Seeing Berlin
Monday June 5, 2006
BERLIN, GERMANY - I have now moved to Berlin, joining the group for the RIAS German-American Journalist Fellowship program for the next two weeks. It’s a diverse group of broadcast journalists, ranging from a public radio reporter from Alabama (who’s actually a native Hoosier), a thirty-year producer for CBS News who works on the overnight “Up to the Minute” broadcasts, to an educator from North Carolina. We all feel sort of bonded immediately by our selection to the program, and after just a half-day together, I’m sure we’ll certainly feel bonded by the experience.
Although I got a brief glimpse of the city during my trip Friday, the only things I really saw with any depth were the building that contains the German Marshall Fund Berlin office and the Berlin Zoo (it’s a great zoo—highly recommended). Today, we got a three-hour guided bus tour with stops at some points around the city. Among the highlights was a stop at the still-new Holocaust memorial. It is made up of thousands of slabs of grey stone, all at varying heights from just a foot to more than eight feet tall, arranged in rows, but on a rolling cobblestone ground. The effect intended by the artist is to allow the visitor to walk inside the monument, feel a little disoriented and lost at the tallest points of stones, and not really know where to turn. That is the feeling that many Jews in Germany undoubtedly had during the Nazi era. It is a quite effective monument, emphasized during my visit by the placement of a rose on one of the slabs. Again, as first enforced by my trip to Buchenwald concentration camp, the Germans are making a great effort to preserve the memory of that horror.
Just a few feet away from the Holocaust memorial is a parking lot with a children’s playground for a nearby apartment complex. No marker exists to commemorate the history of the spot, but this is Hitler’s bunker where he took his life as the war ended.
It’s stunning to realize that this place was once divided, but there are reminders everywhere. The best portion of the wall still intact is a two-hundred meter section supposedly left unchanged since 1989. It has no painting on the east side (not allowed by the communist regime), and has markings such as “Why?” and “Maybe someday we’ll be together” on the west side. While returning my rental car yesterday, I got lost trying to find a gas station. Early on in following the directions given by the rental agent, I realized I was driving through Checkpoint Charlie—the U.S. entrance from East Berlin. A museum inside contains original artifacts from the side, including the famous sign stating “You are now entering the American sector” on one side. A path of cobblestones marks the former placement of the wall throughout Berlin.
I was told before leaving Weimar that Berlin would be a much more international city, both in language and look. Definitely, the sign that it’s more Americanized is here—I’ve had no fewer than four Starbucks sightings.
A couple of wrap up notes on my time in Weimar…I don’t know that I ever mentioned this while I was there, but those of you who have forgotten your world history should remember the Weimar Republic—it’s not the newspaper in town, but the German government formed as a democracy after World War I. It was called that because the representatives who put together the government met in the Deutschland Theatre in Weimar to hammer out the agreement. Since you remember World War II, you probably figured out correctly that the Weimar Republic didn’t work so well. The Nazis held their first meeting in Weimar’s Deutschland Theatre in 1926, then later exploited the Weimar Republic to have Hitler installed as the supreme leader of Germany.
A couple of corrections…I misspelled the German word for “thank you” the other day. It’s “danke,” not with an “a” at the end as I typed too quickly. Also, the car I first rented is a “Ka,” not an “Ak.” I’d like to say that, again, I typed too quickly, but the truth is that I actually had a joke in mind about an AK-47 and what I’d like to do to that car (not a funny joke, mind you, so I won’t recreate it here). When in Germany, splurge for the next level up and get something with more pickup than a Moped.