October 30th, 2012

So much has happened since my last post!  First, Ali and I did a lot of research on what the best Currywurst place in Berlin was, and based off of the information on the internet, we decided to visit Bergmann Curry.  Let's just say we were not disappointed.  I have had a lot of Currywurst during my time in Berlin but this was definitely the best.  It was a little distance away from my apartment, we had to transfer from the U8 to the U7  and then walk a little ways, but it was worth it.  They served high quality sausage with delicious curry sauce, I highly recommend it to anyone who is in Berlin!  We are still planning on visiting some other famous Currywurst places such as Curry 36, but I think that Bergmann Curry will still remain the best in my book.

On Friday, Prof. Wagner took our class to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe near the Brandenburg gate.  I had never been there before but had heard a lot about it from classmates as well as seeing photos.  The reading that Thorsten assigned had a lot to do with the process of deciding which design to use for the memorial as well as a lot of other controversies surrounding its existence. All of the difficulties in trying to make the perfect memorial remind me a lot of what I have read about the erection of the Jewish Museum in Berlin that we visited last week.  I can't imagine having to design a memorial or museum that has the ability to accurately reflect all of the horrible things that the Jews have been through as a result of the Holocaust.  Fortunately, there are people more artistic and creative than myself that have been successful in articulating such a troubled history.  I really enjoyed seeing the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe; I was very captivated by its design. It slightly reminded me of the Garden of Exile from the Jewish Museum. The pillars don't seem overwhelming at first, being that they are only a foot or so tall at the edges of the memorial. Even looking over all of them from the outside, I guessed that walking through I could still mostly see out on top of them. Walking through it was a much different experience.  Toward the middle the ground is lowered and the pillars are almost more than 10 feet tall. In addition, the shape of the ground ranging from across the memorial is almost shaped like a sine wave, which makes it harder to navigate through. Even though we showed up as a group, as soon as we entered the memorial everyone went their own way and explored it.  I felt overwhelmed when I was at the tallest point of the pillars; I almost a feeling of claustrophobia.   This powerfulness that radiates from this memorial is, in my opinion, an effective method of conveying some of the emotions that are tied to the Holocaust.  All of the debate and time, as well as effort, that went in to the memorial is well worth it.  James Young, author of one of the articles I read, had a point that the debate about the memorial itself and the process of creating it serves the memory because it brings the events in to the minds of everyone.  That is something that I really agree with. I hope Berlin continues to erect Holocaust memorials on any scale, just so that the current ones are not forgotten and so they don't slip into the unnoticed objects of the every day routine.  We went into the exhibit underneath the memorial and I really enjoyed that as well.   I just returned from a visit to Amsterdam which I will discuss in its own post!

Above: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe 

Ciao from Berlin,
Becca