I barely slept on the first flight. I had the worst pain in my ears during the second one. And I didn’t think I was going to survive all day without sleep. I’d never flown out of the country before this and it was a new and interesting experience to say the least.

I made it through the first day, though!

On our way to lunch, after we landed in Berlin, I was looking through the windows of the bus, amazed by the architecture of the buildings and houses, but also that it was so green and felt like we were in nature at the same time. Lunch at Restaurant Scheune was delicious, both because we hadn’t eaten since breakfast off the plane, and it was real German food, Käsespätzel being a very popular dish.

Next we visited the memorial at the Grünewald train station, dedicated to the remembrance of the trains of Jews that were transported to concentration/work/death camps during the war. The neighborhood in which the train station and memorial is located is upper class and very beautiful, so it was surprising to see that a lot of the houses had a perfect view of what would have been going on. I was shocked to learn that Jews would be crammed into cars on regular trains, with people living their everyday lives in the next car over. Overall, this memorial was profound and effective because of what you’re led to think about just by looking at dates and number on a train platform.
Our next stop, the Wannsee Villa, was one of the most beautiful buildings and landscapes I’ve ever seen. However, when you actually read about what happened there, and think about how the men here determined the fates of millions, it’s almost weird to walk through where they sat and ate breakfast, and discussed the deportation and gassing of Jews. There were so many artifacts like letters and writings of those men, that I couldn’t read it all. What I did manage to read, however, I tried to read in German first, then see how much I could understand before reading the English translation.

We then drove to another neighborhood, the Bayerische Quarter, and walked through the streets reading signs about Jews during the war and saw a few Stolpersteine in front out houses, commemorating the Jews who lived their and were taken from their homes and killed in camps.

When we finally got back to the hotel, after all of the things we did, I wanted to fall asleep right then and there. But we still had to go to dinner. It was a cute Italian restaurant, with amazing food and people. It was a great way to end the already packed and busy day of flying and touring. Being able to have a hot shower and fall asleep in a real bed though, 10/10.

--Maia

The Wannsee villa (Maia D)

The beach at Wannsee (Maia)

Stolpersteine commemorating Holocaust victims (Maia D)

At the Wannsee Villa (Emily J)

At Gleis 17 (Emiy J)

At Gleis 17 (Emily J)

​Our flight boarded at Logan Airport at 8:35pm (Boston time) on our way to Munich. We arrived in Munich around 10am (German time), with just enough time to make our connecting flight to Berlin.

Once in Berlin, we hopped on the bus to get lunch at Restaurant Scheue, where I had Käsespätzle (German cheese noodles). It was delicious!! Then, we got back on the bus and went to Mahnmal Gleis 17, a train station that has plaques marking the deportation of Jews from Grunewald Station. It was heartbreaking to see the numbers of deportees increase as time went on, but at the same time uplifting to see roses and rocks adorning the tracks.

After that we headed to Wannsee Villa, where the conference deliberating the “Final Solution” took place. It was crazy to stand in the place where men discussed locking the Jews in gas chambers to make them die within 20 minutes to hasten the process. The room in Wannsee Villa that really stuck out to me was the one which included quotes from Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Here, it was made evident that just because these people survived and were “liberated,” the occurrences of the Holocaust haunt them and their families for eternity.

Following Wannsee Villa, we walked around to find the stumbling stones. These plaques in the cobblestone commemorate Jews that were persecuted by the Nazis, and the idea is that you literally just stumble upon these little memorials. It was also interesting to see the street signs with images such as hopscotch and bread, combined with a German sentence to convey a message of the way of life during the Nazi era.

Finally, we checked into the hotel and went to dinner at Osteria Caruso. It was so good and we all exchanged Valentines!! Now we are all exhausted but today was a great day with great weather (50s and sunny:)) so we’re all looking forward to the rest of the trip!

--Emily


One of the places we visited today was Gleis 17. Here were the old train tracks of one station that took Jews to concentration camps across Germany. It was astounding to find out that thousands of Jews were stuffed into these small compartments and shipped away from their homes. Today this is a quiet place where people come to honor their ancestors with flowers and stones
—Augustine

It’s incredibly strange to take two planes, and, in under 9 hours, be somewhere completely different. Also, time didn’t really exist yesterday, which is neither here nor there but might give you some insight as to how we were feeling. Our first stop (after lunch) was the train station memorial at Mahnmal Gleis 17. The tracks themselves were overgrown, burning in the afternoon light. On the edge of the platform, where a yellow line might be on a modern platform, was another kind of warning: dates, numbers, names of camps. The numbers, by themselves, were hard to understand, hard to wrap your mind around. Together, they were incomprehensible. The memorial seemed a fitting beginning to our trip in that way. I think we’re going to spend a lot of time grappling with difficult truths.

An interesting part of Germany, and of Europe in general I think, is that you can’t avoid its history. There are layers of it. If you lived here you would ride your bike past haunted places on a daily basis. You would live in the ghost of the past. This was made very clear to us while walking through the Bayerischerplatz (a once predominantly Jewish part of the city). You can’t go anywhere without running into signs whose bright and simple designs draw the viewers eye to discriminatory laws passed against Jews in Nazi Germany. Also, imbedded into the cobblestones were plaques that detailed names, the date they were deported (deportiert), the date they were murdered (ermordet), and where.

The history of the city was also embedded in the Wannsee Villa (the place where “the Final solution of the Jewish question” was talked over by Nazi and German government officials). It was just one of many mansions by the lake, once owned by artists, then used by Nazis. Layer after layer. A group of men, orchestrating a genocide, made that house a witness.

This is what yesterday felt like. It felt like witnessing history. We walked to dinner past pieces of the Berlin Wall.

-Norah