After the Wall

The post below brings me back into the present, which has caught up with me and prevented me from finishing my stories of the ship. Rest assured, they will make their appearance some day soon.

Following two exhausting red-eye flights back-to-back and a sacrifice of nine hours, I arrived in Berlin with the group on Tuesday afternoon. In the lazy German sunshine we drove to the hotel, put our things in our rooms, and headed back outside for a walk to what would be the first of many, many memorials.

We have thus far typically had free time for lunch and in the evenings, in which my non-verbal communication abilities have been very much put to the test. My range of German is limited to little more than hallo, bitte, and danke. Otherwise the trip has been bursting at the seams with highly educational tours and lectures, and in this three day immersion crash course I now know a lot about 20th century Germany and Europe in general.

As a student of political science (among other things), I hear frequently about the importance of November, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had heard about the event my whole life, but as I was only six months old when it happened, I never really knew what it was about before high school. I knew only that there was once a wall in Berlin (wherever that was) and that now some people had pieces of it like souvenirs. Later of course I learned all about the wall dividing East and West Berlin, the Western powers from the Soviets, freedom from communism, and how it was intended to imprison East Berliners behind the Iron Curtain. Or that was the standard line anyway, colored with old propaganda but based in truth.

I always expected there to be more nuance, and nuance I have found. Life was not all bad in the GDR, and most people did not want to leave. There were many students who wanted to change the system from within. There were many people (e.g. career women who could now make as much money and hold as much respect as their male colleagues, which they in fact are presently having trouble with) who liked things the way they were. The deeds of the Stasi (the now infamous secret security of the former GDR) were kept indeed secret, and the extent of its intelligence and its prisons was known only to those on the inside. In fact, there is a fair amount of nostalgia for old East Berlin at present. We got quite a large picture, talking with former prisoners, learning about the history, hanging out around the modern city, etc. The architecture is beautiful, save for the remnants of Nazi construction, which is certainly impressive but hardly attractive. It’s hard to believe that the city is so young, comparable to the United States.

Yesterday we spent almost ten hours on the bus, mostly caught in a traffic jam, making our way from Berlin to Wroclaw, Poland. I will have more to write on this small, surprisingly medieval and remarkably multicultural city at another time.