What a busy first day in Berlin! I have to say, I have
really been pleasantly surprised. I guess it was because of all I’ve read
regarding communism and the Berlin wall, but I imagined Berlin to be a rather
bleak city, full of concrete and hideous high rises. As I told my friend Anna
today, I pictured Berlin in black and white. I could not have been more wrong.
Today was literally the most perfect autumn day- the kind you dream about (or
basically just like the beautiful ones I’m used to on Furman’s campus). The
weather was cool but not too cold, and all the leaves were changing colors. It
was a sight to behold. I’m glad that the weather was good though, because it
was a BUSY day. We’re at the point in the trip where we switch professors, so
we said goodbye to Dr. Nelsen this week and hello to Dr. Guth. Dr. Guth is
really nice, but boy is he active!
We began our day at 9:30 with plans to explore the center of old Berlin. We started at our hotel and walked down the main commercial drag of the former West Berlin, Kurfurstendamm, and began with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a monument to imperial ambition and the tragedy of war. We got to see both the old and new versions of the church- the former a politically charged but rather traditional looking cathedral (complete with both religious images AND images of Kaiser Wilhelm) and the latter a sparse, very modern looking church. After that, we hopped on a bus and headed to the Victory Monument, which offered a breathtaking view of Berlin. The only catch was that we had to walk up about 600 steps, straight up. We were all pretty winded by then, but the view was SO worth it. Berlin in the fall is truly a sight to behold. I felt like I was looking out over Central Park in the fall or something, with all of the greenery and the gold and amber leaves falling everywhere. I again just had one of those moments where I thought, “did I ever envision myself being lucky enough to be in Berlin, living this wonderful life?” I really love moments of insight like that. They come at unexpected times, but always serve to remind me to keep things in perspective.
After the Victory Monument, we took the bus down to the Brandenburg Gate, which is located along the Berlin Wall and served as a place for people to pass from East to West Germany and vice versa. We got to see the dark tiles where the Berlin Wall used to stand. Because our class has just read this really moving book (Stasiland by Anna Funder- I really recommend it. A quick read but very, very powerful) concerning the GDR and life under the communist regime, it was a really surreal experience to actually place my foot on where such a symbol of communist repression once stood. It was slightly vindicating as well. While we were at the Brandenburg gate, we got to see a really interesting protest that was a mockery of the current Occupy movement. It involved people yelling out things like “We are the 1%” and “Occupy Tiffany’s!” and even “We are rich, what are you?” Very interesting but also kind of appalling. We then walked to the Holocaust Memorial and took a brief visit through the museum. As befits a museum with that subject matter, it was very moving. I won’t say I enjoyed it, because as always that part of history leaves me feeling nothing but disbelief and sadness, but it was very interesting and well done.
We grabbed a quick lunch and then continued our walking tour, passing Bebelplatz, Humboldt University, the Gendarmenmarkt, and the Marx-Engels Forum (where Anna and I got a lovely picture with the statues of Marx and Engels, hurrah for sociology and philosophy majors!), and ended up in Alexanderplatz, the hub of old East Berlin.
Our last stop of the day was the DDR museum, which was an interactive museum dedicated to life in East Berlin under communism. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but our group was so exhausted that when 4 or 5 of us sat down to watch an informational movie, we all fell asleep! Someone else in our group snagged a picture, and it’s pretty funny to see. We topped the day off with a lovely dinner of kebabs and then some delicious cake and coffee for dessert. We got back to our cute little hotel (Hotel Astrid- definitely the nicest and biggest one we’ve stayed in so far, minus the cold shower) by 8 PM but it definitely felt so much later. I pretty much collapsed on my bed and headed to sleep, because we had an early day the next day!
Day 2 of Berlin was also a whirlwind. It just happened to be the night of daylight savings time, and my roommate for the weekend, Allie, and I had to get up super early to be ready to leave the hotel by 7:30 to visit the Reichstag. Unfortunately we thought we'd set our clocks back an hour, but we actually hadn't! We woke up at what we thought was 6:20, to find out to our distress that it was actually 7:20 and we had approximately 10 minutes to get ready. Pretty stressful! We got ready and rushed out the door, and were on our way with the group to visit the Reichstag. The Reichstag houses the German parliament, but also has this huge dome that has an amazing 360 degree view of Berlin. A winding staircase with a window view leads you up to the top, which is open air and beautiful! The audioguide we used for the tour was really advanced and would talk to you based on your position within the dome. Apart from the cold (and boy was it cold up there), it was an awesome experience. Berlin truly has so much to offer. I have been surprised at every turn by this city, and it has turned out to be (yes Mom, I know I know) definitely one of my favorites! It's way more cosmopolitan than I thought!
After the Reichstag we walked around the Chancellory grounds and along the river and just enjoyed the beautiful fall Berlin landscape. We grabbed a quick lunch in the main train station and then hopped on a train to visit the Stasi museum in East Berlin. East Berlin was definitely markedly different from the West. It was more sparse, with a lot of concrete high rises. The Stasi museum turned out to be super interesting. As I mentioned before, my group just recently read Stasiland, which is a fabulous and enlightening book about life in the GDR and under the Stasi before the Wall came down. The Stasi museum really expanded upon a lot of concepts in the book. The amount of surveillance that East German citizens found themselves under and the complete lack of any privacy was just absurd. The Stasi (the state security) went to extreme measures to keep the East German citizens under control at all times. Some of the most striking things in the museum included "smell samples"and extreme bugging and surveillance devices. Our tour guide was super informative, and it turned out that the reason he ended up being interested in working at the museum was because when the Stasi files were finally released, he ordered his file and found out that his neighbor was actually a Stasi informant and had informed the Stasi about his and his brother's movements. Like I said, the level of surveillance and the amount of informants the Stasi had was absolutely insane. It makes me paranoid just to think about it.
After the Stasi museum we headed back to West Berlin in time to check out St. Hedwig's Cathedral and the Gebdarmenmarkt with the two opposing French and German churches. The German one housed a museum on German history which we checked out. By then it was dinner time, and a group of us decided we wanted some traditional German fare. I tried the famous German "currywurst", which turned out to be sausage with ketchup and curry on top- surprisingly good! A few of the girls and I couldn't resist heading back to the delicious (and cheap!) cake and coffee place from the night before to top off the night. I collapsed in bed, exhausted again by about 9 PM.
Day 3 of Berlin began with some lectures in the morning. Dr. Guth had arranged for Dr. Joseph Braml and Dr. Nils Oermann to speak to us, and it was really interesting to hear their perspectives on the financial crisis. Drs. Braml and Oermann are scholars, think-tank participants, and have served as advisers to several prominent German politicians. Both have lectured at Furman in the past, so it was cool to hear them.
After our lectures we hopped on the bus and grabbed a lunch in a restaurant in Potsdamerplatz. The lunch ended up taking a really long time and we had to eat our food on the run in order to make it back to our meeting spot in time. After lunch we headed on our way to the Topography of Terror Museum. As we were ambling down the streets of Berlin, who do we happen upon but another Furman study abroad group! It was literally so strange that we randomly ran into them on the streets of Berlin, but I was so happy because I got to see Miss Claire Chipman, a lovely sophomore Chi O! Love seeing people from home abroad.
The Topography of Terror Museum was super interesting, especially if because we were in Berlin, the heart of the German Nazi Movement. The museum was located near the old SS headquarters. It was pretty surreal to be there. Outside the museum we were able to see a piece of the Berlin wall still standing. We got to take pictures in front of it as well. It was weird to be in front of a crumbling bit of a barrier that literally people gave their lives to cross. It was such a symbol of oppression, and here we were taking smiling pictures in front of it. That is definitely the weirdest thing about living in Europe and visiting all of these places- you literally LIVE the history.
Anyway, after the museum we headed over to Checkpoint Charlie, which was the famous checkpoint for travel between East and West Germany. The museum was definitely sensory overload with memorabilia everywhere and was a bit amateurishly done, but it was interesting nonetheless. We spent about an hour there and then headed to meet up with our professor again. Our professor had graciously offered to have Furman pay for a nice dinner for us that night, so we found this delicious nice German restaurant and were all able to enjoy a great meal together.
It is so strange that I literally knew about 5 of the 18 people on my trip before I came. I have definitely now come to appreciate the beauty of meeting new people, even your junior year of college when you’ve pretty much met all of the people you think you plan on. That’s another blessing of this study abroad trip- I’ve made some great new friendships. On the way back from dinner we caught the bus and I had a seriously embarrassing European moment (because my life isn’t full enough of those…) As I was riding the bus back (I was standing and holding onto a pole for balance), it came to a really abrupt stop and I lost my balance and tumbled straight into the lap of the woman sitting near me. Needless to say my group members couldn’t contain their mirth and proceeded to laugh for literally the rest of the bus ride. I was about the color of a tomato and the woman I fell on was definitely less than amused. Oh, the experiences of “Grace” in Europe.
That night we met up with the other Furman group again, and went to a dance club to celebrate Halloween in Berlin! It was a lot of fun, especially when they played some Spice Girls throwback music! The next morning was free time for us, so a group of us decided to head and see if the interior of the Berlin Cathedral was open to the public (it had been closed when we came by with our group). This turned out to be a fabulous decision, as the cathedral was beautiful and we got to visit the walkway on the very dome of the cathedral, which provided us with another beautiful aerial view of Berlin. The weather was once again beautiful, and we stayed up on the top of the dome for a good while just enjoying the nice breeze and the beautiful fall colors.
That took most of the morning, so we headed back to the hotel to meet up with our group and head back to the airport. Some final thoughts on Berlin- it was definitely a wonderful, pleasant surprise of a city. The colors and the atmosphere was truly just breathtaking. The food was great, the people were friendly, and the sights were some of the most interesting I’ve seen in Europe so far. I’m so happy I got to experience it all. I’m writing this from the Athens airport, where it is currently 1 AM. My flight to Santorini doesn’t leave until 11 AM, so Sey and I have a long night ahead of us. The next posts will be all about our Grecian adventure so stay tuned! Pictures will also come when I have better wi-fi!
here are some updated pictures!!
We began our day at 9:30 with plans to explore the center of old Berlin. We started at our hotel and walked down the main commercial drag of the former West Berlin, Kurfurstendamm, and began with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a monument to imperial ambition and the tragedy of war. We got to see both the old and new versions of the church- the former a politically charged but rather traditional looking cathedral (complete with both religious images AND images of Kaiser Wilhelm) and the latter a sparse, very modern looking church. After that, we hopped on a bus and headed to the Victory Monument, which offered a breathtaking view of Berlin. The only catch was that we had to walk up about 600 steps, straight up. We were all pretty winded by then, but the view was SO worth it. Berlin in the fall is truly a sight to behold. I felt like I was looking out over Central Park in the fall or something, with all of the greenery and the gold and amber leaves falling everywhere. I again just had one of those moments where I thought, “did I ever envision myself being lucky enough to be in Berlin, living this wonderful life?” I really love moments of insight like that. They come at unexpected times, but always serve to remind me to keep things in perspective.
After the Victory Monument, we took the bus down to the Brandenburg Gate, which is located along the Berlin Wall and served as a place for people to pass from East to West Germany and vice versa. We got to see the dark tiles where the Berlin Wall used to stand. Because our class has just read this really moving book (Stasiland by Anna Funder- I really recommend it. A quick read but very, very powerful) concerning the GDR and life under the communist regime, it was a really surreal experience to actually place my foot on where such a symbol of communist repression once stood. It was slightly vindicating as well. While we were at the Brandenburg gate, we got to see a really interesting protest that was a mockery of the current Occupy movement. It involved people yelling out things like “We are the 1%” and “Occupy Tiffany’s!” and even “We are rich, what are you?” Very interesting but also kind of appalling. We then walked to the Holocaust Memorial and took a brief visit through the museum. As befits a museum with that subject matter, it was very moving. I won’t say I enjoyed it, because as always that part of history leaves me feeling nothing but disbelief and sadness, but it was very interesting and well done.
We grabbed a quick lunch and then continued our walking tour, passing Bebelplatz, Humboldt University, the Gendarmenmarkt, and the Marx-Engels Forum (where Anna and I got a lovely picture with the statues of Marx and Engels, hurrah for sociology and philosophy majors!), and ended up in Alexanderplatz, the hub of old East Berlin.
Our last stop of the day was the DDR museum, which was an interactive museum dedicated to life in East Berlin under communism. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but our group was so exhausted that when 4 or 5 of us sat down to watch an informational movie, we all fell asleep! Someone else in our group snagged a picture, and it’s pretty funny to see. We topped the day off with a lovely dinner of kebabs and then some delicious cake and coffee for dessert. We got back to our cute little hotel (Hotel Astrid- definitely the nicest and biggest one we’ve stayed in so far, minus the cold shower) by 8 PM but it definitely felt so much later. I pretty much collapsed on my bed and headed to sleep, because we had an early day the next day!
Day 2 of Berlin was also a whirlwind. It just happened to be the night of daylight savings time, and my roommate for the weekend, Allie, and I had to get up super early to be ready to leave the hotel by 7:30 to visit the Reichstag. Unfortunately we thought we'd set our clocks back an hour, but we actually hadn't! We woke up at what we thought was 6:20, to find out to our distress that it was actually 7:20 and we had approximately 10 minutes to get ready. Pretty stressful! We got ready and rushed out the door, and were on our way with the group to visit the Reichstag. The Reichstag houses the German parliament, but also has this huge dome that has an amazing 360 degree view of Berlin. A winding staircase with a window view leads you up to the top, which is open air and beautiful! The audioguide we used for the tour was really advanced and would talk to you based on your position within the dome. Apart from the cold (and boy was it cold up there), it was an awesome experience. Berlin truly has so much to offer. I have been surprised at every turn by this city, and it has turned out to be (yes Mom, I know I know) definitely one of my favorites! It's way more cosmopolitan than I thought!
After the Reichstag we walked around the Chancellory grounds and along the river and just enjoyed the beautiful fall Berlin landscape. We grabbed a quick lunch in the main train station and then hopped on a train to visit the Stasi museum in East Berlin. East Berlin was definitely markedly different from the West. It was more sparse, with a lot of concrete high rises. The Stasi museum turned out to be super interesting. As I mentioned before, my group just recently read Stasiland, which is a fabulous and enlightening book about life in the GDR and under the Stasi before the Wall came down. The Stasi museum really expanded upon a lot of concepts in the book. The amount of surveillance that East German citizens found themselves under and the complete lack of any privacy was just absurd. The Stasi (the state security) went to extreme measures to keep the East German citizens under control at all times. Some of the most striking things in the museum included "smell samples"and extreme bugging and surveillance devices. Our tour guide was super informative, and it turned out that the reason he ended up being interested in working at the museum was because when the Stasi files were finally released, he ordered his file and found out that his neighbor was actually a Stasi informant and had informed the Stasi about his and his brother's movements. Like I said, the level of surveillance and the amount of informants the Stasi had was absolutely insane. It makes me paranoid just to think about it.
After the Stasi museum we headed back to West Berlin in time to check out St. Hedwig's Cathedral and the Gebdarmenmarkt with the two opposing French and German churches. The German one housed a museum on German history which we checked out. By then it was dinner time, and a group of us decided we wanted some traditional German fare. I tried the famous German "currywurst", which turned out to be sausage with ketchup and curry on top- surprisingly good! A few of the girls and I couldn't resist heading back to the delicious (and cheap!) cake and coffee place from the night before to top off the night. I collapsed in bed, exhausted again by about 9 PM.
Day 3 of Berlin began with some lectures in the morning. Dr. Guth had arranged for Dr. Joseph Braml and Dr. Nils Oermann to speak to us, and it was really interesting to hear their perspectives on the financial crisis. Drs. Braml and Oermann are scholars, think-tank participants, and have served as advisers to several prominent German politicians. Both have lectured at Furman in the past, so it was cool to hear them.
After our lectures we hopped on the bus and grabbed a lunch in a restaurant in Potsdamerplatz. The lunch ended up taking a really long time and we had to eat our food on the run in order to make it back to our meeting spot in time. After lunch we headed on our way to the Topography of Terror Museum. As we were ambling down the streets of Berlin, who do we happen upon but another Furman study abroad group! It was literally so strange that we randomly ran into them on the streets of Berlin, but I was so happy because I got to see Miss Claire Chipman, a lovely sophomore Chi O! Love seeing people from home abroad.
The Topography of Terror Museum was super interesting, especially if because we were in Berlin, the heart of the German Nazi Movement. The museum was located near the old SS headquarters. It was pretty surreal to be there. Outside the museum we were able to see a piece of the Berlin wall still standing. We got to take pictures in front of it as well. It was weird to be in front of a crumbling bit of a barrier that literally people gave their lives to cross. It was such a symbol of oppression, and here we were taking smiling pictures in front of it. That is definitely the weirdest thing about living in Europe and visiting all of these places- you literally LIVE the history.
Anyway, after the museum we headed over to Checkpoint Charlie, which was the famous checkpoint for travel between East and West Germany. The museum was definitely sensory overload with memorabilia everywhere and was a bit amateurishly done, but it was interesting nonetheless. We spent about an hour there and then headed to meet up with our professor again. Our professor had graciously offered to have Furman pay for a nice dinner for us that night, so we found this delicious nice German restaurant and were all able to enjoy a great meal together.
It is so strange that I literally knew about 5 of the 18 people on my trip before I came. I have definitely now come to appreciate the beauty of meeting new people, even your junior year of college when you’ve pretty much met all of the people you think you plan on. That’s another blessing of this study abroad trip- I’ve made some great new friendships. On the way back from dinner we caught the bus and I had a seriously embarrassing European moment (because my life isn’t full enough of those…) As I was riding the bus back (I was standing and holding onto a pole for balance), it came to a really abrupt stop and I lost my balance and tumbled straight into the lap of the woman sitting near me. Needless to say my group members couldn’t contain their mirth and proceeded to laugh for literally the rest of the bus ride. I was about the color of a tomato and the woman I fell on was definitely less than amused. Oh, the experiences of “Grace” in Europe.
That night we met up with the other Furman group again, and went to a dance club to celebrate Halloween in Berlin! It was a lot of fun, especially when they played some Spice Girls throwback music! The next morning was free time for us, so a group of us decided to head and see if the interior of the Berlin Cathedral was open to the public (it had been closed when we came by with our group). This turned out to be a fabulous decision, as the cathedral was beautiful and we got to visit the walkway on the very dome of the cathedral, which provided us with another beautiful aerial view of Berlin. The weather was once again beautiful, and we stayed up on the top of the dome for a good while just enjoying the nice breeze and the beautiful fall colors.
That took most of the morning, so we headed back to the hotel to meet up with our group and head back to the airport. Some final thoughts on Berlin- it was definitely a wonderful, pleasant surprise of a city. The colors and the atmosphere was truly just breathtaking. The food was great, the people were friendly, and the sights were some of the most interesting I’ve seen in Europe so far. I’m so happy I got to experience it all. I’m writing this from the Athens airport, where it is currently 1 AM. My flight to Santorini doesn’t leave until 11 AM, so Sey and I have a long night ahead of us. The next posts will be all about our Grecian adventure so stay tuned! Pictures will also come when I have better wi-fi!
here are some updated pictures!!
Victory Monument
in front of the Victory Monument
Berlin fall colors!
where the Wall used to stand
Berlin cathedral
group in front of the Reichstag
more Berlin colors
in front of the wall
inside the cathedral
from the top of the dome
more view from the dome
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