Submitted by Andrew Jackson on the 2017 winter session program in Leipzig, Germany sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures…
Just returned to Leipzig from our weekend excursion to Berlin, and it was unbelievable. What an incredible city. It seems like a mix of modern technology and rich history that is still constantly changing and evolving.
On Friday, we walked up the historic Unter den Linden Straße, past many monuments, museums, and embassies, and took some pictures near the iconic Brandenburg Gate. From there, it was just a short walk to the Jewish Memorial, which is a large plaza filled with different sized concrete blocks. The design is meant to be abstract and thought-provoking, as well as creating feelings of fear and uncertainty. I can attest that it did all of that and more. The blocks were, for me, reminiscent of walking through a graveyard, and it is truly impossible for us to imagine what the Jewish people went through in Germany (and throughout the world) during the years of the Third Reich. Walking around the memorial was a very sobering experience, and something that I will never forget.
Saturday was another busy day filled with sights and information. We took a guided bus tour all around the city, and saw many places of interest pertinent to the division of Berlin after World War II, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent re-unification of East and West Germany in 1989-1990. We even saw the last remaining section of the wall that hasn’t been torn down or painted on. I tried to imagine what it would be like to walk down the street one day and have everything be as it usually is, then walk down the same street a week later and find a 12-foot high concrete wall where the sidewalk used to be. What a terrible and oppressive feeling that must have been. On a more positive note, we also got a chance to view the famous East Side Gallery: a long section of the wall that was painted by different artists after the re-unification. What a way to take something completely negative and turn it into something that people might actually want to look at. I thought that was really amazing.
The rest of my day on Saturday was spent in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which houses artifacts from medieval times to the modern day. I could have spent 8 hours in there and still not have seen everything. That’s something I’ve noticed since I’ve been here: the museums have SO much to see and a lot of it is almost incomprehensibly old. I had never seen anything like it before I came to Germany.
Sunday (today) was another museum day. A few of us went to the Neues Museum (New Museum) and saw (somewhat ironically) a lot of very old pieces of Egyptian and Roman history, including the famous bust of Nefertiti. Some of the artifacts were over 5,000 years old! Again, mind-boggling. It really makes you think about just how long humans like us have been going about their lives. Puts a lot of things into perspective. Next up was the National Gallery, which contained (again) a huge variety of paintings and sculptures, not only from German artists, but from other European masters, such as Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, etc. I regret that we only had a few hours to spend there, because I could have stayed for an entire day and still not seen all of it.
Took the train back to Leipzig in the afternoon, went to the grocery store and now here I sit eating my Brötchen (dinner rolls) and preparing for my final full week in Germany. I knew when I got here that the time would probably fly by, but I didn’t realize it would go this quickly! I feel like I’m finally getting truly accustomed to living here and I don’t think it’s terribly unrealistic to say that I’ll be coming back as soon as I possibly can… maybe for a much longer stay next time!