On Saturday, Genna and I had a full day ahead of us. We walked through and art gallery which held several aspiring artists and artisans. I bought another ornament that did not scream "this is from Berlin", but was super cute nonetheless. We were headed for the Jewish History Museum, but got distracted by food again. We stopped for bruschetta and a caprese salad and then went the the museum. The museum is deeply connected to its architecture. Meaning the man who designed it put a lot of thought into it. You start in the basement and there are three intersecting hallways, called the Axis of Exile, the Axis of Evil and the Axis of *******. Listed along the hallways are places. For example, the axis of evil, the names of different camps are listed and in the Axis of Exile, the various places where Jews escaped to are listed.
Then you head to the second floor (or our version of a third floor). This contains old history of the Jews in Germany. It is very interactive and it helped that I was visiting with a real live Jew who knows the Hebrew alphabet and told me stories about the Torah. We added wishes to the peace tree and listened to stories about religious stories and myths. There was a very interesting portion on women as well. We walked through the more modern history a little quicker to get to the special exhibit on Forced Labor.
What surprised me most about this was that the focus was not on Jews. They spoke about politicians and Germans who were against Hitler and were some of the first forced into labor camps. The severity was not as extreme as the Jews, but several people still died. We learn about the Holocaust so much in school, as well as other parts of European history, but it is not the same as when you are in Germany where people either fled the country or died if they were Jewish.
After this, we headed to the Holocaust Memorial which is off of the main street in Berlin. Not to be disrespectful or anything, but this memorial is terrible. It is 2700 rectangular prisms of various sizes made out of concrete. It looks like a maze and you can climb over and wander through it. There is no explanation as to why this is the memorial, only that they wanted it to be big and in a public place. Below the memorial is a mini museum you can walk through for free. Even Genna the Jew was sorely disappointed by the Holocaust memorial in GERMANY. After this, we grabbed dinner and headed back to the hostel.
I got to skype with Matthew and the rest of the Falkenham family. I have determined that name is of some German origin, as restaurants and hotels in this region have the name Falken. There aren't as lucky to have added the "ham".
Later Genna and I grabbed a quick drink at Susan's where we discovered the owner was one of the waitresses. Yeah, I was backpacking through Europe and Susie was 23 and running her own awesome restaurant. I felt slightly inferior. We returned home early because I had to repack my bag, which takes a solid 45 minutes if I want to fit everything in it. I am going to have to buy another one soon.
Needless to say, although Germany was never high on my list, I am very glad G and I spent the weekend there! I look forward to our reunion in London next week.
XO
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