Neue Synagogue and the Berliner Mauerweg

It's been a pretty good couple of days over here. Today, after having been in hiding pretty much since I arrived here a week ago, the sun made an appearance at last. The weather forecast looks promising for the next couple of weeks, so we'll see.

Wednesday was May Day, which, here in Germany, is also known as the Tag der Arbeit (Workers' Day) and is a national holiday. As such, stores and businesses were closed as the city took the day off. Not realising this, I went out anticipating hitting up some shoe stores to scout out my much-anticipated Birkenstock purchases of 2013. (Incidentally, Birkenstocks are still cheaper here, but the prices have seemed to have gone up since I was last here. Sadness. Maybe I'll adjust my Birkenstock quota from four to two pairs...) Finding most things closed, I ended up just walking around Mitte and the old Scheunenviertel, where I stopped in at the Neue Synagogue.

The Neue ("New") Synagogue, Oranienburger Strasse

The building has an interesting history, as many buildings in this city do. It was built in the mid-1800s and was the largest synagogue in Germany, seating a few thousand people. Unusually, the building survived Kristallnacht thanks to the efforts of a local Berlin policeman, who kept the mob away from the building, even while other synagogues across the country were being burned to the ground in the Nazi-sanctioned pogrom. Unfortunately, the building was essentially flattened in the Allied bombings of Berlin in 1943, several years after it had already ceased to function as a synagogue. The front half of the building has since been rebuilt, and the impressive golden, Moorish dome was painstakingly reconstructed. Today, the building houses a small permanent exhibit on its history and that of the local Jewish community. It also still is home to a small congregation, an itty-bitty fraction of the size of the original one.

In fact, I went this evening to participate in a Kabbalat Shabbat service at the shul. I certainly wasn't the only visitor there, and the tiny congregation was very welcoming. I think they're probably used to having a revolving door of sorts, but in a good way. I met an older couple visiting from Australia, Helen and Harry, who invited me to sit next to them. I regaled them with the story of my long-lost Australian relatives. They knew about the Holy Blossom in Toronto, and shuddered at its non-traditional edifice. They were lovely. And on my way out a couple in from Montreal stopped me to ask if I were a local or not, and we got talking about learning German in Germany. All in all, the evening was quite lovely and very poignant. I've not before had the opportunity to attend services in a 150 year-old synagogue, for one thing, and it was certainly the first time I've attended any Jewish services in Germany. Thinking about what the congregants of that synagogue went through seventy-odd years ago...it makes you pray a little bit louder, I guess. Tonight was also, I might add, the first time I've had to go through a metal detector, put my bags through an X-ray scanner, and been asked for my passport in order to get into a shul. Poignancy doesn't really capture it, quite.

Being a Jew in Germany is powerful, but messed up.

Close-up of the central dome of the Neue Synagogue, a prominent landmark on the Berlin skyline.

Oranienburger Strasse, with the Neue Synagogue visible on the left-hand side down the street, and a clear view of the Fernsehturm straight ahead.

Okay, let's switch tracks from reflections on the Holocaust to another dark period of German history...After my initial stop at the Neue Synagogue on Wednesday, I decided to take a walk along the Berlin Wall, or what's left of it, following a map from one of the Berlin travel books I found here in the apartment. The route takes you along part of the haphazard path the Wall traced through the city.

All in all, I did SO MUCH WALKING on Wednesday. Because I'm a nerd, and because I was curious, I traced it out in Google maps afterwards. The jutting rectangle on the left-hand side, and then continuing on along Bernauer Strasse at the top, represents the part of the Berlin Mauerweg that I followed. The rest is just my wanderings.

I suspect it hasn't always been this way, but the Germans have done a pretty good job of documenting where the Wall once ran through the city. The section that I went to not only still had some pretty extensive sections of the Wall remaining in place, but also had a fairly well-executed outdoor exhibit full of lots of information about the Wall and the desperate escapes, and escape attempts, that people made from the East. At one point, they've even recreated a section of the no-man's land that stretched between the Wall (because really, the Berlin Wall was two walls), which gives you a frighteningly real example of the mere, but deadly, 50-odd yards that separated the two states. This death strip between the walls was patrolled by East German border officers, and was complete with gun stations, sensors and trip wires connected to automatic machine guns, and anti-tank barricades to prevent vehicles from just plowing through.

The Berlin Wall. This was the inner side (that is, the side in the no-man's land), so the graffiti must be post-reunification. Also note the rounded top of the wall, designed by those clever GDR-ers to make it difficult to get a handhold on the top. That is, assuming you made it far enough through the mess of booby traps and the like in order to reach the wall.

The Berlin Wall cut a ruthless path through the city, obliterating buildings in its way. Here, it cut through a cemetery. Oh hi, grave from the 1800s a few feet from the symbol of the Cold War. Berlin is crazzzzy.

Oh hi, East German guard tower, now standing guard over an apartment building's front courtyard.

Bergstrasse is the only street remaining in Berlin that is still cut off by the Wall.

The "death strip," rebuilt between one segment of the original Wall (foreground) and a recreation. The East lies on the far side.

At another point along my walk, I came across a sign documenting the approximate place where a West German police officer shot (and killed) an East German border guard from across the Wall, in order to save the life of a young teenager who was in the process of escaping. There's also a monument honouring the hundreds of people who were not as lucky as that young boy and died in their attempts to escape.

I can't really imagine what it would have been like, say, to live in one of these buildings on the Eastern side where the Wall actually ran directly alongside. Initially, people were able to jump out of the windows of these buildings and make their way to the West. But once the East Germans a) bricked any windows and doors facing the border up and b) razed buildings along the border altogether in order to create space for the death strip, more inventive escape routes had to be created. Including, for instance, tunnels. (Incidentally, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum does a wonderful job of detailing the myriad of ways East Germans tried to escape. I went to the museum during my last trip to Berlin, and will certainly be repeating that visit next month when I have some visitors!)

A fragment of the Berlin Wall on the side of an apartment building in East Berlin.

Another building adjacent to the Wall.

Marking the route of one of the escape tunnels (apparently, the 57th one) leading from East to West.

Throughout much of Berlin, the no-man's land between the Wall still lies empty, twenty years after the fact. Despite being prime realty, there are, as with many other things in this city, questions of memorialisation and politics that surround the use of such land.

So, that was my Wednesday! I'm such a weakling that my calves still hurt a bit from all that walking. I gotta work on that.

Yesterday, I went to the Goethe Institut for my placement test, and today I had my first class! It was actually quite good. My teacher seems kind and patient, and the people in my class (there seems to be about 10 of us) are all pretty much somewhere in their twenties and are nice and laid back. There are a few Americans, some Mexicans, and a bunch of Europeans. We all slip into English when we don't know a German word, which is quite funny. After class, I had a slow, lazy falafel lunch with the Americans students by the Spree. It felt SO GOOD to have a real conversation with other people, in person! I haven't had that in over a week now.

I think Goethe will be good, overall. I'm actually excited about it. Nerd!

Oh, God, I almost forgot!! I also had my first German pretzel, at long last!

Yesssss.

BREZELN COUNT: 1