02.04.2016<\/p>\n
East vs. West<\/p>\n
One of the strangest days I have experienced in Berlin to this date, this was quite the start to my journey through Berlin. Within five minutes of arriving at the Brandenburg Gate, a pillow fight flash mob erupted in the center of Pariser Platz less than 50 feet from where I sat waiting for the rest of the class to arrive. I later found out from our tour guide that it was International Pillow Fight Day as I pulled feathers off of my clothes and out of my hair.<\/p>\n
As we walked through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe I felt the sudden and overwhelming urge to hide my Saint Francis necklace that I had been wearing since the beginning of the trip under my shirt. I watched as the Berliners around me casually sat on top of the tomb-shaped pillars eating lunch, drinking beer, and smoking cigarettes. It wasn’t until after leaving the site that I began to think about why my response to other peoples’ interactions with the memorial were so judgmental–how could I think others weren’t behaving appropriately when I couldn’t even articulate how I thought I should operate in this space? Huyssen’s essay on museum culture clouded my mind for the rest of the tour.<\/p>\n
Standing above Hitler’s final bunker in which he shot himself covered my entire body in goosebumps and filled my head with unsteady emotions that I couldn’t make sense of. As the group moved forward and out of sight, I spat on the ground that held invisible pieces of this person I had been taught to despise before I could fathom any other way to feel about him. I thanked my grandpa Homer for fighting in WWII, a moment of uncharacteristic patriotism that unnerved me for the next several days and still interrupts my consciousness from time to time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
02.04.2016 East vs. West One of the strangest days I have experienced in Berlin to this date, this was quite the start to my journey through Berlin. Within five minutes of arriving at the Brandenburg Gate, a pillow fight flash mob erupted in the center of Pariser Platz less than 50 feet from where I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}