Au Revoirs and Auf Wiedersehens...

...or however you spell that word.
Sachsenhausen was interesting and sad; basically very depressing. We saw the sickbay where they did medical experiments on prisoners and what the Soviets put up after the war. However, the saddest was the Jewish bunkers, because all the paint was peeling. In 1992 after the Israeli Prime Minister's visit, two neo-Nazis fire-bombed the barracks. They left some of the destruction to illustrate the fact that this outdated thinking is still very alive. It's sobering.

Street leading to Sachsenhausen; SS officials and their families used to live in these houses; now they are lived in by Germans


Clock at Sachsenhausen: stopped at the time it was liberated by the Soviets

Fire damage

Sickbay at Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen was an all-day trip. The next day, we went to two more museums: the Soviet-German war museum built by the Soviets, and the Jewish museum, along with the Soviet war memorial. The first museum was alright, but everything was in Russian and German so I couldn't read anything.

The Soviet war memorial was WAY bigger than I though at first and was absolutely beautiful; I will post pictures later.

The memorial

Statue at the Soviet memorial

The Jewish museum was my favorite of the trip; it chronicled Jewish history in Germany and didn't focus all its energies on the Holocaust like every other Jewish center we visited. It was fascinating and the architecture was beautiful.

Excellent quote from the Jewish museum

Today we went to a small Berlin Wall Museum and had a free afternoon to pack and nap. Jacob and I found a terrific Italian restaurant last night called Peretti, and so we convinced a bunch of people to go there. We and others, meanwhile, went to the best Indian restaurant I have ever been to (me and Jacob also discovered this, on our first night here) called Amrit.

Our last group activity was drinks and food at a Biergarten. It was fairly sad saying goodbye to Prof. Crew, but I will see the others tomorrow on the way to the airport (bright and early- 5am). I will also see Kristin and Andrew in Rome, which I am looking forward to. And we will be hanging out altogether often; we were and remain a closely knit class.

The group at the biergarten

But now it's time to say goodbye to WWII and make my way on to Renaissance art: Italy, here I come!

Happy Gassy Mobil!

Continued from May 24, 2008:
The day of my birthday we had a free day since we were leaving for Paris (to go to Berlin) so very early the next morning. I went to the market after sleeping in, and on the way ran into my lovely boyfriend who had brought me flowers (and as I found out later, chocolate!). At the market I bought a wall hanging for myself that I had wanted the last week and figured it was my birthday so I should get it. I ate lunch in town, a wonderful baguette with Gruyere cheese on it (my new favorite French delicacy) and an Orangina (my downfall) and then we went to the tapestry museum.

Birthday flowers from Jacob

The Bayeux tapestry is really long and chronicles William the Conquerer's conquest of England, so it was made in the late 11th century (I'm pretty sure, anyway. You should wikipedia this stuff, because it's really interesting). The tapestry was beautiful and we heard the story along the way with our audio guides.

After the tapestry we returned home; I packed and changed and got ready for dinner. But before dinner, we had a wine tasting with Prof. Cauvin. That was awesome. I'm really sad that he didn't come to Berlin with us. He got four different wines and gave us a mini-lecture on how to tell a good wine and how to drink it and everything. Of course, he had gotten too many bottles, so by the end we became slightly more appreciative of the wines.

One of the best parts of the trip-- Cauvin at the wine tasting

Dinner was alright; the restaurant wasn't that great but the company was perfect (Jacob) and I tried asparagus for the first time (and liked it). Dessert was good. Afterward we were supposed to have a birthday party, but hardly anyone showed up because they were all packing or sleeping, which was understandable but still kind of sucked. However, we would make up for it in...

BERLIN.
A group of us were taking a different flight to Berlin that stopped in Copenhägen, so we had to leave earlier- at four in the morning. We were quite tired when we got to Charles de Gaulle, which was dirty and not at all represntative of a good international airport; in fact, it really sucked. However, theCopenhägen airport was really nice; it was HUGE and everyone was nice and spoke whatever language they speak in Denmark.

With my birthday chocolates at the Copenhagen airport

Our first day in Berlin we had a small walking tour with Dr. Crew around our neighborhood. Our hostel is really new and nice and it has a bar on the ground floor and lots of friendly people ('friendly' in the sense that one followed Lauren back to our room and tried to make out with her). We saw the oldest Jewish cemetery and were introduced to 'stumbling blocks,' which are little gold plates you're literally supposed to stumble over. They are where Jewish families used to live and have their name and the date they were murdered.

Stumbling blocks

For dinner, Jacob and I ate at a phenomenal Indian restaurant called Amrit. The ambience was beautiful and the food was even better. I'm glad he introduced me to Indian food.

Amrit

The next day began our two-day walking tour of Berlin, led by the indefatiguable Crew. We went to the Brandenberg Gate and saw memorials to people who died trying to cross the wall. We also went to a Soviet war memorial; we were in east Berlin so there remain a lot of Soviet memorials, statues of Marx and Engels, etc.

Sparrow on a tank at the Soviet war memorial

We went past the Reichstag and then to the Holocaust memorial, which kind of sucked. It is a huge space of different sized gray blocks, but it was so ambiguous and did nothing to make me think of the Holocaust; had I not known what it was I would have played hide and seek in it, which was what most of the people we saw there were doing.

Holocaust memorial

We also went to Checkpoint Charlie and by the plaza near Humboldt University where the Nazis burned books of banned authors. After that we went to a Protestant church which has a huge dome, the Berlinodome. Most people went up, but I took a nap in the pew.

Checkpoint Charlie: tourist destination in the extreme

The church

The hotel by the Brandenburg Gate where Michael Jackson hung his baby out of the window

After that we came back to celebrate Lauren's birthday, which was that day (the 26th). We went to dinner at an Italian place that had AWESOME gnocchi, and then we went to our hostel bar and sang karaoke until all the other patrons left. It was great, especially Tom Divine's impassioned recreation of "Kokomo."

Yesterday we did our second part of the walking tour. This day wasn't as interesting as the first, but we did go to the largest remaining part of the Berlin wall and tagged it ("Keep the Peace-May 2008"). That was pretty cool. We also went to a DDR museum that showed life in Soviet Berlin, but it was kind of weird because there was a lot of information (and pictures) on the nudist movement in the 1960s. Most of us were exhausted by the time we came back, so we had an early night, although some people went with the professors to see Indiana Jones.

Today should be an interesting day; we are going to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Germans acknowledge their role in the Holocaust, but only while similarly mourning other "victims" of the regime, like German soldiers and civilians, who might have taken part in the terror themselves. And you think they would have learned their lesson, but every Jewish store, synagogue and center has 24-hour guards and heavy security, so it seems like there is still a disparity between the abundance of memorials to Jewish victims and the prevailing German attitude (this is not to say that most Germans are still anti-Semites, because obviously they're not. But it is interesting).

Shut UP, COLIN!

I'm in Berlin now, (HOORAY!) but will continue from our last days in Normandy.

The day after we went to Mont St. Michel, we went to Utah Beach. There wasn't much to see, but there was some cool barbed wire and horses on the beach.

On Utah Beach

After that, we went to St. Mere-Eglise, which was the first town to be liberated after D-Day. We went to another museum, where I found that Montgomery, one of the commanders of Allied forces in France, named his two adorable little dogs Hitler and Rommel.

Montgomery with Hitler and Rommel

After the museum we were able to explore around the town (there was a market that day, so we explored by eating food and ice cream and chocolate). The town is famous partly because of John Steele, a paratrooper who unfortunately landed on top of the church in the center of town and was used to target practice by German soldiers. He survived by playing dead, and there is a dummy paratrooper that hangs from the spire of the church, which is pretty cool. The inside of the church is even better because the stained glass in there depicts the invasion; the best one was of the Virgin Mary surrounded by paratroopers.

Mere St. Eglise-- you can see the dummy paratrooper to the left

The next day we went to Arromanches, which is were the British mulberry (floating harbor) was. We first went to a museum about it which was fascinating; what was even more fascinating was that while we were walking around when Cauvin says something that no one heard, and when we asked him to repeat it, he pointed to a picture of some soldiers in a glass case and said, "that one in the middle is my brother." Turns out his family knew about the picture, but the first time he came to the museum with the program and saw it, he did a double take because he didn't know it was there. My most badass professor's brother is in a museum, which makes him even more badass! That was pretty cool.

Cauvin's brother is in the middle

After the museum we got to go out on the beach and see some remains of the mulberry; which was great because it was low tide and we actually got to climb on part of one.

Acces interdit be damned!

After that we got to travel to where some German gun emplacements were and got a nice lecture from a man who was actually liberated by the Allies.

I've got big guns.

That night was the eve of my birthday, and we had dinner with the professors at the Moulin Morin. Francoise made one of the best desserts I had ever had; little pastries with ice cream inside, drizzled in hot chocolate sauce. After that, some of the girls brought me a birthday cake, which added to my already monstrous sugar intake.

Francoise is amazing.

Birthday smoooooch

We have to leave soon but I will continue later!

Alyshia's on the Computer and Lauren is Playing with Toy Ducks and Giving them Voices

May 21, 2008

T-minus 3 days until my birthday!

I think today might have been my favorite day so far on this trip. We left incredibly early, when it was 40 degrees outside, and we were told to wear shorts. Of course, we though our professors were one step beyond insane, so we layered up. The bus ride to Mortain took a little over an hour, and when we got there we toured the mountain that was home to the Battle of Mortain and saw where German soldiers lay in wait for Americans climbing up the hill. There were some terrific views, but it was nothing we hadn’t seen before.

On Mortain

Very old church on Mortain

After that we went to a little town to buy lunch for a picnic; I had a delicious baguette with Gruyere cheese and some strawberries.

By then it was close to two o clock (there was a lot of driving today), and we were set to begin our walk to Mont St. Michel.

Mont St Michel is a huge abbey that was built in the 8^th century (708) in the bay between Normandy and Brittany. The tide recedes way far out; at least a couple of miles, and you’re able to walk the 6km or so to the abbey across the bay itself. It was really muddy, knee-deep in some places, and we had to wade through some rivers of water with deep currents. Best of all, there was quicksand! It was so weird-feeling; kind of like rocking on a wooden plank, or standing on a “water mattress” as our French tour guide described it, which meant that whenever we found a patch we shouted “WATER MATTRESS!” and all jumped in it. You don’t sink too fast so it was really fun to play in it. All in all it was definitely an experience. We got to the abbey after around a couple of hours and took a tour. I will post pictures and a map later; I can’t write too much because I am tired.

Love!

Getting Sober

May 20, 2008

The lack of Internet is disturbing, but Alyshia has been kind enough to let me use her computer to type up blog entries so I can at least write up what we’ve done. I’m not sure what had happened the last time I wrote, but Normandy (as I probably said earlier) is kind of ridiculously beautiful. There are some cows right on the other side of the fence outside our lodgings at the Moulin Morin, and they are big and soft and sweet, with huge eyes.

Our first day in Bayeux we had mostly free, but we walked into town , which is a good 30 minute amble from our place. We saw a bunch of sites, including a church, the Notre Dame de Bayeux. By this time it was pouring rain, so it was nice to go inside. I left my umbrella in the front so I wouldn’t get the floor wet. We toured the crypts and the whole church, and then congregated at the front to leave again. But LO AND BEHOLD someone had STOLEN my umbrella! From a CHURCH! So I had to borrow Cauvin’s umby and make my miserable way back home.

The Church in Bayeux

Our second day was a totally free day, so instead of going on a bike ride with Wynn and being active, I took a long nap and bubble bath and walked to the store. We’ve done collective dinners almost every night, so we go to the store (Leclerc) to get groceries. But it was a really beautiful day and it was nice not having to do anything.

Yesterday was anything but a free day. We went to Caen in our pimped-out tour bus (leather couches in the back), and saw the castle of William the Conqueror and the abbey dedicated to his wife, Matilda was William’s second cousin, and they had to get permission from the Pope to marry, so to secure his acquiescence, they built abbeys. It was awesome going into the abbey of Matilde because her tomb was right there, and it was insane being in something that dated back to the 1000s (later rebuilt in the 15th century after a fire), and the abbey was also part of the main Caen government building, which houses the governing body of lower Normandy. The funniest part of the tour was when our very capable tour guide told us that “the door between [the government building and the abbey] is always locked because the French believe in a firm separation of church and state.”

Castle of William the Conquerer

After the tour of the church, we went to a reception held by a lady of the governing body, who gave us cider and hors d’oeuvres and gift packs with backpacks and t-shirts (sadly no umbrella)!

Mme. Debakker looking fab.

Jacob and me at the reception

After the reception we went to a memorial museum, a second generation museum for war in general, I guess. You could tell that it was made a) to impress upon visitors the emotional impact of the war and b) to educated people who didn’t have any firsthand experience of the war. However, as someone who has spent a whole semester studying WWII, I found the exhibits a little overbearing and corny. We did watch a good video on D-Day, but it was overshadowed by the second film, which had corny music and kitschy graphics.

Good picture from the museum

After that we returned home, and GUESS WHAT! I got to feed the ducks and one of them came right up and ATE OUT OF MY HAND! So that made my day. We spent our night (as we spend every night) dancing, playing games (Charades and cards), and Frisbee, and bonding. We also had a guest who was in Normandy Scholars in 1991 two days ago who worked for the UN in Geneva, and who was fascinating to talk to. She has a job that I would love to have; doing good for the world.

Feeding Margie the Duck

Today we woke up super early and rode the bus to the German gravesite. Each stone marked the graves of two German soldiers, and many of them were unidentified. It was much simpler than the graves we would visit later on in the day.

German cemetery; the mound is made up of unidentified remains of German soldiers

After visiting the German gravesite we traveled to Pointe du Hoc, where about 160 American Rangers lost their lives trying to destroy huge guns that weren’t there. This definitely had more of an impact on me than any of the museums we’ve been to so far because it was a place where men fought and died. Here, as everywhere else, everything was green and verdant and flowery, but there were still huge craters and holes where artillery had landed. There were also bunkers and gun emplacements, some destroyed and some still intact. We went into some of them, and they were completely dark and cold. I don’t believe in ghosts, but if they existed they would exist here, in these dreary water-stained walls. It is very sobering to know that you are walking on ground that countless men died upon.

In a crater from shelling, Pointe du Hoc

German bunker on Pointe du Hoc View from a German bunker on Pointe du Hoc

After Pointe du Hoc we went to a small town above Omaha Beach, and took a long lunch while waiting for the tide to recede. After a two hour lunch, it still wasn’t low enough to walk on the beach, so we drove to the American cemetery (they usually walk), and saw the American gravestones. We started out at a museum of sorts at the Visitors’ Center, and saw a brief film. Once again, the stuff was interesting, but I had learned it before and it wasn’t as arresting as the site itself. After the museum we took part in a ceremony in front of a statue overlooking the gravestones entitled something to the effect of American Youth Rising Above Death (don’t remember the exact name; I’ll put it down later). The loudspeaker played the Star-Spangled Banner, and we each got a yellow rose. Then it played Taps, and we each got the name of a Texas soldier who died in the invasion. The ceremony was slightly more moving because I didn’t realize what was going to happen, and it was a little emotional. The graveyard is designated American soil, so American flags fly above and everything is first written in English, and then in French (usually it’s the other way around).

Statue at the American Cemetery

After the ceremony we went to find the gravestone of our Texas soldier. Mine was Millard Proffitt, a PFC who died only a few days after D-Day. It didn’t say his date of birth, but he probably wasn’t that much older than me. It did make it more personal to lay a rose at the grave of one person, although there are 6,000 more whose gravestones remain unadorned.

Grave of Millard Proffitt

I guess I am in a philosophical mood but as this semester has ended and the history tour has begun, I don’t really feel any better about the state of the world.

After the cemetery we walked back to the bus along a few miles of Omaha Beach, as by this time the tide had receded. It was a long walk down; I don’t know how anyone could have survived the climb up the bluffs.

On Omaha Beach