Bonjour from Paris!
This morning, Kelsey and I had an early start and walked from our hotel to see the Brandenburg Gate, as my trip to Berlin would have been incomplete without it. We then went back to the hotel, set a record for the fastest breakfast ever eaten, met up with the rest of the study abroad squad and our friend Heiner, and walked to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.
At the memorial, we were given time on our own to explore the seemingly endless rows of concrete blocks. The paths are uneven and hilly and the giant blocks are of all different heights and textures. The deeper you walked into the labyrinth of stones, the steeper the path and the taller the monument became, swallowing you entirely and allowing you only to see the sun. At any moment, you could have run into another visitor, but when in the rows it appeared to be a rather desolate and solitary experience.
After some time, we met up to talk about our individual experiences within the very post-modern monument. Some of us had little to no emotional reaction, while others spoke of a feeling of isolation and anxiety. The confusion, isolation, anxiety, and the fear of what may be just around corner can be very easily juxtaposed with the experiences of the Jewish people sent to the concentrations camps. These people had no idea what would become of their lives and often could not see a way out and much like the people in the maze of the memorial, the only bright spot was the sun above.
Our discussion also involved the fact that the memorial is extremely controversial and has had two books written entirely about the concept of the structure. Having been built on the grounds of a former Gestapo headquarters, it hits a bit of a tender spot with many people. Paired with the idea that the enormous space has no real meaning (just as the genocide of millions of people), it is a place of much debate.
We then walked across the street to see the Memorial to the Persecuted Homosexuals. At first glance, the memorial doesn’t look like much. Tall and concrete, it could have been very easily assumed that they had been intended to belong together, though they were built years apart. The homosexual monument however, had slanted edges and was not perfectly rectangular. There was a small window on the front side of the box, and inside there was a video being played that portrayed a passionate kiss between two men. Upon inspection, there is no plaque or sign to tell visitors the name or reason for the monument. This lack of acknowledgement as well as the much less triggering word “persecution”, rather than “murder”, shows the hesitancy to address the mistreatment of homosexuals in Europe. We have seen this selective erasure of information and memorialization on every stop of our trip thus far.
Back to the hotel we went and frantically did the packing we were told not to procrastinate on, and caught our shuttle to the airport after shoving 15 people’s luggage into one vehicle like jenga pieces. We made it through security (barely), grabbed lunch, treated ourselves at the duty free, and waited. And waited. And waited.
After a slight delay, we got on our plane, where most of us swiftly became dead to the world (I took the BEST nap on Randy), some of us ate truly terrible macaroons, and we were in Paris in no time!
After arriving in Charles de Gaulle airport, we grabbed metro passes and crammed on to the train luggage and all. We took incredibly awful metro identification photos and after hauling 90 lbs of luggage up and down several flights of stairs and on and off a couple trains, we arrived at our hotel!
