Second of all, my trip to Berlin. One really cool aspect of this program is that we get to go on so many trips for which the program pays! We left early on a Friday morning, and got to Berlin in the early afternoon, where we met up with Katy--she used to teach at Luther, but she's originally from Berlin and has since moved back. We found our hostel and from there went to explore a church that was bombed during WWII and has been reconstructed, but to look completely different than it did before the war. We also paid a visit to the Kaufhaus Des Westens, or KaDeWe, which is basically Berlin's version of the Mall of America. Forgive the Gilmore Girls reference, but I felt like Emily Gilmore without Emily Gilmore's credit card in that place!Many aspects of the trip were designed to relate to our ethics class about the Jews in Germany, so we went to the Jewish Memorial, the Zentralrat des Judens in Deutschland (the central organization for Jewish affairs), and a former concentration camp. We also saw what is called the Neue Synagogue which was destroyed during Kristallnacht but rebuilt afterwards. All of these aspects of the trip were really interesting and raised a lot of difficult questions that our class will continue to tackle throughout the course of the semester.
We were also able to do a lot of fun things in Berlin--we went to a performance of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra--I don't know a lot about music, but I really enjoy orchestra concerts, and this one was excellent. We also went to Carmen at the Staatsoper (City Opera), and that was especially interesting because the opera was performed in French, but there were German subtitles. The other "theatre" type thing we did was attend a performance of Qi--it's billed as the biggest Vegas-type show in Berlin. There were acrobats, an ice-skating rink, and a swimming pool that all popped up on that stage at one point or another. Quite the experience!
Other Berlin highlights were a tour of the Reichtstag (the German equivalent of the U.S. Capitol)--our tour group was really fascinating. We had an English tour with a group of Egyptians, two Russians, and our group from Iowa. It was really fun to experience that tour with the group of people we did. Also, we went to the Berliner Dom--a cathedral built by the Prussians, and went up to the spinning restaurant on the top of the Fernsehturm (TV tower). My personal favorite part of Berlin were all the museums--last January we had to walk right by them, but this time I actually got to go in and see everything. I liked all of the museums, but my favorites were the Neue Museum (which has just re-opened after being basically destroyed in WWII), the Pergamon Museum (it has the Ishtar Tor. enough said.), and the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte (Museum of German history). Other museums I visited were the Altes Museum, the Gemälde Gallerie (Painting Gallery), and the Jewish Museum.
From Berlin, we went to Wittenberg aka MartinLutherLand. I find the European Reformations endlessly fascinating, so I was really happy to get to go back to Wittenberg. We did a city tour and and I got to go back to the Martin Luther museum--I like that place a lot :) This picture is of me with "The Door" of Wittenberg--where Martin Luther may or may not have posted the 95 Theses on October 31, 1517.
For our last day, we basically went back to Berlin--Potsdam is basically a suburb of Berlin in which tons of rich people built palaces. We toured the most famous (Sans Souscci--I think I spelled that right) and walked around to see others.This trip was a lot of fun, and we've been back in Münster for about two weeks, and we leave for spring break tomorrow!
