![\"Brandenburger](\"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/144\/2016\/04\/image-4-1024x282-300x83.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWhat started with at a pillow fight ended at a fake checkpoint.<\/p>\n
That being said this tour was incredibly informative and well led. The ten minute history blitz of Germany that took us from all the “Friedrichs” to the fall of the Berlin Wall was a great refresher on the formation of Germany as a country. This helped to situate us among the different monuments and buildings that surrounded us. A few notable ones were the Brandenburg Gate itself, the Victory Column, the Reichstag Building, and the US and French Embassies.<\/p>\n
Within the majestic nature of these structures there was always an implication of what was even if it was only applied through the structure of what is now. The Reichstag Building is a perfect example. It was originally situated outside the city walls as a symbolic representation of how much the leaders of the time paid head to power of this parliament. The culprits of the building burning in 1933 remain unknown, and somewhat inconsequential, but Hitler capitalized on the event as another step towards elimenating the other parties in opposition to the NSDAP. It stood vacant Throughout WWII and was only partially renovated in the sixties where it sat mere meters away from the Berlin Wall on the Western side. Only in June of 1990 was the reconstruction started and was finished in 1999. The new clear dome that overlooks the parliament is only the present phase of the symbol this building has become. With tours of this dome open to the public one can see down into the proceedings. Although it still sits outside the gate it is no longer outside the scope of the citizens of Berlin.<\/p>\n
This was our first glimpse into this city’s determination in it’s intention to take responsibility for its convoluted and often painful past. It was important for me to remember that these symbolic monuments were intented to somewhat permanently remember in order to never repeat the past, and was not meant as reparations for those actions.<\/p>\n
The next site on our tour was The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. As we came up to this entire city block that has been filled with 2,711 concrete, rectangular pillars I found it hard to witness people laughing and playing in and around these man made stones. Having been to the Jewish Cemetery just recently in Prague, where I was told the artist who rendered the memorial found inspiration, I found the people running around all of these faceless, grave like pillars to be incredibly disrespectful. Our guide made sure to tell us straight away that the artist had intentionally attached no meaning to the piece other than the name. There was no plaque or instructions as to how to think about the site. The only rule enforced was one was not allowed to stand on the pillars. When pushed to answer what this space meant, even though he had intended a purposeful meaninglessness in it, he said it was meant to show how a man made structured and ordered system can still be chaotic and even maddening. With this in mind we walked through the pillars.<\/p>\n
I was immediately struck by how the children were racing through them playing tag. I saw a little girl laughing for just a moment flash in front of me… And then she was gone. Another moment later and I could hear her soft footfalls and rapid breathing running past me down another row, but this time I didn’t see her. I saw the faces of my colleagues or sometimes just their backs as they stepped into line with my row and then disappeared again around a corner. In my mind I couldn’t help but displace these encounters over a longer period of time or in a different context that was more threatening and more permanent. When I I merged on the opposite side it was as though I was surfacing out of a lake, even though I was able to breathe freely throughout the experience there was a sense of releasing a held breathe and gasping for air again. My initial feelings of the laughers, and players, and all other sorts of being within this piece, was washed away allowing them to be as much a part of the memorial as the pillars were not. We briefly discussed with our group what our individual experiences of this were and moved on to the next site. I had a hard time leaving.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I don’t want to go too much further in depth about any of the other places we encountered that day because they all pale in experience to this sacred moment for me. That being said the other tour sites were also moments of important and conflicting duality. From Hitler’s bunker site that is now just a gravel parking lot to the tourist trap that is a mere representation of what Checkpoint Charlie was, it was certainly provoking to see how these places were inhabiting the city today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What started with at a pillow fight ended at a fake checkpoint. That being said this tour was incredibly informative and well led. The ten minute history blitz of Germany that took us from all the “Friedrichs” to the fall… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"geo":{"latitude":52.5162735,"longitude":13.3777037,"description":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826"}],"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\/3189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ofbloodandbeauty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}