The last time: Berlin

The 2014 Focus on German Studies CfP is here!

Our topic this year is: "Creating, Questioning, and Playing with Reality: Living in Worlds of Pure Imagination?"

You can access the CfP from the attached link. Please send 250-word abstracts to fogs.editor@gmail.com by June 15, 2014.

Looking forward to a fascinating weekend in October!

Berlin

Friday was one of the most historical days of our tour. We started the morning at the Checkpoint Charlie museum, learning about life on the border during the time of the Wall. The museum was not very organized; the information was not in sequential order and made little sense. After the museum, we viewed a Panorama exhibit that depicted Berlin.  We spent the afternoon shopping at Alexanderplatz before meeting students from Bielefeld University to share our knowledge and preconceived notions of Berlin, which was very informative. We ended with dinner at a local pizzeria! 
On Saturday, we started with a late tour of different spaces in Berlin and read selections of literature about those places.  It was interesting to hear about the varying perspectives of the authors and see Berlin’s changing identity throughout the years. My small group broke off and explored Museum Island, specifically the Alte Gallerie.  We were able to see works from Rembrant Bugatti, a famous sculpture from Italy.  We ended the afternoon exploring the Jewish Quarter of Berlin.  This was especially eye opening.  I had always assumed that most of the Jewish population had left Berlin, and Germany in general, after WWII.  It was interesting to see the congregation and centralization of Jewish culture in Berlin today.

- Victoria -

Berlin

Seeing the Olympiastadion from the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany was a big deal for me. I am very passionate about the sport of track and field, and I am extremely happy I was able to visit the Olympiastadion where the world was given a show. Adolf Hitler had constructed the stadium to present to the world the might and power of the German people and to show how great Germany is to the rest of the world. The 1936 Olympic Games, or the 11th Modern Games, was an event full of turns. Native Ohioan, Jesse Owens, stood up to the face of bigotry and hatred that comprised the "Nazi games" and proved to the world that racism cannot stop an individual from accomplishing astonishing feats. Along with Jesse Owens competed a lesser known athlete, Louis Zamperini. Zamperini was an American long distance runner who competed in the 1936 Olympics. He did not earn a medal, but after the race what he did earn was a handshake from Hitler himself. Hitler had asked to meet Zamperini stating the he wanted to "meet the American with a strong finish". Zamperini would later on join the U.S. Army Air Corps and his plane would crash in the Pacific Ocean. After being stranded for over 30 days on a liferaft with no food or clean water (a world record), he was captured by the Japanese and was held for over 2 years in Japanese prisoner of war camps to be abused for simply being an American Olympian. Zamperini survived, and spread his story of strength and perseverence to others. Knowing this story, I entered the Olympiastadion knowing I would be standing among not only the most iconic American athlete, but also one who proved his strength in other ways. Today, the Olympiastadion has been renovated to host FIFA games and to be visited by those with a love of sport. The renovations took place in the last decade and have preserved the most important exterior of the stadium, but has enhanced its interior with a roof and modern audio and lighting system.

- Kyle -

Berlin

I really enjoyed visiting the Wall memorial at Bernauer Strasse today. A reoccurring theme in our discussions on this trip has been Berlin's "layers of history" at different places, throughout the city (often described with the peeling-of-the-onion metaphor), and I think that this memorial is a great example of this layering. As a few placards with information and photos indicate, before the construction of the wall, this location was a cemetery. Thus, the building of this memorial was complicated by the fact that a parish also felt entitled to this space and had different plans for it, after the wall was torn down. I found this to be a good reminder of the fact that there exists many layers of history before the well-discussed Second World War and Berlin Wall, and it brings up interesting questions of who "owns" spaces and cultural memory, by encouraging, through memorials such as this, what exactly should be remembered or memorialized in these places.

- Amanda -

Berlin

So far this trip has been a eye opening experience. This is my first time visiting Europe and exploring Germany. I have enjoyed visiting all the different monuments and areas. To list a few that I enjoyed were the East Side Gallery,  a collection of post-reunification artwork on the Berlin Wall, Reichstag,  Brandenburg gate, Potsdamer Platz, Schloss Charlottenburg and many more. I have also enjoy all the different food selections such as Döner. Overall this trip has been a exhilarating experience. 

- Jason -

Berlin

Last but not least
So the before I flew to Berlin, my whole mind set was that this was just going to be a stop before my “real” trip to Germany when I would go to Munich. However, as I sit here on the train to Munich, I leave with a feeling of wishing it had not ended. I learned so much including the city of Berlin and what it has to offer, with everything from sitting in cafés to going to explore their night life. Our group of people mixed so well that we never had a problem. The best part not surprisingly was having the ability to learn about parts of the city that everyone seems to know. Instead we would walk and talk in parts of the city that allowed me to put what I have learned in past seminars into perspective. This was truly a once in a lifetime trip that I will never forget. Also a big shout out to Professor Nusser for being our fearless leader.
 

Der Döner
So most of Europe has an amazing food called Doener. It was the one thing I looked forward to most. A lot of people in our group ended up trying them falling in love with them instantly. The best way to describe it in America to someone is that it is like a gyro but a thousand times better. We eat them for almost every meal because they are so cheap and they fill you up for almost the entire day as we walk around the city. i think everyone should try a least once in your life.

- Will -

Berlin

Monday, May 5th: We started off the day by going to the Olympiastadium. This stadium was originally built for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, during Adolf Hitler’s regime. Originally planned to be the largest stadium in the world, today it is just the second largest in Germany and is the host Hertha BSC. We had an excellent guided tour throughout the facility, and were able to see the outside grounds, the stadium chapel (which I found very interesting that this was a room included in the stadium; even more interesting that people could actually get married there!), changing room and locker rooms for the visiting teams, the coveted 400 euro VIP seats, and even were able to get as close to the pitch as possible. Though the stadium has been renovated since, to me it still had some of the feel of the time it was built (for example, the majority of the stadium was grey, lacking color save the blue and white track that represented the Hertha colors). After the Olympiastadium, we grabbed a quick lunch and were on to our next destination!
The next stop of our day was Teufelsberg, where after a 2 kilometer hike, we reached the most interesting stop of the day: a Listening Station from the Cold War. This building served as a place for US and British soldiers to listen to the Soviet Union from West Berlin. Now, the building is heavily graffitied and vandalized, and the site is heavily guarded and fenced in. We were taken through a tour of the building, and able to see the city of Berlin from an incredibly amazing view; as this station sat on top of over 260 million cubic meters of rubble.
The last stop of the day was a group dinner at a nice Thai place in Berlin. As it was our last day in Berlin, we made sure to make this dinner last as long as possible, ordering several desserts to top off an amazing day.
A fun day packed full of history, excitement, and adventure, it was surely a great way to end our time in Berlin! I will surely miss this city, and treasure the time spent here and memories made.

Sunday, May 4th: Our Sunday was given a leisurely start, as we were able to sleep in a hour for breakfast! The first stop of the day was a Berlin Wall memorial, that started with a ghost station in the U bahn. Ghost stations are stations that have become abandoned during the time of the wall, and still have quite an eerie feeling today. The Berlin Wall memorial was quite fascinating, as though the wall wasn’t there anymore, the memorial made it feel as if a separation was still there. It was a sobering but informing experience.
Our next stop of the day was a flea market, where our group was able to split up and purchase select items ranging from clothes, jewelry, china, glassware, and other knick-knacks. After roaming around the flea market, we went to lunch where a few of us went to a phenomenal Korean restaurant which specialized in tapas that fused Korean and Spanish foods (personal favorite being the corn pancakes with spicy pork). 
The last stop of the day was a guided tour of the GDR museum, where we were given a peek into the everyday life of what it was like for people living in East Germany. For example, we were able to walk around and see parts such as the limited selection in groceries stores, care packages from Western relatives, and how inventive East Berliners sometimes had to be in order to improve their quality of life. Though our group was a bit tired when we went through, it was still an excellent exhibit that prompted some interesting and even controversial discussion from the group afterwards. We ended the day by splitting up for dinner and then played cards for several hours in the hotel, creating several inside jokes that are sure to last.

- Charlotte -

Berlin

Today was our last day as a group in Berlin. We began the day by going to the Olympiastadium. Here we had a guided tour, which was very interesting because the tour guide did a fantastic job of combining historical, architectural and sports facts, so there seemed to be points of interest for everyone in the group! She was also incredibly friendly, in addition to being extremely knowledgable. Although I had been to the stadium before, I found this tour to be particularly interesting, as I lacked some of this important information in my first visit and I was also able to tour much more of the stadium, today. We also went to the abandoned American spy station at Teufelsberg and toured the remains of the station. It is hard to describe just how amazing this place was. Again we had very knowledgeable and friendly guides, who told us the history of the station and the "mountain" of rubble, upon which it stands. Today, artists are allowed to make art throughout the remains, so every single part of this building has something extremely interesting to look at and experience, both in the old structure and the new art.

-Amanda -

Berlin

Yesterday was Friday and most of the group was excited to spend time discovering the amazing nightlife in Berlin. The city is known for their high class clubs, their late night parties, and their amazing music scene that supports up and coming musicians. A small group of us, however, being incredibly tired after a day of walking in the cold and rain, wanted to have a calm night.
The night began with a group dinner at Due Forni, an amazing Italian restaurant famous for their traditional European-style pizza. The crust was thin and flimsy, the sauce a bit spicy, the toppings fresh, and the cheese absolutely amazing. Walking first through the kitchen, our group entered the dining area, which was filled with long tables and hundreds of seats. The area smelled heavily of tomatoes and bread as everyone in the restaurant stared with amazement at our group of twenty, slowly squeezing ourselves in the back corner of the room. We were lucky to have sat where we did, near the windows and the bathrooms. The tight space grew warmer as we waited, but the slight discomfort was completely worth it.
Our waiter began taking drink orders and stopped to ask my friend and I where we were from, thinking that our accents sounded Polish. He was interested to hear that we were from America, and not somewhere in Europe, which was very flattering. He moved through our group’s drink orders and we waited. And waited. And waited. It made sense, the long wait, nearly thirty of us ordered our own pizzas, and the place was already packed.
When the food arrived, we could not have been happier. After a bit of confusion with the Italian words pronounced in a German accent, we all received our food and proceeded to devour the pizza in a very America way.
 
Shortly afterwards, a few of us decided it was time for some ice cream, and we spit off from the group, walking around this very nice part of town in awe of the beautiful cars and expensive stores that surrounded us. This is how our night began.
 
In a very determined search of ice cream, we found our way to the U-Bahn station in Alexanderplatz where the only thing open was a McDonalds. I scoffed, not having eaten McDonalds in seven years, I was not ready to be in one of the best cities for food and ice cream, and bow down to the Golden Arches. Unfortuantely my lust for ice cream outweighed my disgust with the company, and we stopped to buy McFlurries. They did not disappoint. Here in Europe, businesses generally care about their customers, so instead of a tiny ice cup of ice cream with a few Reese Cups in it, we had huge cups of soft gelato stirred together with crushed Snickers bars, caramel, and whipped cream. Absolutely delicious.
 
Satisfied with our sweets, we had a new energy about us.
 
“Lets get on the subway and just go.”
 
So we did. We ended up at the Brandenburg Gate, a site we had already seen, but at night was far more impressive. We continued our journey, and these are the beautiful things we saw.

- Callie -

Today we took a literary walking tour with students from the Universitaet Bielefeld and their professor, all of whom we met yesterday. We met at Alexanderplatz and visited several places, reading excerpts from German language texts regarding these places and discussing the connection between the literary works and the places we were visiting. Even though we had not read the texts in advance (as the Bielefeld students did for their course), it was still a fun exercise and another interesting way to explore the city, by building a "map" of parts of the cityscape through these texts (and also hearing/visualizing how the cityscape has changed, since some of the areas discussed in the texts had since changed). It was also nice to receive information from yet another source on this trip, Bielefeld Professor Dr. Erhart. After admiring the inside (and climbing to the top) of the Berliner Dom, we decided to split into two groups: one group explored museums on the Museuminsel, and the other went to explore the Brecht Haus (the home in which Brecht lived with his wife and in which he died). I found the tour of this house to be especially interesting, personally, because I took Professor Weinstein's German seminar this past semester, in which we read Brecht's Dreigroschenoper and learned about Brecht and the epic theater. After the guided tour (which, unfortunately, we were not able to photograph-- but the home was set up with many of the original items that were in it when he died, including his library), we toured the cemetery next door. Not only were Brecht and Weigel buried here, but we also saw the graves of many other Germans, who I had come across in my years studying German as an undergraduate, so it was incredibly interesting to see all of these "famous" (to me, at least) graves.

- Amanda -

Photos: Amanda; Tanja

Berlin

On Thursday Vanessa was kind enough to bless us with information about Afro-German and Turkish-German culture, which I found very interesting since both of these are very prevalent in Berlin yet they still somehow manage to take a backseat in the minds of those that haven't had a chance to truly experience the city. It was nice to be educated on the social constructs in the city, especially since it is so diverse. After the tour through the city we we're given the chance to relax and enjoy some ballet, which was the perfect ending to a long and wholesome day.

- Clay and Josh -