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| Do as the Germans do, and pose with their legislative building. |
I arrived in Berlin with, frankly, very little expectations. When planning our trip, our itinerary had come down to the fact that Stephanie had to get to Berlin and I had to get to Paris. Boom. We had a spring break trip. Berlin is also not one of those cities you fantasize about. Sweeping romance blockbusters are not set in Berlin. Unless they end in something horribly depressing (at least in my experience). When you think Berlin, unfortunately you think, well, Nazis. And Gorbachev. Not Paulo and Lizzie McGuire riding on a moped.
To put it concisely, Berlin exceeded my expectations, if I even had any. Leaving, I felt magnetized, like I was already ready to go back. I think there were a lot of different factors involved in this beyond Berlin of course: the friends I was with, the place I stayed, the people we met, the things we did. But, Berlin is a total and whole of all of these things to me.
I think what surprised me most was the people. I took a Lufthansa flight over to Rome at the beginning of the semester that connected in Frankfurt. That was my experience with Germans. They were on time to the second, neatly pressed, and not cold but certainly not friendly. And I think this is a lot of people's perception of them. This is not what I found. The people of Berlin were some of the kindest, most welcoming people I have come across this semester. They just constantly wanted to help. You never had to ask for directions. More than once, locals came up to us, apologizing for broken English, trying to guide us, simply because we looked lost. One man even joined us on the bus, saying, "We'll do this together. I'll ride with you until it's my stop to get off." I mean, who does that? And that's coming from someone who lives in the Midwest.
I was informed while we were there that Berlin is different from the rest of Germany. It's a city of creative types. It's incredibly accepting. One person told me, over a drink at the bar, that his take on the city was this: so much had happened there, so many forces had stifled people's freedoms and voices that now the city almost had to overcompensate in the best possible way, in a creativity and acceptance that is actually astonishing.
Take for example our Friday night out at the bars. We ended up at the weirdest, but impossibly cool bar I had ever been to. It was a hard rock club that was completely enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. But, also had painted cherubs on the ceiling and a purple upright piano on the stage. Oh, and don't forget the bleachers for sitting space and the three euro beer. As four white kids in obvious American traveler clothes (AKA not all black), we stuck out like a sore thumb. But, no one cared. Maybe they gave an initial sideways glance but no more than that. When I did a poor job of pronouncing the name of my cheap beer the bartender was not offended. He just smiled and gave me my beer.
Probably the most incredible thing about Berlin, for me, has to do with all that, with my one-night-friend's analytic thoughts over a glass of ice. It is the relationship Berlin has with its history. It's sometimes easy to forget everything that has happened there, that at one point practically the entire city was just smoking ruble. Then you notice the bullet holes still on old buildings as you walk down the street and how some of their most historic monuments are still charred black from the fires. Being in Berlin is like looking at a rose that has bloomed from ashes.
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| The Holocaust Memorial actually makes you feel anxious and trapped as you walk through. |
They are the first ones to bring up what happened there. They want to talk about it. They left part of the Berlin Wall up and marked the pavement where it had been because they want people to know that it was there. Berlin accepts what has occurred and has moved forward but never forgotten that past. You see it everywhere you look: the dignity and humility with which they face such a horrific history.
It makes me consider how another city would deal with such a heavy task. Would a US city be able to so elegantly deal with something so dark? Would it have the courage to? I think it's a very difficult question, and honestly I don't have the answer for you. But, what I do know is that Berlin has succeeded in such a way that it has made me fall in love with her in a way that I never anticipated.
I mean it could also be the fact that they eat cake the way the British drink tea--but, why not just say it's both? From the quirky shops to the meat stacked plates complimented by cheap beer (I actually didn't drink beer before I visited here) I was truly impressed. My friend, Emily, was ready to relocate there. Me? Well, I'm thinking maybe I'll have to find my way back there eventually, somehow, someday.
xoxo
lauren
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