the class, and after I perched on a high stool, the lead teacher brought the students into a semi-circle. I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying but apparently three students volunteered to get some supplies and bring them to the circle. In the meantime, she wrote “4638” and asked the three volunteers to represent this on their materials, two of which were standard Montessori materials. The teacher led them through the representation, having everyone repeat each of the numbers. (At that point my German numbers were coming back to me.)
The third representation was an abacus, which I’ve never seen in Montessori before. I was very impressed with the teacher and the diversity of the student population (every though there were only a few “blondes!”)
Our main focus was getting to the Jewish Museum. It is said to be the largest Jewish museum in the world and we only got to see part of it. Everything is topsy-turvy like the small Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, with no right angles, including the flooring. My favorite part was the most unexpected. It started with just a number of the wall at the end of a sloping hallway, which opened up an audio segment on my phone. The architect for the building related a story about a woman on one of the crowded rail cars heading for a concentration camp. And up at the corner of the rail car, she noticed a small opening with just a little light showing. The woman recalled years later how that image helped get her through the grueling years in the camp.
Yet the number and the audio piece didn’t seem to lead to anything. But eventually I discovered a door at the end of the hallway which I opened with some effort. Inside were dark gray walls leading up 30-40’ showing just a tiny bit of sky. I walked over to the corner under the light with my hiking boots echoing off the walls with each step. Finally I just sat down against one of the walls for around 10 minutes just absorbing the experience.
Afterwards, I stood my ground against some pushy people in the cafe line and put in my order for some kosher food. Then I claimed a space at one of the courtyard tables occupied by a family while waiting for Deborah to join me. Turns out they were Dutch from Rotterdam. The dad was particularly outgoing and I really enjoyed the conversation.
While Deborah lingered some more in the museum, I walked across the street to see if I could talk my way into Anoha, the Children’s World of the Jewish Museum Berlin. It was the place the German mom had raved about. I waited outside the locked doors for a while and a Muslim woman finally came out to talk to me. They are closing for the day, she said, and besides that, adults are not allowed in unless accompanied by a child. She gave me a pamphlet and we talked about the exhibit and some of the challenges.
We walked a few blocks and came to a park that was blooming with children and families, a big difference from when we passed it on our way to the museum. The street had since been blocked off and there were all sorts of kid-powered scooters being enthusiastically driven around the street. In the park, there was an obstacle course set up with balance beams. A miniature version of tether ball was in use, sometimes with kids kicking instead of hitting it. Then there were about 12 kids and two adults playing a variety of games on a squishy surface.
Parents were hanging around talking to each other on the periphery. I asked a couple of them who sponsoring these activities. They said it was a privately run organization that arranges pop-up play areas around the city, oftentimes right outside of schools as parents are picking up their kids.
We also stopped to talk with a Romanian immigrant who has a business repurposing old fabrics into the clothing and accessories.
As we were thinking about where to go for dinner, on a lark I checked to see if there were any Indonesian restaurants. We fell in love with the food in Amsterdam, but haven’t been able to find authentic Indonesian cuisine in any of our other travels. Sure enough, there was a place in Berlin! We went all out and ordered the Reistafel which includes about a dozen mini-plates of food. We stuffed ourselves and had enough leftovers for part of a breakfast, dinner, and some leftovers for another breakfast.
I was also able to walk around the neighborhood for a bit. The streets were all lined with cafes and bars. They varied in clientele from the more upscale (and graffiti-free) street where our restaurant was located to faster food, and slower drink options, complete with wall-to-wall graffiti.
That evening, as we approached our hotel, we saw a young couple standing on the street flashing a light onto the bricks. They had discovered three of the metal markers honoring the Berlin Jews who had been rounded up and killed. The three they found were from that very block. We talked with the couple for a while and discovered they were Australian, and not Jewish. Not only were they fascinated by the markers but they were also on their way to one of the concentration camps. It was really encouraging to see their interest.
September 20 — Berlin
How fitting that the next day we ventured to the Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp. The Germans had to reconstruct part of it so that people could help understand the horrors of the situation. Deborah reads extensively on the Holocaust and filled in additional details while we were there.
It was mild by concentration camp standards since it was more of a work camp with tailoring operations and a manufacturing plant there by Siemens. There were really gas oven there, and it wasn’t until the last four months of the war that the Germans killed 40% of the detainees. I can’t imagine what it was like for the German families that live in the nearby town with the constant reminders of the atrocities and the tourists like us coming in and making a beeline to the concentration camp.
While the camp was well-portrayed with an eerie stillness as you walked around the grounds, we weren’t sure it was worth that much of our day to come up there. With all the picking up the car, driving up there, and getting the car back to Enterprise it was time consuming. Plus it was very hard to get out of the city. We’re spoiled by having all the interstates you can hop onto. And it was the closest of the concentration camps.
Did I mention that Enterprise offered me a car in a thick German accent and I had to ask again what the name of the car company was. Eventually I understood it was a Mercedes and agreed. After a long wait, the “car” was brought down and it was a passenger transporter as big as the 12-person vans I rent in Durham!
September 21 — Berlin
I had signed up for one of the “free” walking tours (more pay what you like) and headed to the downtown portion of Berlin. Since all of our activities to date were in some of the more diverse, outer communities, I was shocked seeing downtown. The buildings were big and bold with sweeping parks. Our guide was excellent, teasing us to guess the dates of some of the buildings, and really stumped us on the palace, which was only two years old (but built as a replica).
The Berliners have a thing for memorials and I found them quite compelling. The first was a memorial building celebrating first Prussians, then Nazis, and then Soviets. When the Berlin Wall came down, the memorial was repurposed to honor the fallen in general. And instead of lots of individual memorials, they chose just one symbolic statue and added a hole in the roof. Something about being exposed to the weather? Another interesting one was placed in front of the Reichstag to draw attention to the book burning by the Nazis. If you look down into the “library” all you see are empty shelves.
JR, the guide, had a knack for imbedding history into interesting anecdotes. He took us to a massive building and told us it was the former Nazi Air Force headquarters and an example of the Nazi architectural style. Normally the Soviets demolished all Nazi buildings but this was built so substantially that it wasn’t worth it for them. So they used it as one of their office buildings after first stripping off the swastikas and other Nazi symbols. JR asked us why we thought the US never bombed this important military building. The answer tied into the Tom Lehrer song, Werner von Braun. We were very interested in recovering the weapons papers and scientists after the war! And the use of the building now? It’s the German equivalent of the IRS!
We also walked to the Jewish War Memorial which has overtones of the lynching museum in Birmingham, though I don’t know which was first. It’s a massive complex of tombstone-style slabs of stone that get bigger as you move toward the center.
After it cooled off a little (I only had long-sleeved shirts with me), I navigated my way to the Futurium Museum. It is big and bold and the first impressions were ones of awe. However as I worked my way through the exhibits I started noticing how out of date some of them were. That’s the big challenge with a future themed museum! There were some nice non-future components like the giant swing and the rooftop viewing area to get some perspective on the city.
September 22 — Berlin to Denmark
We had planned to take an Uber to the main train station for the ride to the airport but couldn’t get it to complete the last step. The woman at the front desk was incredibly helpful and used her phone and discount to summon the cab. We were a little worried as the driver spoke almost no English and seemed uncertain of where we were going. I kept an eye on the GPS display and watched as he tried to duck out of some traffic and wound up taking longer. But by that point we had cobbled together enough pigeon English and German to have a conversation. Turns out he is from Afghanistan.
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