Our Apartment

 

This is the front entrance to our house. It looks like a building straight out of "Taxi Driver" with Robert DeNiro. But don't worry, the neighborhood is safe. Our apartment is the one directly above the "Indische Kuche" sign. But don't worry, the apartment doesn't smell like curry. For more pictures, check our Berlin album on the Picasa site.

Shanah Tovah!

Having Fun at the Bundesrat

 

During our tour of the the Bundesrat (German version of the Senate) we were allowed to take pictures at the podium. Since I would never be allowed to do it in the US, I took the opportunity here in Germany.

Settling Down

 

This past week has been a whirlwind of activity. To start, Danielle was able to meet with the doctor that will oversee her internship on Monday. Her "Prakticum" will be with a gastrointestinal doctor at the Sankt Hedwig Krankenhaus located in the center of Berlin. The hospital is still run by a Catholic order and most of the nurses are nuns. Very cool. At the end of World War II, it was the only functioning hospital left standing in the city. During the days of the Berlin Wall, the communist government tried to shut it down, but all attempts failed. Today, it is one of the teaching centers for Charite, the best medical school in Germany.

On Tuesday, we moved into our new apartment in the Kreuzberg. The neighborhood is primarily Turkish and we were able to get tons of fresh produce at the daily outdoor market which is on the other side of a canal that runs past our building. The only unfortunate part of this experience has been that all Germans said that Berlin is not cold. Little did we know that they were comparing the temperature to Siberia. Just this past week, the mercury dipped into the 40s. We are hesitant to turn on the heat so early in the year, but our weak Californian bodies are ready to capitulate should this cold front continue.

The seminar that my Foundation is sponsoring has been excellent. Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to remembering the atrocities of the Nazis. We visited the Sachsenhausen concentration which was the first such camp erected by the Nazi regime in 1933. From there, the planning of all other camps was made. It was also the place where human beings were gassed en masse for the first time. On Tuesday, we had a tour of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The monument sits just opposite the Parliament building and the Brandenburg Gate which is a strong statement by the government and people of Germany. Interestingly, the monument was built at the initiative of a German citizen group.

On Friday, we visited the Parliament and were able to sit in during the debate over the budget. During one of the speeches (that referenced the financial crisis in the US on numerous occasions) the Chancellor of Germany walked in. Wearing a lime green jacket, Angela Merkel took a seat in the back of the chamber and began talking to someone quite loudly. We could actually hear her chatting all the way up in the balcony. I'm leaving out that we saw "The Barber of Seville" at the State Opera and that we spent one day in the country side. We have pictures of all of it, so we hope you enjoy.

Communist Monstrosity

 

Our Berlin photo album now has some pictures I took along Karl-Marx Allee. The street (and sidewalks) is about 450 feet wide and has some of the best examples of the Socialist Realist school of architecture. During the Cold War, the boulevard was used for massive Soviet military parades. Take a look, it's very depressing.

Shopping - Berlin Style

 

Today was our first full day in Berlin. After a short tour of the city that followed the course of the Berlin wall, we had some free time. Our first stop was to the shopping mecca of Kaufhaus Des Westens which is Germany's answer to Harrod's of London. We need to give a shout out to Adolf Jandorf (1870-1932), a fellow Yid who founded this shopper's heaven.

The absolute coolest part of this department store is the 6th floor which contains a food "Gourmet" section that makes Berkeley Bowl look like a 7 Eleven. Aside from the 5 separate counters that serve different types of coffee, we found a huge selection of American food (JIF for 8 Euros), meats (skinned rabbit, parrot fish, eel, goose fat, candy wrapped sausages), fruits (durian, jackfruit, mangosteen, lychee), and eggs (turkey and ostrich variety). We have tons of pictures posted including one of a tin of caviar for 795 Euros.

Later in the evening, we went to a panel discussion about Jews in Berlin post 1945. Afterwards, we were able to meet some of the members of the local Jewish community who told us that there is a Jewish week with various events in the next few days. There is a significant Jewish presence in Berlin and the sad fate of the Jews follows you to every remote corner of the city. Just down the street from our hotel, which 5 miles from the city center, is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe.

Berlin!

We finally made it to Berlin. Our new hotel is much better, although we will be moving into our apartment in a number of days. Also, our internet connection is light years faster, so we can upload more pictures. I added some new ones to the "Bonn" folder tonight. We are taking a tour of the city tomorrow, so we should have some new info to post soon.

"Hey Pop, I Have the Black Lung"

 

Early last week we visited a brown coal mine near the Cologne-Bonn area. It was gigantic. I snapped the above picture of one of the strip mining machines. It was about 15 stories tall and had tracks at the bottom that looked like the ones NASA uses to roll out the Space Shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Recognition We Deserve

 

Our language school was one of the most bleak buildings I have ever spent time in. The outer walls are white, the inside walls are white, and there aren't any pictures hanging anywhere. Carly, one of the people on my program and a muralist,asked the director of the school if she could paint the outside of the building. He gladly agreed and the photo above shows one portion of the wall.

Dani, our teacher Marc, and I were photographed and then Carly projected the image against the wall. She used onion skin thin paper and charcoal to transfer the image on to the wall. My dream of being immortalized on the side of an obscure building in Bonn has been realized!

A German's Revisionism

Today was the second day of my introductory seminar with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Today we visited the Museum of Modern German History – my third time. You may remember that I previously wrote about my experience there.
Danielle and I opted for the English tour to maximize the amount we could understand. Our guide began walking us through the exhibits, but breezed right past the part about the Holocaust. She stopped us in front of some footage of ruined German cities in the aftermath of the War and explained that places like Dresden were up to 80% destroyed. We continued right past the display about the Nuremberg Trials (our tour guide still not uttering a word about the “difficult German past”) but she made sure to mention the hardships of food rationing upon the German populace in the years following the end of World War II. I leaned over to one of my Jewish friends and asked, “Hey, what about the Holocaust?” to which he blithely remarked, “It must not have happened.”

We headed to the second floor of the museum and, once again, flew right past the display about Israel being one of the few countries objecting to the reunification of Germany in 1990. Instead, our guide chose to focus on French opposition to a unified Germany based on economic reasons.

However, we were not ready for what came next. When we arrived at the section discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall, our guide told us that it happened on her birthday. But, she explained, November 9 was also a tragic date in German history. This was also Kristallnacht, the night that many “Churches” (yes, you just read the word church) were burned down by the Nazis in 1938. Our guide was fluent in English, so I’m not sure if she had a slip of the tongue.

At this point, we were not surprised that our guide made no mention of the huge displays about Adolf Eichmann or the growth of the National People’s Party – the successor to Hitler’s Nazi party.

We felt horrible after the tour. When Danielle asked our guide why she skipped this important piece of German history, she simply turned to me and asked, “What are you doing in Germany this year?”

Since being here, we have only encountered Germans who are very open about the Holocaust and are willing to discuss it. This came as an unwelcome surprise especially since our tour was led by an employee of the museum. We are writing a letter of complaint and will post any further development.