Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkeneau

18 May 2012

Auschwitz I

Auschwitz I was quite touristy which really prevented me from being able to experience what the camp was.  I found it hard to connect with the camp in an authentic way.

Most of the buildings in Auschwitz I are original, because they were not bombed by the Allies.  However the barracks were not built by the Nazis, and were instead part of a previous camp that the Nazis used when they got to and started using Auschwitz I. 

You’ll notice that I keep referring to it as Auschwitz I.  That is the camp with the “Arbeitet Macht Frei” (“work makes you free”).  This sign was actually stolen a couple years ago, so now the sign is no longer original. When the “final solution” got into full swing, they Nazis created “Auschwitz II (Birkenau)” or Auschwitz Birkenau.  This is a separate camp, very close (just a couple kilometers) from Auschwitz I.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

A few of the barracks in Auschwitz I are now used to display artifacts from victims of the camps.  One room is full of suitcases.  You may wonder why they had suitcases if they were just being sent to camps where they were stripped of everything and usually killed within minutes of arrival.  When the victims were told to pack their things to move to deportation centers (like ghettos) they were told to label their belongings clearly.  This was part of the psychological trickery which was used to maintain a relative calm and coerce the victims. 

Another room is filled with the shoes of children.  Another room is filled with adult shoes, on both the left and right side.  We were walking through a room surrounded by shoes of dead mothers and fathers who were killed for being Jewish.

The most emotional room was a room of hair.  After the victims were stripped and sent into the gas chambers (which they were told were showers), they would then shave their heads.  They were already dead; there was no reason to shave their heads.  It was done to further degrade them.  Jewish culture places a great deal of value on hair; forcibly cutting or shaving it is complete humiliation and degradation.  There were four tons of hair in this room.  It is being preserved there, behind the glass (because it is contaminated with zyklon B), where it will eventually decintigrate.

This is a bad photo because I was far away, but here's a map of the city and the two camps it contains.  You see here how insanely huge Auschwitz II-Birkeneau is. 

Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

Auschwitz Birkenau was an extermination camp.  I knew that it was large but I had no idea of the true scale. Walking up to it (we walked the walk that the victims would usually have to walk, along the train tracks and into the camp), I was amazed and horrified at the sheer size of this place.  It went on so disgustingly far both left and right, and when I got inside, it went back just as far.  Poland is an incredibly flat area (as flat as central Florida), so when standing in the middle of the camp, you really can’t see either end of it. 

When learning about the holocaust usually you hear that most women and children were selected to be immediately sent to gas chambers.  This isn’t historically accurate.  Dr. Mengele, who among other disgusting things, was one of the primary people in charge of pointing his thumb to either the right or left to determine prisoners’ fate upon arrival to AB.  This is what largely determined the selection process: how many prisoners they needed for slave labor that day.  If that day there was, say, 87 people needed, the strongest/healthiest 87 were spared, and most of the others were immediately sent to the gas chambers.  They would ask the young boys their age when they came in.  Many times prisoners would pass by and tell the line of new child arrivals to lie about their age.  Sometimes those kids took the advice, sometimes they didn’t – and that alone determined many individuals’ fate. 

It’s crazy to think that how long after you arrived at the camp was determined on so many unsure, ‘luck-driven’, coincidental, and arbitrary (in the case of Dr Mengele) decisions. 

The current estimate is that by liberation on January 27,1945, approximately 1.3 million individuals were killed in Auschwitz II-Birkeneau.  About 90 percent of them were Jewish. 

A couple last notable facts:

1.  There’s an area they informally called “Canada” in AB.  It was named that by the prisoners, because they saw Canada as a place of fortune and abundance, and this assignment was one of the luckiest you could get in AB.  Here, the prisoners were charged with going through the clothes and suitcases of those who were immediately killed upon arrival, to collect any valuables, which would be turned into the SS, and then sent back to Germany on the trains that had brought victims to the camp in the first place.  Think about how valuable this job was for these people.  Every two inch scrap of fabric was like finding gold – men could lay it on their heads in place of the yamaka (only women got caps at camps – that was intentional [women don’t wear head coverings in Judaism]).  Or it could be used to wipe your face of sweat – there was no water to wash with, and people found humanity in simply pretending to wash their armpits with their bare hands.  If you had fabric to do it with, imagine how much more real it would feel.  Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of working at Canada was finding the occasional piece of food in victims’ belongings, giving you a few calories more for that day.

2.  Other measures were taken similar to the body washing that I mentioned before, in order for prisoners to restore some millimeter of normality and redemption back into their lives.  As prisoners, one’s saliva production was incredibly scarce, because of the lack of nutrients and water and the constant labor.  That’s one aspect I’d never thought about before.  We heard the story of one woman who would lick her thumb and index finger and use the tiny bit of saliva to run down her pants in order to create somewhat of a crease in them.  To make it hold, she would then sleep on them.  It’s amazing the things these amazing individuals thought to do to make themselves feel human again. 

It was in the barracks of Auschwitz-Birkeneau where our two survivors, Henry and Sally, shared their stories with us.  They both spent time here at the camp - it's where Sally's mother and little brother were killed in gas chambers, and where Henry spent years before being one of 87 children spared by the evil Dr Mengele.  But I will share their stories with you later. 

Well, I’ve gone on long enough (well.. can you ever actually go on long enough about this?), and I truly truly appreciate all of you who made it to the end of this.  It’s respect for those 11 million who suffered in somewhat similar ways.  Stay tuned for more (shorter) posts from the rest of my trip in the coming days.  

A display of some of the suitcases from victims at Auschwitz (I or II, I'm not sure - probably some of both).  It's about 2 or 3 times as long of a display case as it looks here.  I spared you the eyeglasses and kids shoes displays.

This is the side of one of the buildings at Auschwitz I, the windows of which were boarded up on the side facing the torture area.  People were hung by their arms like in medieval times from these poles (pictured in front), and shot against the brick wall in the back.  Obviously the other prisoners would hear these things, but couldn't see them.

Last day in Europe - life update!

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry about my sudden halt in blogging while I was on the March.  Our schedule got quite hectic to say the least, after my last post.  Running on about 5 hours of sleep each night, I was in no condition to blog by the time I saw my bed.  But if you'll be so kind as to check my blog next week, I've typed up my posts in word documents and will be posting them once I get to New York City next week.

The March was an incredibly transformative, educational, and inspirational experience.  So I will by all means be posting the remaining entries so that I can share my incredible experience with you!

After The March I flew to Istanbul, Turkey to meet up with Lucy for the week.  It was a nice and very interesting.  However I don't think I was able to fully enjoy what it had to offer for three reasons. First, I was very much still processing all that I'd learned and experienced on The March, and I was feeling a sort of academic withdrawal from it once I felt the impact of the sudden drop from the program and re-entry into un-guided traveling into un-chartered territory.  Second, and probably because of the above reason, I started becoming really anxious to just get the heck home. The fact that Turkey was so different from anyplace I'd ever been made me a want that even more.  Third, I got pretty bad food poisoning or something and was down and out for a couple days cumulatively.  But it was awesome to get a taste of the Middle East with Lucy!

Yesterday I flew back to Berlin - I was (and am) SO happy to be "home"!! This morning I went to school and picked up my luggage and chatted with Ella over tea and chocolate - I'd missed her a lot!  That made my day.  Then I walked around Mitte for a while, ate some food, and got a beginning Hebrew book at Dussmann :)

Now it's my last night in Berlin, and tomorrow morning I will head to the airport and then fly home mid day.  It's crazy.  I feel like the experience has gone by somewhat fast, but at the same time, I don't remember what it's like to be home in the States.  It's my personality to become really immersed in wherever I am (at HWS, on summer break, whatever it may be) at the time and forget about what it's like elsewhere or in real life.  But having been gone for five months, and in such a different place, I feel that more than ever.

It's sad to think that I won't be back in Berlin in the capacity of a (sorta-)carefree undergrad study abroad student.  But I think I've gotten so much out of my experience here (despite my deep-winter-stint of not liking Berlin. To my defense, it was -10 F for three weeks).  I'll definitely hold the city really close to my heart, and it'll be a really interesting and probably difficult adjustment period back into American culture and furthermore into NYC culture. But continuing to blog about The March, Turkey, and other things I haven't yet gotten to but am determined to record here, will help me through it.  That, and a lot of quiet time.  What can I say, I'm easily overwhelmed.

Here's a photo I took on a bridge here near school around 7:45pm while walking back from dinner.  One more thing I'll miss about Northern Europe - 9.20pm sunsets!!!

The River Spree from a bridge on Friedrichstraße

March, Day 2: Berlin

What a long day.  Our wake up call was at 6.30am and it's now... 1am!  After this afternoon's 8 hour bus ride to Krakow, Poland, I am ready for a good few hours sleep.

Today we saw many monuments and important sights related to the Nazi regime and even Berlin Cold War history.  Many of them were places I've seen before and even showed people when they've visited me, so it was really interesting to re-visit them with leaders who have infinite knowledge about the sites and the historical context.

One of my favorite sites from today was a Jewish cemetery about 3 blocks from my school, which I had no idea existed.  This site was a cemetery back before WWII, but during WWII the Germans did two things. (1) They were desperate for materials during the war, so they removed the tombstones and used the material for other purposes and b) since the city was completely obliterated when the allies bombed the city, they were also desperate for places to put dead bodies.  So they re-opened these graves (the Jewish burial tradition puts the deceased 6 feet down, thus there was (technically, and sickeningly) "room for more"), and put bodies on top of them.  Now it looks like a huge fern patch.  However, there is ONE gravestone standing, which was erected during the 1990s.  It's for Moses Mendelssohn, who was a great Jewish thinker in the 18th century.  He has a long and interesting history, but what he is most known for is studying/discussing the idea of living a life of faith in a world of reason.  Another way to put it; having one foot in a traditional (orthodox) world, and one foot in the modern world.  It's something that people are still struggling today in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  Since he is so important to Jewish history and German-Jewish history, they re-established his headstone in the corner of the cemetery where they believe he was buried.

The Jewish graveyard, and to the right (just right of the huge tree) you can see the sandstone colored tombstone of Moses Mendelssohn.

Another interesting thing I learned or realized today, is that a lot of experiencing or learning about a place that you go to is not in noticing the monuments, or buildings that exist, but in noticing what does NOT exist.  This is an incredibly difficult task.  It's not only hard to wrap your mind around and intellectually challenging, but it also is difficult if you didn't know what was there before that was now missing.  Along these lines, many memorials in Berlin (particularly those to Jews) deal with remembering and making visible this absence.  Some points about this:

1. This building is the most vivid example of this.  It was bombed during WWII, but only the middle section of it was completely destroyed.  During reconstruction during the 1990s (remember; the GDR left all the WWII-destroyed properties completely alone during their regime, and almost everything in the East was not reconstructed until the last 15-20 years!), they decided to leave this section of the apartment missing, to make visible that these people are no longer living there; as they've been killed. Not all of them are Jewish, but it's a very important reminder of the past.  This type of memorial is even more expensive than erecting a traditional 'memorial' or monument, because of the real estate value.

On the LEFT building you can see it clearer; you'll notice big signs or plaques on the side of the buliding.  Those state who lived in the apartment before it was destroyed.  

2. This initiative, which I may have mentioned before, establishes small plaques (another kind, not to be confused with the ones I mentioned above which are much different) on the sidewalk outside of businesses or homes from which Jews were forced from their homes and deported. (see below for what they say). I find it one of the best memorials in the world.  I have seen the plaques in Berlin, Bavaria, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Denmark.  It's a really amazing thing to just be walking down the street with your friends eating some gelato, and see a plaque, and pause to remember the severity and gravity of what happened there not even a century ago.  It's really powerful, and is a great everyday reminder for everyone.  Here's just one example of this, and this is actually the largest set of them I've ever seen (usually it's just 1-3 plaques in front of a building).

This was in Schoneberg, the "Jewish neighborhood" where 16,000 Jews lived before WWII. 

An up close view of the plaques.  They read (bottom left, for example):

Here lived

Ursula Salinger

Born [maiden name] Salinger

Year born. 1919

Deported 1942

 Riga 

Died

For reference, Riga (the capital of Latvia) was the site of mass executions by the Einsatzgruppen.  The Einsatzgruppen is a group of German officers (often formerly-normal police officers who were forced into the job) who moved from town to town each day and would dig trenches and systematically shoot the individuals into what became mass graves - this killed an estimated 1.1 million Jews during the Holocaust.  The biggest example is in Babi Yar, which is right outside of Kiev in the Ukraine, where an estimated 33,771 individuals were murdered in a two-day masacre.  Unimaginable. 

I know this is all really really emotionally difficult material to learn about.  Trust me. I've taken classes on it, read many books on it, etc., so I definitely know.  But I sincerely hope from the absolute bottom of my heart that those of you reading this will nonetheless continue to come back and learn, feel, and interpret these things yourselves.  As one of the daughters of survivors (who is helping lead this trip) talked with us tonight, she thanked those of us whose history this is not, for coming on this trip, desiring to understand, and desiring to pass down the education on the topic.  She mentioned that as a descendent it IS her story, but for some of us like myself it is not, and that's touching for her to see. I couldn't have thought of a more appropriate response, but one student said "It wasn't my story, but it very easily could have been".

And that is why I find this so very important to learn about and experience.

Thank you so much for reading and goodnight! 

March, Day 1: Berlin

So on Sunday (May 13) I left Copenhagen and returned to Berlin.  I spent a couple days here in my lovely city.  Then today I started another small but significant chapter of my story.

This morning I met the group of 63 HWS and Nazareth students, Holocaust scholars, 2 Holocaust survivors, their child(ren) and grandchild(ren), the President of my college, and a few engaged community members to begin the week-long Holocaust remembrance trip called The March.  As I sat at at their gate waiting for them to get off the plane (yes, airports are designed intelligently here, it's quite nice), I discovered that I was incredibly nervous.  I'm not exactly sure of what, but part of it was that I haven't interacted with that many Americans since... last time I was at HWS in December.  And I'm not the most fond of social situations.  So that was and is definitely a difficult aspect.

But! As soon as I saw my awesome professor and he gave me a hug, the nervousness was almost instantly resolved.  I soon found out that my roommate for the trip would be Beth, who is a WS student who just graduated, and is on this trip as a "student assistant" type position. She did the trip last time, in 2010, and was asked back to be a student assistant.  I didn't know her before, but we have similar interests and studies, so it's been SO great to have her to have intellectual conversations about instead of complaining about we're hungry and tired (I'll leave my complaints about other college students at that).   So getting to discuss and process what we see and learn over the next 7 days with her will be invaluable, especially since she's been through it once already.

We also have such amazing individuals with us as I briefly mentioned before.  Our professor is just incredible, as is the professor from Naz, we have two survivors who now live in Toronto, and the tour group through which The March is run/organized is out of Israel. The 4 people from that group are all very diverse and uniquely interesting, and are SO knowledgable about all things history.  In typical Devan fashion I find these adults a much better/more informative/more interesting group of people to interact with than half-engaged college students, so I'm looking forward to some thoughtful and transformative conversations with them in the week to come.

One beyond cool thing that happened today: 

We were in the Berlin neighborhood of Schöneberg, which was a primarily Jewish neighborhood before WWII.  While our guide was talking to my small group about an interesting monument that's been scattered throughout the neighborhood to remember the history, this man and his wife were also examining the map before us.  While we were off discovering the scattered monument, he apparently approached our guide and told us that he is visiting this place for the first time since his family was forced out of the neighborhood by the Gestapo.  He wanted to share his story with us (how amazing is that in itself?!... the strength it took for him to do such a thing), so through tears he pointed to the apartment where he lived, and told how his grandmother was dragged into the streets by young Gestapo punks, and how his mother tried to bribe their way into staying in their home and not being sent away.  Miraculously as his grandmother was being dragged away, a Gestapo limousine pulled up and someone inside ordered the ones dragging her to stop.  Inside was the family's doctor.  Because he knew the family so well, he spared them his lives with a few short words.  They successfully emigrated to the US (which is VERY rare, because the US refused to take more than a few thousand Jews per year, even though they knew what was happening [albiet not to the extent we know now]).

So that was a "God moment", that this man happened to be at that street corner as this bi-annual March  passed through.

I'll try to keep you posted throughout this week, because I feel that each day will be so significant and memorable that I'll need to share these reflections with you.

Until then!

Dresden, Germany [April 14-25]

About a month ago, I went on an IES trip to Dresden, Germany.  Since our program led it, we had a great city tour arranged and even had a private tour of the Volkswagon factory there!!

Dresden is about a 2.5 hour drive southeast of Berlin; it's half way between Berlin and Prague.  The city itself is known for being heavily bombed at the end of WWII by the Allies.  The Americans, British, and French chose to bomb Dresden precisely because it was a city of absolutely no strategic value; the purpose of the bombing was just a show of force to the Germans.  So, they essentially leveled the entire city of Dresden.  The amount of bombs dropped on the city was so great that what and who was not bombed directly was/were incinerated in fires as hot as what was experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, the first day we took a tour of the city where I learned about these bombings.  We saw many buildings, museums, and landmarks that have been reconstructed since the fall of the wall. As I've mentioned before, cities in the East (GDR) that were severely effected by the bombings didn't really get much re-building attention until the wall fell in 1989.  Similarly, our guide (a native Dresdener) told us that she grew up in a "city of ruins" in the 1970s.  There was either still rubble, or just empty spaces lingering, until the 1990s.

Most of the buildings in Dresden are made of Sandstone.  I didn't know this, but with sandstone, when water gets into it it gets trapped in the stone, expands, and eventually (after 100+ years) turns the stone darker.  Now during the reconstruction process, they tried to use as many original pieces of the buildings as possible.  It's really cool to look around the city and see many really dark stones/pieces, in contrast to the many lighter ones (there are also some medium colored ones from the '30s or so) .  This shows which pieces were preserved from the late 1800's/early 1900's, in contrast to how much needed to be rebuilt.

Example: Dresden Frauenkirche.  After 13 years of reconstruction, the outside of the church was finished being rebuilt in 2004, and the inside in 2005.  Before that, it looked like this:

And when I visited, it looked like this:

it's beautiful. you can even see the dark pieces of sandstone, which were preserved from before the bombing.  You'll also notice the whole left side is dark, which you can also see pictured on the left side of the first photo.  The statue of Martin Luther still stands in the square, I just took this photo from in front of it. 

Even in the square in which this church is located, the buildings around it are all brand new (and quite deceiving; they look old!).  These ones here were finished very recently, some as late as 2009 I believe.

There's also a Catholic church in Dresden which I didn't get any good shots of.  It's a really huge church  because in Dresden the Catholics were really persecuted, since Protestantism was the way of the North.  Thus, instead of having processions through the town on holidays, as not to be victims of any violence, they would hold all of their processions inside the church.  So if you go inside, there is a really large aisle through the middle and around the outside of the pew areas that was used for these occasions.

On Sunday we went to a museum called the "German Hygiene Museum".  I'm not the biggest fan of museums and this one sounded particularly boring.  But it was actually - despite the name - quite interesting. I learned about everything from diseases to psychology to my hearing range. There was one interesting exhibit where you place an electrode headband on, and compete with another person to see who can have the most relaxed mind.  Based on how relaxed you are, a little ball on the table will move towards either your side or the other.  The goal is to relax your mind more than the other person's, to get the ball over to their end and win.  It was fascinating!

my psychology-major classmates playing the game (and not relaxing!)

After this we did the culminating event of the trip - a tour of a VW factory!!
This plant was created specifically to build Phaetons: the Phaeton is one of the most high-end VW cars and starts at about $80,000-90,000.
It's most popular in Germany and the surrounding countries, and isn't sold in the US anymore. At this factory I learned lots of interesting things (pertaining to this specific plant).  Here are some of them.
- 96% of the car is hand-made!!
- the factory is really new and state of the art, and all aspects of it are designed to make the workers comfortable and ensure that they're working in ways that are ergonomic.  It's their #1 concern, and that was really evident.

-the production floor is all wood. picture one of the luggage retrieval carosels at the airport integrated into a floor, and that's what this is. you can't even tell, right?! each station has 1-3 workers if I remember correctly.  the conveyor belt rotates appx. every 15 minutes. the workers can pretty much be standing up straight all day while doing their work, because the platforms that the cars are on can raise, lower, and shift accordingly, so that there is little (ergonomic) strain on the worker.
- the production floor is very quiet, even during production. all of the machinery is really quiet and the building has great acoustics.
- about 56 cars are completed daily at this plant
- it takes appx 24 hours to complete 1 car.  About half the time is the assembly, and a little less than half is for testing. They test it in all situations, including driving on the local autobahn.
- the plant's exterior is almost all glass. to prevent birds from flying into the windows, they've had a recording of bird noises designed that send the signal to birds "this place is already occupied, don't come here" and it plays out of speakers on the building's exterior at all times. how cool?!

Everyone who orders a Phaeton or CC can pick the car up personally at the plant in Dresden. I think she said about 80% of people in Germany & the nearby countries who order the car do come to pick it up.  It's a whole production, in which they get a tour as we did -but an individualized one, then get champagne etc, and their car is presented to them on a stage with lights and a curtain.

While they're waiting for the proud owners to arrive for the pickup ceremony, the cars are stored in this nifty, high-tech, 14-story, cylindrical contraption that holds around 300 cars. Don't ask me how it works!

After the tour we got to sit in a Phaeton and test it out... it was so awesome, and I'm anything BUT a car person! The one we sat in had all the cool accoutraments and cost €140,000 (that's $181,000 USD).  My favorite feature was that to close the car door, you just gently push it so that it looks like it's ajar, and then it automatically closes silently.  No slamming car doors! What a world that would be.

Sorry for the long post, but that was Dresden!

End of the Semester

Greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark!

lis greeted me with this cute flag! 

After a week of final exams, yesterday was the last day of my semester, so we had our closing meeting and farewell dinner, and I said goodbye to my host mom.  This morning I got up at 3:20am and made my way to Copenhagen (only a 45 minute flight from Berlin!).

Leaving Berlin was really difficult.  We spent 1.5 hours at our closing meeting discussing/'learning about' the culture shock that we're going to experience when we return to the states.  I must say - through that, I discovered that the BEST thing I've done for myself was to keep this blog!  Not only did it allow me to think through and document my experiences, but more importantly it told you guys about my experiences, so that you at least have a partial understanding of what has been happening with me and how I have changed in the past 4 months.

BUT!  I could not start thinking about the cultural re-entry process (as they call it) just yet!  First, I am embarking on the trip of a lifetime through Europe for the month.  This past week I had a mixture of feelings of (1) really wanting to be home at the lake spending time with my family, (2) really wanting to stay in my comfortable and awesome life in the great city of Berlin with the awesome support system of IES, a few close friends, and my host mom, aaaand (3) wanting May to start so I can explore Europe!

Luckily, Mom knew just what to say and told me that I'm so silly to want to come home, that I've got a whole continent on my hands and that feeling uneasy about the change is okay.  So!  Feeling a little better about that, I left Berlin - but it wasn't a "goodbye" (thank goodness), but just a "see you later":  Here is my schedule for the month:

April 27 - May 2:             Copenhagen, Denmark
May 3 - 7:                        Munich, Germany and Salzburg, Austria
May 7 - 13:                      Copenhagen, Denmark
May 13 - 16:                    Berlin!
May 15 - 23:                    The March   (Berlin; Krakow, Poland; Warsaw, Poland)
May 23 - 29:                    Istanbul, Turkey
May 29 - 31:                    Berlin!
May 31:                           Fly back to the States

A bit of explanation:

Munich:
       A close friend of Lis' Grandfather lives in Bavaria (Southern Germany) near Munich.  We are going to go visit him for a few days, and see his wonderful area.  Lis, Werner, and I are all really excited!  We're going to make a day trip to Daschau, a concentration camp right outside of Munich, and another to the castle Neuschwanstein.  After that we're going to spend 24 jam-packed hours in Salzburg, Austria and go on a Sound of Music tour!!!

The March:
     This is a Holocaust Studies trip which is run by my Holocaust professor from HWS, his wife, and two survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The trip starts in Berlin on May 15, where we will see where the Wansee Conference took place, and other memorial/historic sights around Berlin.  The following day we take a bus to Krakow, Poland.  We will spend several days there visiting camps and historical sites.  On Friday night we will have a huge Shabbat dinner - a highlight of the trip, which sounds so cool.  For the last segment of the trip we will be in Warsaw, Poland visiting nearby camps and sites as well.  It is truly going to be an incredible and life changing experience, since my professor is endlessly knowledgable and we have two amazing survivors with us.

Istanbul, Turkey
     For my last week in Europe, I will be traveling from Warsaw to Istanbul to spend 6 days there with Lucy! I am so excited to finally see Turkey, since the culture has been SO present in my studies, cultural experiences, food experiences, etc., in Berlin.  I believe Berlin has the largest Turkish diaspora, so going to the actual country, which is something I've always wanted to do, will be absolutely amazing.  Better yet, we have an acquaintance from HWS who is from Istanbul, so he will show us around, too!


But don't think that my blogging is over!  I still have to tell you about many things, among which are my trip to Dresden, the tour of the high-end Volkswagon factory (they're made 96% by HAND!), the Stasi Prison, and more.  Luckily, I'll have lots of time on my hands while Lis and my other friends in Copenhagen are in class, and as I travel.  So stay tuned for what will be more frequent updates on my blog, both about past experiences and about my current travels.

Thanks so much to those of you who are still following along with my experience - it means so much to me that you take the time to read (what are rather lengthy) posts.  You guys are the best :) 

Mosque Visit

On Thursday, April 12, my class about European Identity took a trip to a mosque in Kreuzberg - the neighborhood of Berlin that has a large population of immigrants (and 40% of Germany's migrant population is Turkish - I'll spare you the lengthy historical reasoning).  Thus, there is a large Muslim community in the city, and particularly in Berlin.

Okay - I'm a cultural person, I can't spare you allll of the details.  There's actually an urban phenomenon happening in many cities throughout the world, where the younger (my) generation is re-aligning themselves and beginning to identify themselves primarily with their religion.  For them, it's becoming their main identity.  Although this is happening in Judaism too, this is mostly a Muslim - and urban - phenomenon. In Germany (or more specifically, Berlin), people with migratory backgrounds are poorly integrated into the society (that should ring a bell - America) because of a long series of policy and infrastructural flaws that France has perfected but Germany lacks - despite the fact that these people were probably born here and so were their parents and grandparents.  So, already a bit - not excluded, but not exactly included - from society, they often take one piece of their identity - in this instance - their religion, and then put it at the forefront of their lives, to have something to define themselves with.

If this is hard to imagine, think of yourself.  For instance, I am an American, a student, a Christian, a sister, a daughter, an athlete, a photography enthusiast.  The only things that society really pays attention to are the first three.  So if they exclude me for the first one, clearly I'd have to chose one of the other two to hold tight to, to affirm my identity, place of belonging, and place in society.

Moving on to the mosque.  This was a recently built mosque, so it's very modern.  Prior to this, from the time the largest influx of Turkish people came to Germany (1960s), mosques were generally one room and a garden in the back of an apartment building.  Now, with financial help from private investors, the denomination back in Turkey (or other places), and others, they can build these awesome ones.

You can see more photos of the intricacies of the mosque in my Flickr album.

In the main room of the mosque, where prayer and talks (like sermons take place), instead of an alter there is a Mihrab.  This is a small recession in the wall, pointing in the direction to pray to.  It is from this same area where the imam (like a priest or pastor) sits on during one of his talks.

Our guide was so wonderful and taught us SO much about his religion.  It was fascinating.  One thing I really really admire about Muslims is their dedication to their religion.  They literally drop everything and pray five times a day.  They stop serving you food, stop doing their work, and just pray.  It's beautiful.  Additionally, they carefully wash themselves to purify themselves before approaching God.  It's such a humbling act!

The room where the men wash themselves.  The women have a similar room upstairs, since they have to remove their  hijab.

By the end the session I felt bad about the persecution that everyone, without giving it thought, treats Muslims with.  Not necessarily forthrightly, but subconsciously.  They emphasize the message of peace in their religion, and it's something that should not be overlooked by us.

After the trip we went out to an excellent Turkish restaurant nearby, and had a delicious meal of bulgar and this stew-like meal (I had an eggplant stuffed with other veggies), and it was SO delicious that I brought Mom and Artie back the next week!

Note: the green thing on the right is NOT an asparagus, but a jalepeño, so DON'T eat half of it in one bite as I did! 

Finally posting!

So, I've finished almost all of my papers and have completed my German final exam!  Since I'm feeling like a weight has been (somewhat) lifted, and since I had a fantastic day, I'm going to spend my night blogging for you (and for myself, so this can serve as my memory bank).
Sorry for the sudden flood in posts!

A new week

Hi everyone!

Last week was a whirlwind of travel and fun, with Mom and Arthur coming to visit Berlin (and Prague).  A couple hours after they left I went to Potsdam for a field trip all day, and then the next morning IES took us on a two day trip to Dresden.

So as you can imagine, I have lots of photos and stories to share.  I'm finishing up some of my final papers now (this is my last week of classes - I don't know how it's already here!!), so soon I should be able to get back to consistent blogging since I'll have more time on my hands.

Stay tuned for some updates.  Until then - here's a few photos from our short trip to Prague:

a photo in Wenceslas square, thanks to a kind Texan expat! 

Delicious pizza for dinner

The view of the castle from atop the clock tower 

exploring! 

Mom and Arthur arrive today!

Technology is so cool.  On KLM's website they have a flight tracker map where the planes move according to where they are and you can click on them and get their flight info.  How awesome?  Here are my travelers:

Preview: Mosque visit

On Wednesday my Identity class took a field trip to a mosque in Kreuzberg (a neighborhood of Berlin).  It was a really really cool experience, and afterwards we went to a delicious and very authentic Turkish restaurant for lunch.  So good!

I am really excited to blog about this experience, but first I must work on my papers and class registration for next semester.  I'll write about it in the next couple days!

An interpretation of Russia

"How was Russia?!"

"Russia was... different"

"Yes, some corners of the earth is so different.  Isn't that great, though?  Live would be so boring if everyplace was the same!" 

The above was a conversation between myself (middle line) and Ella, our program director (the inquirer).  She often talks to me about my experiences here because she feels I'm more organized (and thus observant?) than others, and when she responded to my answer, I felt so... stupid.  Of course it was different!  Of course I wanted it to be different!  How could I say in a quasi-complaining tone that the far-off place I had the amazing opportunity to go to was (almost unfortunately, I was implying,) just "different"?!  

Well, because it was different.  And that's really the only way I can explain it without going into great detail.  As frustrated as I made myself with this answer and Ella's innocently brilliant response, I still come back to describing it as such.  So hopefully through this blog post - which I am forcing myself to write now before I forget things, though at the same time I am still trying to digest what I experienced - you will have a comprehensive understanding of my interpretation of Russia.

(Give yourself some time to read this, as I'm sure it'll be long, but I'd really appreciate if you do read it, since for many it'll be the closest insight to the culture you'll have seen).

   Memories of the distant past; Palaces
I did not expect this, but Saint Petersburg (SPB) was filled with tons of palaces.  They were from the eras of the Czars, Catherine the Great, etc.  Take for example, the Winter Palace, one of the city's icons which is today the Hermitage (the world's largest art museum - if you spent 1 minute at each piece it'd take you 5 years and 7 months to get through).  The Russian State Museum, which is the museum for Russian art (as the Hermitage only holds the finest European art because it was a museum Catherine the Great started as her private collection because of her affinity for European art).  This Russian museum is a former palace as well.  In fact, one bank of the Neva River, SPB's main river, is ENTIRELY lined in former palaces.  And don't think that they're old and decrepit inside - most are either museums or are used as nice office spaces for companies.   Outside of nuclear SPB we visited the suburb of Pushkin which is where Catherine the Great had her summer palace.  I can only speak for the summer palace, Hermitage/Winter Palace, and the Russian Museum, but these were by far the three most opulent and extravagant places I'd ever seen.  Even individually they far outdid Versailles, and my classmates agreed.  (for photos of these and a much better understanding, see my Flickr. I will post just a few here because it takes forever to upload them).

Interesting side note: during the Leningrad Blockade (I'll get to that later), the Nazis controlled Saint Petersburg and Pushkin, and stole most of the valuables from all of these palaces.  In the case of Catherine's summer palace, they stole an entire room which had been made completely of amber.  It took ages to rebuild, and now photography is banned in that room for fear that someone will heist the room again.

this is the staircase you use to enter the Winter Palace/Hermitage.  It is completely gilded.

  Churches and Cathedrals 
The churches and cathedrals of SPB were equally as opulent.  Each one was really breathtaking, in their own special ways.  It was clear that a great deal of time, energy, and money had been spent to restore these buildings, if not in the Soviet era then in the past 20 years.  Second to Notre Dame, my next favorite church in the world is now the Church on Spilled Blood in SPB.  It is a cathedral that was bult solely on the donations from the Russian people after the assassination of their beloved Czar, Alexander II.

myself and the Church on Spilled Blood

This is a small view of the inside of this church.  See these murals? They are made COMPLETELY of tiny mosaic pieces smaller than the size of a dime. They were about a 1cm x .5cm.  Absolutely breathtaking.
St. Isaac's Cathedral is another famous church in SPB, it's a Russian Orthodox church and the interior is also completely made of mosaic, but this mosaic is made solely of precious and semi-precious stones.  And as usual, the rest of the Church including the entire outside of the dome, was gilded.


   Russian opulence meets Russian culture, or does it?
This is something that many of us found rather troubling about our experience in SPB.  From what I described to you, if you had no US-education-system-engraved-preconceived-notions on Russia, you would think that much of the culture, or at least SPB culture, is very extravagant.  And indeed, when being a tourist and just visiting these places, one can easily convince themselves that this is so.
However I had the opportunity to be not just a tourist but a student in this country, and interact and discuss with professors, Russian students, and my American classmates quite a bit.  We were really troubled by how everything I just described to you cannot be ANY farther from the actual reality of daily life in Russia.  
I'm not sure how to describe this "reality" in a cohesive manner because, well, it's anything but cohesive to begin with.  So here are some examples.

- Traffic
    Traffic jams are SPB's middle name.  Driving anywhere is completely unreliable, because trafic is usually at a complete stop.  The only time I really saw what you'd call a normal amount of traffic is out my window past 10:30pm.  So, why not take public transport, you my ask?


- A completely inefficient public transport system.
     The metro system has few stops in the city center is mainly for suburban commuters.  That leaves us with the bus system.  There are no bus schedules, so one must wait at the stop with complete unawareness of when a bus will come - it could be up to 40 minutes because of, yes, the traffic.  We could take Bus #3 to school, but were advised to walk the 2 miles daily because it could take even longer to take the bus.  When one boards the bus, you must have exactly 21 rubles ready to give the bus man/woman whose job is to remember who gets on where, and collect money from them - on this bus with not even room to breathe - between stops.  (Our theory is that this was ridiculous a job created by the Soviets in order to achieve full employment, which just stuck).


- Filth
     Next to New York (2) and Berlin (3), SPB takes the crown for the dirtiest city I've ever been to.  Litter, broken bottles, endless cigarette butts, etc., make the already depressing landscape even sadder.  


- Mortality rate
      Primarily because of the healthcare system's disruption after the transition from the USSR, Russia's mortality rate is lagging.  The male life expectancy is only 64, which is lower than that of India!  Other large contributors are smoking and alcohol-related diseases.


- Poverty 
     Poverty in Russia is really bad.  Since the collapse of the USSR, the socio-economic inequality has gone crazy, leading to (what I saw as) 10 poor women re-selling goods in the market for every 1 Land Rover or Lexus I saw on Ligovsky Prospekt.  


- "You can drive a Lexus, but can't even drink the water?"
    This was a common mind-boggling issue brought forth by many. It's an excellent example of my previous point. 


- Shopping in the Galleria
     The city's main shopping forum was located near our hotel.  It contained 4 floors of some of the best brands on the market - companies from all over Europe and even the States were represented.  Curiously, despite the financial troubles of the country, everything in the mall - even at H&M - was so expensive few of us bought things.  I just wonder how the average Russian shops?

the large scale housing estates, similar to ones you've seen in my photos from the former GDR

old soviet-loking tram car (sorry for the unintentional watermark)

   Historical and cultural understanding of this:
So, what I'm trying to say here is that there seemed to be two Russias that I felt I was experiencing simultaneously.  On one hand there was the opulent palaces, churches, and historical sites that the state had visibly put a pretty penny into maintaining and showing off.  But on the other side, there is visibly a suffering infrastructure, high poverty rate, low mortality rate, and rampant inefficiency in all interpretations of the word.

A classmate shared his interpretation of this that I found enlightening.
When you go to a third world country, you're prepared for the lack, the structural inefficiencies, etc., that you'll see.  If someone told me I'd need to brush my teeth with water, I wouldn't think it's bizarre at all.  It's because that's what we've psychologically established as the norm for such a place.

With Russia, we don't expect the same thing.  As students of history, we recognize that the land (albiet the USSR) was a competing superpower with the US for decades, and the political power it still holds in the world.  I wouldn't say we're mentally placing it at the same capability level as the US and West, but at least putting it on the same playing field.  However we have to remember that from 1918 to 1990, the country was on a completely different playing field - completely incomparable.  With no private property, no differentiation in wealth or income, etc., it was thrown into a capitalist world when the USSR collapsed, with its citizens never having known how to partake in a capitalist and democratic society.

As a result, as almost every Russian pointed out to us, they are still learning about how to and trying to make capitalism work in their society.  It's been 20 years, and many of the old kommunalkas (multi-family apartments in the inner city) are still inhabited by the same 15 or so people that lived there in 1980, with no infrastructrual changes.  Private companies are still getting the hang of efficiently renovating and selling to the few wealthy people who can afford to buy.

Therefore, I - we - have to stop looking at Russia in a way that places it on a level playing field as other Western European countries (and the US).  Unlike the fall of the GDR, it did not have the FRG to pick up all the pieces and absorb it into its system.  If there's one thing that Russians said to me the most, it was emphasizing how recent the change was and how people are still adjusting because of how drastic the change was.  In the words of our guide, who said this with a smile "We're getting better and better each year" 

   To conclude...
So yes, Russia is different.  I still find that the easiest way to describe it to people who don't care to hear about it in this detail.  But I hope that through this lengthy post I've been able to show you how and why this is so, and that much of what I saw as "negative" parts of the society are really just results of circumstance that the Russian people, who so love their country, are trying to slowly but surely turn around.

Back from Barcelona!

Greetings!

I returned from Barcelona really late last night, and have a lot to do today before I can write a blog post for you all. It's high time for registering for classes next semester, (still) trying to figure out what on earth I'm doing this summer, laundry, writing term papers, and doing other things to prepare for Mom and Art's visit (they arrive on Saturday morning!).

Barcelona was great, it was sunny every single day, and was in the mid to high 60's which felt like paradise after a cold Berlin winter [accented by our frigid trip to Saint Petersburg].  We went to the beach almost every day, so I'm nice and tan and feel great (well... I did, until I realized how much crap I have to do).

Speaking of which.  I better get back to all of that stuff.  Until my next post (which I promise I will try to write as soon as possible!), here's me in this awesome retired FCB (Barcelona Futbol Club) jersey I got.  I was going to wear it running today, until I realized I don't want to be killed by German football fan passerbys.  And that I am too lazy to run today.  :)

Saint Petersburg post

Hello all!

I returned from Saint Petersburg tonight at 5:30pm, and will be leaving my apartment shortly after 5:30am to fly to Barcelona, Spain for spring break.

Therefore, I haven't had time to blog about my trip.

I did however post SOME (key word - I have a lot of photos that turned out really well from this trip) photos to my Flickr page.  I will be uploading a lot more when I return from Barcelona - my internet was too slow to do them all tonight.

But under each photo if a very detailed caption, each containing interesting information that I would have posted here for you to read about.  So I would appreciate it if some of you took the time to look through the photos and read the captions.  It's hard work creating and captioning them!

I will definitely post about Saint Petersburg when I get a chance, because it was a really interesting experience that I really look forward to sharing with you all.  But for now, while I am off enjoying some much-deserved warm Mediterranean weather, I will leave you to my Russia photo album on my Flickr so that you can have a taste of the stories that are to come!  Enjoy!

Ps: If the link does not work for you, here is the URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/devannn/sets/72157629264756706/

Marzahn, Berlin, Germany

Marzahn is a neighborhood in Northeast Berlin.  If you mention to anyone in the center/main areas of Berlin, they will look at you with an "ooooh, you don't want to go there" look/statement.  Even my host mother said the same.  But this past Friday for one of my classes we took a field trip there and learned that - once again - only actually visiting and learning about a place while there can you truly understand/judge the place appropriately.

Our tour of the neighborhood was led by a community representative - a typical position for communities throughout Berlin (they help gauge residents' opinions on new buildings, community happenings, etc).  He has lived there for over 40 years (so, half the time it was the GDR).   The area is comprised of almost entirely GDR "large scale housing estates".  Those are the massive and efficient prefabricated housing units built by the GDR throughout the country (for their efficiency).

When taking the train (there is only one metro line that goes to Marzahn) it looked like this:

Those taller large scale housing estates are at the inner border of Marzahn, but the rest of the neighborhood (it's more like a town) has long, shorter (6-11 story) ones.

After walking around for a few minutes, we realized (and confirmed this with our professor and our guide) that Marzahn is a totally safe place for anyone to walk around by themselves, even at night.  The streets are cleaner than some of those in Mitte (the [wealthy] city center), I saw no one begging (unlike in Mitte).  There were a lot of families - many of non-German origin - people walking dogs, young students walking home from school, etc.

We asked our guide and our professor several times to explain to us why on earth everyone discourages people from coming here.  They told us that it's simply because this is a lower-class area, so it's seen as "yucky".  Every student in my class agreed that it is the equivalent to a standard middle-class neighborhood in the States.  The outer ugliness of the GDR-style architecture is really the only thing that would turn any of you away from wanting to live there.  If I lived in Berlin and didn't mind riding an extra 20 minutes to get to the city center, I'd totally live in Marzahn, as a single girl.  (Heck, you can get a 2 bedroom apartment for around €400 [that's $530]!

After us repeating the above conversation many times, our professor reminded us that "this is Europe.  Here the lower class usually lives at about where your middle class does".  That could not have been more clear after this field trip.

This man-hole cover really hit me as being a huge reminder of the actuality of this having been a different country, society, etc.  It's amazing.

Although Marzahn is a relatively poor area, they really have their crap together as far as community goes.  As I said, they have community representatives, and accompanied community centers for residents to make use of.  We walked by a bunch of guys spray painting a wall, and our guide stopped and said hello to them.  Surprised, we asked if that was legal.  Our guide replied that yes, since everything in Marzahn was grey (because that's how the GDR built things) many murals are being spray painted on the plethora of concrete slabs around the city to brighten it up.  How cool?

Lastly, we visited a coffe shop, which had a children/teen "club" underneath on the 1st floor, and a hotel on the 11th floor.  The wonderful ladies who ran the coffee shop also ran the kids club (where they'd come after school), and together with these kids, they ran the hotel.  She explained that this was to give them something to do so that they're not unattended at home (schools end around 2pm here; many parents are still working), and to teach them responsibility/give them skills that they could use in life.  Therefore, with guidance from these women, they learn all the aspects of managing and running a business.  (The hotel itself is a stunning 2 bedroom apartment with a balcony, a view out of Marzahn into Brandenburg [see below], etc. And, it's very cheap!).

All in all it was a great field trip, so educational, and I'm so glad that I went and saw the area/how nice it was for myself, versus taking Berliners' word for it.

Awesome Tuesday

Today started off with me being the only person to show up to my 5-person German class.  So, my super awesome professor, Kerstin, took me to Dussmann (if I haven't mentioned it before, it's like the Bloomingdales of books. It's 7 stories, and has everything you could possibly imagine).  We went and looked through children's books that would be appropriate for me to buy for myself :) It was so much fun, and I got to have a lot of conversational German with her.  It is SO fun learning languages from people who you feel comfortable speaking (read: making mistakes) around.

After that, I went to lunch at the Mensa with two board professors who are reviewing our IES program, the dean of some of the IES programs, and 3 other students.  One professor was from William & Mary (sigh...) and the other was from another good US uni but now teaches at Humboldt (fun fact: he went to HWS, how cool!).  They were both fascinating individuals, and were SO interesting to talk to over lunch.  I dread the day I leave academia and have far fewer conversations that are as mentally stimulating as today's.  Both professors have incorporated German/Germany into their fields of study and are fluent (or, as we at IES re-named it, "gefluent" [it's a conjugation joke]).

I left that feeling much more inspired about my life in Germany and my progressing language skills, which is a boost that I've really been needing.  Then, two hours later, one of my program directors, Ella, in conjunction with our student assistant who will be leaving after this semester, told me that I would make a great student assistant after graduation.  I thought she was just being kind and being the "mom" she is to us, but she was serious, and told me why I would be fitting for the position, etc.  I was so surprised... I can't think of a more appealing and fun job to help me get more gefluent.

So after all of those things, I was pretty excited about life and the future and the opportunities God seems to be constantly opening up for me (despite my annoyingly pessimistic outlook on the future).

After, I went to the gym, and on my way back came within approximately 6 inches of getting hit by a smart car who was turning left on red as I was crossing the street legally.   I think the driver was more affected by the situation (sorry, that isn't the right phrase, but my English is really suffering) than I was.  Perhaps I shouldn't wear a dark coat at night.  But perhaps we should also abide by driving laws.

In other news:
Rest in peace Jar #1 of Wegmans peanut butter (and thanks Lauren for this awesome shirt!!)  :)

Some notes about the St Petersburg trip

We are leaving for our second study tour, to St. Petersburg, one week from today.  So to procrastinate from real work, I took a look at the memo our school sent us on the city.  Here are some interesting bits of information from said memo:

- If you buy alcohol on the streets, it's likely poisoned, and can blind you.
- The stolen credit card in Russia "is booming".
- If you walk alone at night, it's possible that you may get stopped by police and they may demand you give them money.
- Police's salary is somewhat dependent on how many people they catch; so if you jay-walk, you will get fined a lot.
- Train fares, airfare, hotels, restaurants, and museums often charge double or triple the amount for foreigners.  If you ask a Russian why this happens, you will get a several justifications including "you have more money than us", and "this museum is here for Russians, not for foreigners".
- You can't take photos of railways, or tunnels.
- You can't take photos from the air over Russian territory; if you're caught, your camera will be confiscated.
- A 1996 law mandates all advertisements/public signage to be in Cyrillic.   [translation: you won't be able to read anything.  Including metro time tables]


So with that, tomorrow morning we will have our St. Petersburg orientation meeting.  Hopefully things will sound a bit more inviting after that.

I was also just did a little research and found out that in 2011 Russia stopped observing daylight savings time, which puts them at 3 hours ahead of German time!  (so ordinarily 9 hours ahead of US time, but since you just had DST, it's 8).  Crazy.

Speaking of languages...

Our student assistant Ryan told us about a huge French department store called Galleries a Lafayette that is here in Berlin! The top three floors are high fashion clothes, makeup, and bags.  The bottom floor has a french restaurant, french cheese shop, french coffee and tea shop, french grocery store with all imported products (ranging from meat to yogurt to microwave meals to frozen deserts...and *drum roll* I FINALLY FOUND HUMMUS IN THERE!).  When we were in France I spent $6 on a container of hummus and flew it home, and have been savoring it since.  But now I know where I can get more hehe!
They also have macaroons, fine wines, etc.  Basically, it's a pretty awesome place.

Most importantly, they have a whole bookstore of French books, and the people that work there even speak French.  I was in heaven.  It was like being back in Paris... which, I still haven't told you guys about, sorry! It's been a busy week of internship applications and homework.  I've been editing my photos today, though, so I'll have some updates on that end soon.

In the French bookstore I got myself one of my favorite books in French, and then stopped at Dussmann for what I think is my first actual purchase of classic literature.  I'm going to try reading some fiction... we'll see how it goes!

On Language

I've been meaning to write this post for about a month, but an experience I had last night illustrates the whole subject quite well, so I'm glad I waited.


When I moved here two months ago, I obviously wasn't the German language expert.  But nonetheless I felt I needed to have all of my social interactions in German because, after all, this is Germany, and I shouldn't be that arrogant American who thinks that everyone should know her language.


Over the course of the first month, I tried my best to order food, check out at the grocery store, etc., in German.  But when I would lose a word for a moment, or accidentally spit out a "thanks", the person on the other end would automatically switch to English, which I found extremely frustrating.  I interpreted the interaction as me failing and them being annoyed with me, and it really wore on me.


However about a month ago I realized that not all of these interactions are like that.  Often times these people I interact with want to practice their English, and see interacting with people like myself as a great chance to do so.


When I got to Prague a few weeks ago, I realized that it was my first time being to a country where I did not speak ANY of the language.  And no, it's not like Spanish or French where you can sort of figure things out: here's one example of a phrase... it means "I'm fine, thanks" - "Mám se dobře, děkuji".  So anyway, I was reliant on Lucy's 2 weeks of learning Czech, and my broken english I've perfected since being here, to communicate with people.  The most fascinating thing with me, as a linguaphile, was the interactions I had there with people whose first language was neither Czech nor English.  For example, we ran into a group of Argentinians on the way home one night and they asked us in English how to get somewhere, so we (trying to use our Spanish) explained it to them in mostly English, throwing in the Spanish we remembered from high school.  Another example was on the bus on the way back from Prague.  As we boarded the bus, all the people who didn't speak Czech, the bus people speak to them in English.  I was probably the only native English speaker of the group, but it's really interesting how the Chinese, Russian, French, German, and Spanish people all have to communicate in English while in the Czech Republic.  

As much as I did not want to believe it, but now do after living here for 2 months, English truly has become an international language.  I'm not sure how I feel about it - I have mixed feelings - but it should really make you feel blessed to have it as your first language.

The next week I spent in Paris, and had all of these experiences again.  Thankfully I can communicate in French, so things were easier for me than for my classmates, who had some interesting language stories.  I found French people to be, like many Germans, eager to practice their English.  However there, instead of switching languages and maintaining their annoyed look as Berliners do, they thanked my friends with a smile and nod for their "je voudrais..." and kindly offered the food names in English. 

On a side note, flying back from Paris to Berlin was one of the most linguistically confusing experiences I've ever had.  By that point it'd been 1.5 weeks since I'd been in Germany, 2.5 weeks since my last German class, and for the past few days I'd begun thinking in French.  Which to speak, French, German, or English?  After a week of being back here in Berlin I've finally gotten back into the routine.  But in one week we leave for Russia, and the day after I get back I'll be leaving for Barcelona..... so, we'll see how that goes.

So back to my experience last night.  My friend from HWS was in town and I was taking her to meet up with some IES friends.  We got to one of the train stations and there was an announcement in German that I didn't understand, but I knew it was something along the lines of the train not working because the route had been changed [and because whenever there is a train problem, it's the only announcement that is not translated into English].  Hearing us speaking English, a woman desperately approached us and asked us what the announcement said.  I apologized and told her my German isn't good enough to translate it.  She was disappointed and said "I only speak English and French", and later we found out Greek, as she's from Greece and was in Berlin for a tourism convention (which, is conducted in.. you guessed it.. English).  I took her to where she needed to go, because few metro workers speak English.  She kept expressing her deep frustration in the fact that these German transportation workers don't speak much English; she said that in Greece "all the transportation workers and waiters have to speak English".  Amazed, I asked "really?".  She explained that when she was growing up she chose French in secondary school and then later learned English, but that in public schools in Greece today, English instruction is mandatory beginning in middle school, and that students can then chose from a romance language in high school.  Talk about having some life advantages!

Anyway, this was a long post, but I don't apologize because it's all really pertinent and I find all of these interactions to be fascinating, and hopefully you found them mildly interesting as well.  


If you're interested in this topic, you can read this recent NYT article that Deanna sent me about polyglots; it's quite interesting!