Hey y'all,
Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything! It's funny, you start to fall into a real rhythm living abroad. When i first got here, everything was so new and different and I wanted to report everything back right away. But Berlin has started to feel more and more like home. I finally have my grocery store sequence down: Aldi for staples (the cheap off-brand store), Kaiser's for produce (the nice grocery store), bakeries for bread (cause it's Germany..you just have to lol). I got a gym membership and somewhat have a work-out routine. I found a used English bookstore whose prices are not through the roof. I even kind of understood what this lady at the shoe store was yammering at me in German today haha. And I have the full-on, ordering ein Kaffee (coffee) mit Milch und Zucker (milk & sugar) routine down. I think sometimes they don't even notice my American accent. It's great haha.
As I'm here longer and longer, my list of funny homeless people attacked me stories just seems to keep getting longer as well. So yesterday I was coming home from McFit (my lovely gym) at rush hour. There's like hundreds of people on the subway platform. I'm not even thinking remotely about my safety.. watching my bags of course, but the chances of something happening with that kind of crowd are super low. Or so my old thought process went haha. So I sit down on this crowded bench, putting a considerable amount of space between me and this dozing homeless man. There were people on his other side as well. I'm just chilling, daydreaming, thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner (roasted potatoes & bratwurst...yum) - so preoccupied I don't noticed he's turned toward me and yammering at me in German. Sometimes it doesn't register when people are talking to you in different languages because it just all sounds like gibberish and you can't tell what's directed at you. But yeah, so I notice that he's gotten considerably closer and am debating getting up but the bench is just so damn comfortable. When he pokes me. Then shoves me. Pushes me. I was like whoaaaaaaaa ohhh hell no !! I glare at him, get up, walk away toward my train and I notice hes looking like he's about to get up too. I'm reaching for my pepper spray but thank goodness my train came at that moment. My deepest gratitude to the 80 or so German people that watched this all happen but didn't feel the need to do anything about it haha. I dunno, honestly maybe that's just a big city thing, but it scared me a little bit. I know that in cities, especially in places like subways, peple just tend to go about their business and keep to themselves. It makes me wonder if my comfort in crowds is a false sense of security. If he had really attacked me, would anyone had done anything? I would like to think so and believe the best in people but that experience made me question that deep-seated belief. Anyways, it makes for an amusing anecdote for future bad dates and awkward small-talk. : )
We also had a lovely American party on Sunday night! The Superbowl was playing at the Hard Rock Cafe downtown and we all decided to go. Just FYI, the Superbowl starting at 12:30 Sunday night and ran til about 4 in the morning. That's some serious commitment to American football and culture haha. But it was so great because we all felt like it was ok to stand up and scream the star spangled banner at the top of our lungs, ok to cheer obnoxiously and down way too many Coronas, ok to revel in American-ness for a few hours. It felt really good. And my Saints won!!!!!!!!!!!! So proud!!!!! Class the next day was a little painful considering we got home around 6 in the morning, but hey you only live once. Sleep when your dead haha.
That weekend we also went to Sauchsenhausen, a concentration camp just outside of Berlin. It was used at first to house German political prisoners and Communist and later Jewish barracks were added. After World War II it was in East Germany and was actually used as a propoganda tool to show how evil capitalism was. The communists depicted it as a symbol of capitalism and World War II in general as a battle between the two that the communists had won. There was a giant obelisk with red triangles on it (the symbol Communist Sauchsenhausen prisoners had to wear on their uniforms) at the camp for when it was under Communist rule.
Honestly, as much as I've studied World War II and Communist history, nothing, I mean nothing could have prepared me emotionally for being in a concentration camp. We had a long train ride to the city of Oranienburg and then a bit of an extensive walk to the camp itself. The whole time I was pretty mellow and contemplative, thinking about my family as I often do when I am in history class learning about things that so directly affected them. As we walked through the city, we came upon this tombstone commemorating the death march prisoners of Sauchsenhausen had been forced to take. And then the chipper college student mood of the group grew significantly more somber. I was really, really quiet as we walked through the iron steel front grates. They read "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free). After walking through the front gates, all I could see was extensive coils barbed wire, huge expanses of white snow, and a blood red sun burning in a snowy sky. We walked around for a little while, visiting some barracks where they had crammed in way too many prisoners, places where they had bathed and been tortured, and where many of them had died.
And all of a sudden I couldn't breathe. I literally had to walk out of the barracks and go outside. Even then I felt this extreme tightness in my chest that did not subside until the camp was far behind me. Everything was just so impossibly still, so heavy with the ghosts of the past. All I could think about was all of the hundreds of thousands of people that had walked on this frozen ground before me to such horrible fates. Over in Auschwitz, a few of those people had been directly related to me. For those of you reading this that didn't know, some of my Polish relatives were shot by Nazis for eating meat and some perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. As hard as being at the concentration camp was for me emotionally, I felt like I made this deep connection and peace with that difficult part of my family history. I plan to go to Auschwitz as well when I visit Krakow for spring break. It may not be the most cheerful or uplifting trip, but I just feel like it's something I have to do.
God bless the fallen and may they eternally rest in peace. May the future not repeat the mistakes of the past.
On a slightly less intense note, going to Bordeaux, France this weekend to visit Katyrose. Beyond stoked!
Guten Nacht!
-Courtney
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