"Ich bin ein Berliner": Berlin, Germany

No, I'm not in fact a donut, but I could go for one right about now!

My first day in Berlin was fun. I went on a tour of downtown and got myself orientated. The group was small (there were only four of us), so we got to go fast and visit some places via public transit. I got to see pretty much every landmark on my Berlin list in a 3 hour period, but I'm gonna go back on my own time later to see them again. I'm not sure quite how to explain it, but Berlin still feels like WW2 could have just ended. Many buildings are left unrestored, and many city blocks have empty lots where buildings used to be, but nothing has been built to take its place. Unlike the other German cities I've visited, there are memorials and monuments, subtle to grand, all over Berlin. It's impossible to go downtown and not see the history here.

After the tour, I decided to take in something different. I walked a few blocks over from the old SS headquarters, and landed myself in the Berlin Jewish Museum. After walking through the various armed guards, I got a ticket and went down to the museum. This place was HUGE, and I barely skimmed the surface of what was available to me in there. The general layout of the museum was fantastic, and the whole setup feels like an interactive story. The first floor was the most dramatic, as it was divided into three sections by "axis". The floor, wall, ceiling, and displays were all jagged, and in high contrast. The surface was slanted in various directions, and the whole building made you feel lost, and disorientated. At the end of each Axis corridor, you would find a room behind a massive metal door. Inside one was a garden of stone pillars, the other was an empty room where the studded metal walls reached 25 meters into the sky, slowly closing over your head.

To leave the Axis floor, you would then make your way up three floors using a long, jagged, swaying staircase. Once at the top though, the feeling was of a much different tone. In front of me was a large apple tree within a brightly lit room. This floor began at around the first century of the Jewish people. This floor was more like a conventional museum, but it was creative, and also had interactive elements not seen in most museums. The history of the Jewish people which I have knowledge of is mostly only from the last 100 years or so. Soaking in two millennia worth of information was quite the impossible task. I learned so much in the two hours that I spent there however; and I find myself wanting to know more. Babylonian to the Roman period, Islamic influence and the crusades, the Ottoman period, pre war relationships with Germany, Zionism, the Holocaust and the founding of Israel, it was all incredibly interesting. I hope to go back to this top notch museum if time permits.

-Kyle out-