Hoorah Hoorah - Ping Pong and Swing Dancing for a Yiddishkeit Birthday

While others were hellbent on having a beer, and some on a more serious pregame, I was fixed on a cakegame – this would be when you prepare for an event with a prelude of cake. Eight of us sat at an outdoor table clouded with locals blowing smoke, but delighted that the menu was in English and the staff spoke English. When I asked the staff if we could have a table, a server said to me, “Sit down there. We will come.” I think the cross between his height, the language barrier and Euroservice attitude really was classic. Really, every other server was just lovely and dealt with special requests and questions with grace. I had a Zwetschgenkuchen – plum cake, and while it was delish, regret not getting the apfelstruedel, which was better.

After the kuchenstravaganza, I was ready to plotz, but I ran into the pregame crew who was ready to go hard and definitely not home. Since they were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and staying local, I felt compelled to go. So, I rallied on the walk to a ‘Gypsy Club.’ This term is derogatory and irrelevant. We stepped across a courtyard and into a slim hallway toward muffled music, passed a chalkboard labeled ‘swing.’ Yes, guys and gals, put in your banana curlers and roll up those bobby socks: hardcore swing dancing. In era attire. In partners. With skill. As we epically failed to fit in (not sure we even tried), our hodgepodge crew bar-mitzvah danced like we’d never see these folks again. We probably won’t. While no Great Gatsby soundtrack came on, the DJ pumped songs with familiar melodies and lyrics appropriated by modern-day rappers like Kanye West and Lil Wayne (think GoldDigger, Get Low…). After a while, the lack of familiar tunes and moves had us on a mission for a more fitting scene.

On every corner, our friend who spoke the most German attempted to ask for directions, and while we never got lost looking for some bar called Kaffee Burger, it turned out to be quite a hike. And with every step, my toe that had been run over by a shopping cart stung a bit. But we had a good walking crew and great sights. Eventually, after finding Kaffee Burger and seeing that it was not at all what we dreamed of (read: no DJ, closing in 10 minutes, cover charge), we went down the street to check out a suspected gay bar.

As we debated whether or not it was a gay bar, I noticed some girls in lawn chairs outside mocking us for our suspicions. In fact, the bar was an international hipster ping pong joint. Almost everyone had a paddle and was rotating in a circle around a ping pong table, losing the game if they missed on their turn at either side of the table. The match became heated quite quickly and I retired to the foosball area, where I was coerced into a losing game. I did score a goal, and it was one of my greater life accomplishments because I am horrific at foosball in general. My partner and I high-fived four times, but I have no idea what his name was.

Eyes grew tired, and so did legs, and I decided to head home. Before leaving, I mocked birthday boy Daneel for conversing with Valencian Hugo in Spanish because, as a pelirojo, he can't really be a hispanohablante, and then I asked an Australian girl lots of questions about living and working in Berlin (apparently, it’s cheap and easy but the Australian quality of life is also excellent, she says). On the way back to our hotel, we shared in a round of the Yiddish Birthday Song (Hoorah Hoorah Oo Vinschtindeer….).

I would say the night is in the category of strange, memorable, and reasons why I so love travel.

A bad Prezi, a good museum, and some hard questions, plus a shopping cart injury

The morning seems like a century ago. These days are insanely jam-packed, but the ebb and flow of activity causes many eyes to droop during certain sessions, as evidenced by the four people snoozing during our morning 90-minute history session. The lecture, given by our tour guide’s brother, followed a national past through a Prezi. I strongly dislike all prezis because they make me dizzy and nauseous, as do silly string and pudding fights. My mind constantly wandered and drifted because I couldn’t look at the screen without wanting to scream but I did enjoy recalling so many fun facts and figures from middle school history: Franz Josef, the King of Bavaria, pre-war borders and more!

After this struggle to listen to 800 years of struggle, we walked next door to an incredible 1800s reform synagogue built to seat 3500 people. While the Moorish façade was protected during Kristallnacht by a random police brigade who didn’t follow orders, the entire sanctuary was bombed out during the war. Only the entrance halls remain, and the remnants of stone, marble and stained glass are fragmented but impressive. I was confused by a displayed Torah that had notes in pencil in the margins, highly unusual for a scroll that was actually used. The guide, like every guide we’ve had so far, is not Jewish but just got interested and then went into the professional Jewish world.

During lunch next door (yes, all of these things are in a row – very convenient), I ran off to the hotel to grab a jacket – Berlin is freezing then sunny then raining then windy, so you can’t have a total wardrobe win. Good thing it was just around the corner, and I made it back to the restaurant when my pizza the size of the moon arrived. I talked with Shira, a Queens observant 25-year-old who had never really known Jews outside of her community – I worked hard to be a diplomat for pluralism and I think I got the message of acceptance and potential through. We really have great conversations all the time here that would be uncomfortable and taboo elsewhere – then again, everything is in relation to the Holocaust, so most stuff is less uncomfortable than that prevalent theme.

The group boarded the U-Bahn for Brandenburg Tor, which is the stop for Berlin’s Times Square. It’s got a huge arch gateway, people in bad Mickey Mouse costumes, the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby, and pickpockets. None of these things got in the way of my enjoyment of the plaza – except then we crossed it and went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This square block area is covered in stelae, mock blank gravestones of varying heights that you walk through in an anxiety-filled maze. You can always see out, but you can’t see who is around you and it makes you kind of crazy. Yet, children were laughing and jumping around, I was harassed by some guys to sign a petition (aka attempt to publicly mug me), and then saw a guy palm his lady’s behind. So, not the ideal memorial atmosphere. The underground Holocaust exhibit presents the most comprehensive timeline and testimony set I have visited in the most effective way. Quotes from letters and family histories frame the factual timeline at the entrance really well – I walked around wondering if people knew that those families are my families. I keep wondering about everyone else’s experience here while trying to formulate my own.

The formal schedule ended with a long panel featuring two speakers: an Israeli sociology PhD and a German former Parliamentarian. There was no introduction, no set of guiding questions, no framework – just two very different and qualified people there to answer ANY questions. At first, I was supertired and then decided I needed to get something out of this and make a push to engage myself. So, I went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, got my head in the game, and asked  questions about the gaps and illusions created in Germany’s collective historical narrative, and what makes for the best shared national memory. And I wasn’t just spewing BS – something really had me curious to take advantage of the really interesting people I had open book in front of me. Particularly, I wanted to hear what the man who had spent 20 years in Parliament had to say, but the Israeli doctor of memory shared an interesting (paraphrased) quote from a past philosopher: “To look away from the past is to commit moral arson.”

Deep.

After that intellectual exercise, I went to a pharmacy where a lady rolled a full shopping cart over my toe. It hurts a lot. I also got my first friends photo by Museum Island and walked around Hackescher Markt before eating sushi for dinner at Wiedenstrasse. I would like to think I am getting good at pronounciations but lezbihonest – no way am I even close. Then, I came home and wrote this blog entry and got ready to hit the town.

Fotobloggen

In a cross between frustration and hilarity, I am just destroying the German language. Fotobloggen is probably not the word for photoblog, but it very well could be. My dad keeps sending me funny iMessages in German, about jetlagenshnagen. Mostly, I don't have wifi, but I take some sweet picz on my phone.

Pretty!

You can kind of see the bookshelves, but I recommend going to this aforementioned monument on your own.

Monument tracing the Berlin Wall

What it looked like when you looked through the Berlin Wall. So, it looked like yucky nothing.

Our group outside the first synagogue. But you can't see it, sandwiched into the ground between us and that ugly set of apartments.

Good morning, not-Eiffel Tower!

Recovered headstones from the old cemetery - the only spooky sign that bones are below.

An amazing mural in progress outside the cemetery

It looks like Inception!

A synagogue built with Moorish influence, and a unique quote on top. On Orianenburgerstrasse(shnasselassegasse.)

Looking out from Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Tea with my name-ish!

The weirdest bike you never can ride.

Trying to Find The Words...

In general, I'm trying to find the words. It's really hard when you're in the former Nazi capital to not keep thinking about the Holocaust, and it feels awkward to talk about regular tourist 20something things, like beer and sights, after you bring the obvious elephant in the room up. So, I'll keep negotiating that but try to understand that I'm not ignoring said elephant, just acknowledging it, and all the other things too. 

In the afternoon, we drove to Sachsenhausen. This is a concentration camp. I don’t feel that blogging about it would be really appropriate to make so public, but if you’re curious, ask me and we’ll talk. Our group had a powerful processing discussion for 90 minutes, openly sharing our reactions to the day and our questions and ideas that had evolved from the experience. A lot on my mind revolved around the ownership of the story, the awkwardness that remains between Jews and Germans and our respective grandparents, and the connections that should be drawn, and those that shouldn’t. 

Upworthy notes of the day included a fantastic dinner of baked sheep’s cheese and a crepe for dessert. Over the markedly improved food from the night before, we discussed Greek life hazing with our German guide Isabel, who also just graduated college. Our group is a mix of ages and backgrounds and schools and everyone seems to have a cool story. Conversations evolve in this kind of aggressive and curious way that’s so unusually open for a crew that just met. For a challenging day, I also laughed a ton and swapped stories with really impressive people who know a lot more about Germany, politics, international affairs, etc. One person is afraid of mannequins, another one is spending next year at Oxford, someone else is Canadian, another keeps disappearing from the group mysteriously and wore hood sweatpants yesterday and the preppiest polo today. A mystifying clan indeed.

After the official group discussion of the day, twelve of us went for our first Deutsche Bier. Confession: I don’t like beer. Or bier. So I got Framboise fruchtbeer, which was raspberry cough syrup marketed as alcohol (2.8%!? And that much sugar!? No thanks) and tried other actual beers while discussing the art of growing up, the awesomeness of study abroad, and a heap of Jewish geography. I also saw real live prostitutes because that’s legal here. A second wind encouraged me to take an explorational walk, rolling six deep. This was my first fully awake stroll and I finally found what it is that people think is so sweet about this city. The bars are packed for a Tuesday night and each one has a solid theme and ambiance: Indian beach, basement cellar, Arabian hookah lounge – you can do whatever you like. I asked a lot of questions about prostitute culture –Do they have breakfast together and swap stories? Why are they all wearing fanny packs? Do they have other career options?

While I likely won’t get these questions answered, this trip is full of both funny and serious, intellectual and creative thinking. And after today, as challenging as it might be, it’s the best brain workout I’ve had in a while and I’m totally ready for more.

A Really Expensive Trip to Starbucks - and a tour and history of the not-so-Jewish quarter

Waking up was a blur - probably because it was about 2:30 a.m. in America and I’m sometimes awake but not often waking up then. I forgot how much I like Europe until breakfast. Oh, the cheeses and breads and spreads and fruits – it makes me think I should eat breakfast more often, and if I lived here, I would. I made a sandwich of a multigrain slice, a ciabatta slice, some brie and some blackberry jam, which was dubbed ‘epic’ by a groupmate. As I ate it with some chocolate soymilk on our walk to the morning meeting point, I was much more elated to be traveling than I had been in the haze that was the last two days. The sandwich was epic, so the day began with great potential.

When we got to Rosenstrasse, Director Dagmar was late, but then said she’d buy us all coffee. And made good on that promise later with one of the most expensive Starbucks purchases the Mitte Starbucks has ever seen, I’m sure: 20 drinks at 4€ a piece is some serious caffeinated damage. But, before the mocha detour, we stood in a park for 90 minutes. Berlin is unpleasantly hot and cold, with spats of rain, and that, I dislike. The tour was titled Empty Spaces: Don’t Trust the Green Grass. Curious and creative at once, no? In the park, Dagmar told us a lot of framing information to design her discourse – she is the kind of PhD you want as a professor because she is brilliant and accessible, validating and challenging. We stood on the foundation of Berlin’s first synagogue, built in the early 1700s by 50 Viennese families in exile from a 1681 pogrom. Nothing marks this space, but looming industrial apartments hover over and dogs do their business on the grass that fills the space where Torah was once read. The park is also home to a monument to a group of women who intermarried Jewish men. These women successfully protested the Holocaust deportation of their husbands, shouting ‘Give Us Our Husbands” in a public square at Rosenstrasse, and the men were returned. We talked about the controversial story, how narratives are constructed, and why people don’t know about the Women on Rosenstrasse. The monument is also in East Berlin, which the Soviets ran until just before I was born, so intellectual controversial monuments with religious associations are kind of unexpected and hidden there.  Nothing marks the synagogue ruins at all. No stone, no plaque – just remnants that look like a short path to nowhere.

Next stop was Starbucks, and then a brief pause at some gold cobblestones. These stumbling blocks bear the names of Holocaust victims who lived in these homes and were torn from them and murdered during WWII. It’s controversial that people step on them, but they are also a noticeable and important citywide testimony to memory. We followed on to an ivy garden with a large tombstone to Moses Mendelssohn, the father of Jewish Enlightenment who believed in the ability to balance Jewish observance and secular life. Turns out he is buried somewhere in the ivy, along with hundreds of other Jews since 1682, but it’s been destroyed since. A few recovered tombstones scatter the right side wall, shadowed by fancy apartment buildings. Across the street, a 400-student Jewish high school, founded by Mendelssohn, is back in use today. It’s interesting that Berlin doesn’t have a typical Jewish quarter, no former ghetto – Jews lived scattered around the city, integrated into different neighborhoods. Near the graveyard, many restaurants advertise as kosher but offer only kosher wine lists and have no hashgacha (official kosher auspices) – one once told Dagmar they were kosher ‘because they don’t serve fish.’ Last time I checked that’s not entirely even a piece of what kosher means, so this winelist act is some kind of awkward cultural tourism scam which was one of the many things that made me uncomfortable today. And this was all before I went to visit the first concentration camp I'd been to. Part two of the day continues with reactions to that experience, beer, and prostitutes, which maybe shouldn't all go in the same sentence, but it's all in Berlin in a day...

Wilkommen: How I Lost My Group on Day 1

After an amazing summer at camp, an adventure was the perfect distraction from any sadness I could feel. On the way to Newark, my parents had me read the trip itinerary aloud, which was a great way for them to know exactly where I’d be in the next 12 days - and for me to find out about the gameplan of which I knew very little. I’d been superbusy fully immersing myself in the end of camp and trying not to think about anything except for smores and playgrounds.

At the airport, I people-watched to escape the boredom of the security line. Exciting folks included a poorly spray-tanned European ballroom duo toting a giant trophy and an arguing French family. I flew to Tegel with old camp buds Daneel and Mikey, and we traded a seat to end up wedged together in the tiniest intercontinental row in the history of planes. I felt smushed and itchy the whole time and based on this experience will probably become an American Airlines person for my work-life. United, you were the worst! I watched three movies and didn’t sleep a wink. Propelled forward only by the thrill of travel, and the amusement of watching the Alpha Christian Travel Group marvel at German customs, I went out into the great world of Deutschland. We ran into another girl from our trip and did a little getting to know you on our hour and a half public transportation extravaganza. We really just took a bus to a subway, but seeing a city for the first time is cool, as is seeing the subway car and station design.

We jumped right into the day with just a few hours to relax in the room (read: pass out) and then a Q&A session at the Centrum Judaicum, an office building and community space. There, the program coordinators introduced themselves and proceeded to READ the 10-day itinerary to us, line by line. This might have been good but I just did this exercise what felt like a minute ago in the car with my parents but had in fact been earlier the previous day.

After this fairly not exciting session, I went to the restroom and got disconnected from the entire group, who had boarded a bus for a bus tour. And Germans are very serious about time compliance. So, the three people I was lost with were a little panicky – thankfully, one of my lost companions was the trip director from the American side, so they weren’t realistically going to leave without us. After wandering Monbijouplatz, German guide Gregor found and saved us! We then went on a three-hour city tour with only two stops where we actually got off the bus. This schedule was fine because we could sleep in between, except guide Gerrit had some nice historical information to share. Since we’d been awake for two days, most of us were unable to concentrate on neither Gerrit nor his city sights.

There were two most impressionable sights: East Berlin Wall gallery, which is not the pretty graffiti one you associate those facebook pictures with but in fact a largely grey and foreboding stretch of park with rusted iron bars and then a little bit of graffiti.   

Memorial to Bookburning at Staatsplatz is an open glass window into the ground of a plaza outside Humboldt University, Berlin’s finest. Here, 200,000 books were burned, with content considered undesirable (Jewish, communist, etc.) – all made unsacred and destroyed in these weird act considering it took place outside a house of learning… The window looks into a huge and empty white room with shelves that could hypothetically hold the lost books – but instead they are empty. Stuff like this just wouldn’t be understood without a tour guide to explain it. Conceptually, I think it’s one of my favorite monuments.

Since the tour didn’t end until a rainy 6 p.m., we were late to dinner, which had requisite mediocre European service and ‘classic’ German food that will take some time acclimating too. Spaetzle wasn’t really my thing – it tasted like a cross between matzah brei and fried dough with cheese. However, the tablespoon of carrot and apple slaw with it was delectable. We’d been awake for two days now, so we really all just wanted to sleep.

So, we came back to the hotel (via 30 min of public transportation and a ridiculously windy and wet walk), and I passed out again. 

She's got a ticket to ride...

When I got home to my parents on May 13, they put a moratorium on travel, a la the current government ban, and I said, 'Yea, yea, sure, okay.' But, I lied. Sorry. I'm getting back on a plane Sunday, passport ready to rock.

This next trip was supposed to be a little encore, just a short trip to Berlin and then a week in Israel before heading to Chicago to start my job conveniently with the new Jewish and school year. Gasp, I wasn't even going to blog about it.

Then, I got a company phone call that said, "wait, not yet, don't come back - we want you, but in October."

I was dizzy with confusion. I had spent nine months waiting for the startdate to arrive. I was a little mad. But quickly, stars aligned, and I changed my flights to extend my stay... by 20 days. When life gives you something that might seem like lemons, realize it's a ticket to ride.

This decision is the most glorious of difficult ones. It's not like 22 year olds can complain about the unexpected 6-week extension of cubicle-free childhood. I could have just moved to Chicago, babysat to pay rent, and studied for the GMAT, mostly sticking to the original plan, but not one of those things appealed more than the thought of starting a new year in Jerusalem. In effect, I get to start my new post-grad, post-camp, post-limbo life there. Gold walls hit by perfect sunsets, fingers sticky from Marzipan rugelach, black-hatted neighbors and sweaty house danceclub nights, I'm dreaming already.

First, my Berlin trip will be with Germany Close Up, a joint venture of the German Foreign Ministry and the American Jewish Committee, blending modern cultural, religion, and national progress in an attempt to face a history there's no denying. Prague will follow and I'll be doing a lot on my own. Being lonely in an unknown city where you can't read the signs is surely a good brain exercise. Then, that Sunday, I'll land in Tel Aviv, making my second-ever trip to the Holy Land. I might kiss the ground and Instagram it (don't wait up for that.).

These are not vacations. These are mindtrips. I'm confronting history, my growing-up self, and pastries far finer than America's.

Gotta go calculate the pastry budget :-)