2 October 2013 Wednesday
Today was special.
We were able to go to the temple in Freiberg first thing in the morning. We did baptisms for the dead for Brother Minert's German relatives. It was an awesome morning to say the least. And this temple is teeeeeny tiny. Like same size as a stake center.
There is a tunnel going from the basement of the temple over to the hostel, so we didn't even have to go outside!
We stopped at the grocery store again to get anything we would want for lunch, and I got another piece of bienenstich, natürlich.
The first museum we hit this morning was about three hours away into BERLIN. It is the museum of the history of the Jews. The layout is insane in that place...it was designed by this crazy architect who is a kind of artist I feel like. The building structure had a lot of meaning and installations and interactive art/history things. I loved it. There were areas that were open to the sky called "voids"....kinda hard to explain. Here's a crummy picture to do so for me.
So this was one of the "voids" for example:
It was cold and quiet and echoed. It was completely empty. It symbolized the hole left by all those that were killed in the Holocaust. We got to just stand in there and be silent and think really hard about what happened there.
This void had a "garden" in it. There were pillars, and at the top were planted Russian olive trees! You could just walk through them on the stones. Another interesting feeling linked to a history museum...
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| the staircase inside....the architecture was nuts |
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| crummy photo of a quote about religion I really loved |
Next stop was the BERLIN WALL. There are chunks around the city that are still standing, which is awesome. It took all day to learn and understand the history of the wall and what really happened. So the Allied forces (mainly the US, Russia, Britain, and one other...) were all fighting not necessarily "together", but in the same cause against Hitler and the slaughter of innocent people. Once the war ended, Russia kinda went back to their own area, but started adopting some communistic ideas...I don't know if that makes sense or if it is even quite correct but the Soviet Union (Russia) started claiming land west and west-er...Poland..into Germany, and then they wanted Berlin. East and West Berlin were already pretty different I guess, and so they split the city in half with the wall. It was smaller than I thought it was..........but I learned that it was guarded like CRAZY! They had the wall, then a ditch, then another fence, then guards, and watch towers, and lighting at night, and there was no way to escape. It is crazy to think that they thought they could have this much power to force people to stay in an unhappy area. It is still pretty confusing to me.
Below the wall, by another secondary wall, there was a museum-like setup just out in the open for free talking about the history with tons of pictures and other visuals (all from 1933). We read a bunch, but also talked to Jordan a lot about the history. He is a WWII major or something. It all makes perfect sense in his head and he is good at explaining.
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| here are Jordan's eyes. They're beautiful |
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| Mara & Jordan |
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| something about the eyes in this sun! |
After exploring and learning and discussing politics for a bit, we found dinner...
or should I say DÖNER...
Finally, we went to the museum "Check-Point Charly". This is at the site of one of the checkpoints at the wall. The museum was full of information about how people escaped from East to West Berlin! They hid in cars, they built tunnels, they boated, they flew in a hot air balloon!!! Many made it across the border, but many were killed, too. I never knew how intense the wall security was! Or how unhappy the people were in East Berlin.
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| on the Berlin Wall...we were walking so fast and my camera was being weird but it said "SAVE OUR PLANET" |
We checked into a nice hotel! Fancier than where we have been staying. And the wifi (it's called WLAN here) is wonderful. More of Berlin tomorrow!
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