January 19, 2013

Wow, is it really already Saturday?! This week has flown by so far! And yes, now I’m sure that the lack of sleep from the beginning of the week has DEFINITELY caught up to all of us. Sleeping in public places seems to be a trend…

The past two days have not been as busy as the beginning of the week was. Yesterday, we woke up a little bit later (yay!) and left for the Jewish Museum around 9:15 a.m. At the museum, we learned about the entire Jewish history—the origin, beliefs and practices, the first persecutions, and of course, the genocide in the 1940’s.  It was a very interesting museum; it shared some information about the religion that I never knew about. As a child in school, I did learn about how they were persecuted and I knew a little bit about the religious from inquiring growing up in church. Even though we hit a rough spot in the museum where our morning coffees had seemed to run out of our systems, this museum was a really good place to expand our depth of understanding as we continued through the course of studying Jewish culture.

After the museum, we decided to reenergize with a quick lunch at a sandwich shop on the way to the Berlin Tower. When we got to the tower, we stood in line for security (where the workers decided it would be beneficial to them to confiscate our drinks that we just bought) and continuously laughed at the ridiculous comments that we kept making. We were surprised to feel our ears popping as we rose up six meters per second up 268 meters to the top of the tower. It was so neat to see the entire city and try and locate some of the sites that we’ve already gone to. Plus, we enjoyed the perfect people watching opportunities.

The rest of the day we spent roaming around the city before we made it back to our hotel to leave and go to an Indian restaurant. Every one of us is always completely exhausted by dinnertime so now it is just a joke of people falling asleep at the table. However, it was particularly hard last night as the service at the restaurant was slower than the rest of the non-rushing places to eat. Good thing it was only around the corner from our hotel!

Today was very cold. Like the kind of cold that doesn’t every leave your body. But we handled it just fine as we spent the entire morning in the German History Museum. This has to be one of the best museums I have ever been too. It had SO much information, but quality stuff! I was extra excited to see a whole section about Martin Luther and how he worked with the German churches when he nailed the 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church doors.

 

We spent a long time in the World War Two section of the history museum. It was very interesting to see everyday objects, such as children’s books, used as propaganda for the Nazi campaign. We saw war effort posters, displays of racial judgments, newspaper articles, and photographs. A lot of it was information that I had already heard before, but there was a lot of new artifacts that reminded me how real the devastation were. On display, there was a set of silverware that was left at Auschwitz. I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that silverware was found at the concentration camps when so many of them were so fragile and starving.

We quickly examined the rest of the exhibits as we realized that we had been there for almost four hours and we needed food to resist the urge to sleep… again. On the way to the Berliner Dom, we stopped at a roadside stand and all treated our stomachs to currywurst that was quite delicious!! We had to eat it in the freezing temperatures so there was a ton of laughing as we got it all over us in the rush to eat it. We fought the cold and the pigeons, completely satisfied with our wonderful lunch and headed to the Berliner Dom.

Once we got there, we hurried inside out of the cold. I was completely wonderstruck by the marvelous designs and detail in this church. Even more so, I was completely thrilled that this church was a Lutheran church—almost seemed like a home away from home. I joked that my church could use a few designer tips from this beautiful building.

However, much to my disappointment (but a thrill to everyone else) I did not enjoy going to the crypt in the basement of the church. After about five seconds down there, I realized that I was surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of corpses in elaborate coffins and I could not handle it. Everyone laughed as I tried to get out of there as fast as I could. I don’t think I will ever live that one down. But at least, looking back on it, I didn’t end up having to stay down there surrounded by dead royalty. That is what I call serious misfortune.