Rainy Days

The Fernsehturm as seen this morning on my walk to school, with part of its distinctive antenna hidden by clouds.

I keep a running list of my favourite German words--words that are just plain fun to say. One of these words is der Regenschirm, which means "umbrella." Well, let me tell you--I haven't gone out one day this past week without mein Regenschirm. The weather has been quite icky here. Like Vancouver-in-November weather. Gross, in other words. I guess I ought not to complain too much, since I was blessed with such wonderful weather last weekend in Prague, when it really mattered, but still. It seems to be human nature to be constantly hung up on the weather.

So what does one do in Berlin during a cold, rainy week? Well, here's what I did:

1. I ate pretty well.


My friend Amy (a vegan!) had read about this nearly-vegan "döner" place appropriately called "Vöner." (I say "nearly-vegan" because they do have cheese, but otherwise it's vegan.) We hit it up for lunch last one day last week after class. I don't know if you're aware of this, but döner is huge here in Berlin, thanks in large part to the city's large Turkish population. Most döner places have quite good falafels, which I'm usually very happy to have, but it's nice to be able to try a popular Berlin food that has been modified to be vegetarian-friendly. Vöner uses some kind of delicious fake meat that they even have set up on a spit to add an air of authenticity to the place. It's cheap, filling and delicious veggie food, and Amy and I vowed that we would return once a week until we try everything on their menu--they also serve vegan currywurst, veggie burgers and "chick'n" nuggets.



In fact, we went back today! I tried their seitan ("chick'n") nuggets and was a bit disappointed, so it looks like it's back to the vöner for me on next week's visit.

Vöner, located in young, vegan-friendly Friedrichshain.

My vöner. We also shared some deliciously seasoned fries.

Me enjoying my vöner.

The seitan nuggets I tried today. Tasted good, but they were tiny little things. I felt cheated.

Amy is like my veggie spirit guide in Berlin, I swear. A couple of weeks ago, she took me to this vegan grocery store called Veganz (I posted a photo of my haul). This past week I tried some of the veggie products I had bought, including some vegan bratwurst (disappointing--really just like any other tofu dog I've had) and battered "chick'n" fingers (quite yummy!). We also hit up Veganz after our lunch at Vöner, and I scooped up some more fake meat products to try my hand at. Also, I can't resist rhubarb, so I picked up a vegan rhubarb-streusel muffin from their bakery:

I ate half of it and then realised that I ought to take a picture of it...

The sun came out briefly yesterday afternoon, just in time for me to go on a walking tour of Jewish Berlin, set up by the Goethe Institut. While the other tours I've been on have been really good German practice for me, the guide for this one I just simply could not understand. It was okay, though, because from what I could understand, he wasn't saying anything I didn't already know. Certainly, we visited sites I had been to before. But what was great about the tour was that it ended close by to this little shop:

Yep, that says "Princess Cheesecake."

I couldn't resist, so I stopped in for a cup of tea (they had a pretty extensive tea menu, somewhat rare in Germany, including for some reason a tea called "Toronto splash" that, according to the menu, was a rooibos tea with basil (?) sweetened with maple syrup--I didn't try it because I don't like rooibos, and also it sounded a little gross, frankly) and a slice of cheesecake. Because really, how I could I not in a place called Princess Cheesecake? It's like whoever came up with the name for that place pulled it straight from my brain, or something.

My organic Earl Grey tea--steeping time adorably kept by an hourglass.

I had what was apparently a Russian-style cheesecake--plain cheesecake with a chocolate crust and chocolate streusel top.

The cheesecake, although good, did not come anywhere close to my mother's cheesecakes. I've been spoiled by her baking, and especially by her cheesecakes that she very lovingly makes for me every year for my birthday. That being said, having a slice of cheesecake--whoever made it--along with a good cup of tea can never be a bad way to end an afternoon.

But the rain returned today. In fact, we had a brief thunderstorm. Really, yesterday's sunshine was something of an anomaly, these days.

And what else is good rainy weather--or any weather--food? Pretzels, of course! I had three this past week!

BREZELN COUNT: 9


2. I hung out with friends.

Rainy days are also for movies. Last Wednesday, I hit up the Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz (a modern square near the Brandenburg Gate--all the buildings are only about 20 years old because the area used to sit in the no-man's land between the Berlin Wall), where they show movies in English. While yes, it would have been good practice to watch a movie in German, movies are pretty darn expensive here so we wanted to ensure we got our full money's worth! We watched Star Trek in 3D (or, auf Deustch, drei-D). Highly entertaining. Also, they sell beer at movie theatres in Germany, of course. That might explain this picture somewhat:

Me with Evan and Andrew, after Star Trek.

Friday night we went to a bar in Friedrichshain that was bathed in red light that made Rorschach diagrams on the walls and had a DJ who played vaguely spaghetti-Western-themed music from the sixties that made me think of Bang! and miss my friends--you know who you are. Saturday we went to a Thai place in Kreuzberg that was super cute--no photos, alas--and then we set off in search of a bar to watch the championship finals, a soccer (sorry, "football") game that was big news in Germany because two German teams were facing off. We ended up watching it in the basement of an Indian restaurant, bizarrely, but it was fun (and also boring--soccer can be quite boring).


3. I went out anyway, damn it.

Every Monday morning at school, we're able to sign up for various excursions and activities the Institut has organised for the coming week. I had signed up for two Spaziergangen (walks) in different Berlin neighbourhoods, but I ended up not going to one due to the rain. I was signed up for another one this past Saturday and decided that I ought to just suck it up and go, so I did just that.

The tour was of the Kurfürstendamm, the main boulevard in West Berlin. I haven't really ventured to West Berlin in the four weeks I've been here so far, so that was part of the reason I decided to go on the walking tour. The street was the cultural centre of Berlin at the height of the Weimar days, but today it is home to some high-end shopping and shopping malls. It's certainly a ritzy part of town, and if it hadn't been raining it probably would have been more enjoyable to walk around there. As it was, it definitely not been a good idea to spend two hours outside walking in the cold and rain. My sneakers were soaked by the end of the walk, so I took refuge in KaDeWe (stands for Kaufhaus des Westens, or "Shopping Centre of the West"), the largest department store in continental Europe and a true Berlin institution. It's huge, certainly. Quite famously, its two top floors are for gourmet foods. They also have sections of food products from around the world. Canada's was, predictably, a maple syrup extravaganza.

Not pictured: Brie cheese (???), Pop Tarts, marshmallow Fluff and microwave popcorn--the last three things could also be found at the USA shelf and I think are examples of the Germans giving up trying to distinguish us from the States.

4. I visited a concentration camp.

Because, why not? You don't need nice weather to visit a concentration camp. In fact, bad weather only adds to the tragic feel of such a place.

The entrance to the camp, now a state memorial.

The gatehouse at the main entrance to the camp.

These damn, haunting words can also be found at the gates of Dachau, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

Sachsenhausen is located in Oranienburg, a small little town about an hour north of Berlin. It was one of the most important camps in the Nazi system, due in no small part to its proximity to the German capital. I mean, you had all these top Nazi officials just an hour away, thinking up evil things and needing a place to test them out. Zyklon B, the gas used by the Nazis in their gas chambers, was tested there, for instance. In general terms, Oranienburg was the administrative centre of the concentration camp system, and Sachsenhausen was a model camp. SS officers were often trained at the camp in methods of barbarity. Like many concentration camps in Germany, it started off in the mid-1930s as a camp for political prisoners--communist and socialist opponents to the Nazi regime--but also became a repository for homosexuals, Roma and Sinti and, after the war began, POWs. Jews were also imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, many at first only temporarily after the November 1938 pogrom (Kristallnacht)--the Nazis wanted to scare them into emigrating, and so released most of those rounded up during the pogrom after several months of hard labour. Many did emigrate, but not enough, I guess.

Most of the original barracks were razed, but a few remain and now house museum exhibits.

Part of the roll call ground.

Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp, not a death camp, but tens of thousands of people died in the camp from starvation, disease, torture and sheer murder. Hidden behind a wall at one end of the camp, but fooling no one, was a building infamously called "Station Z," to refer to the last station of life for the unfortunate prisoners who were led inside. Inside, there were execution halls (where SS soldiers could shoot Soviet POWs from the room next door, through a slit in the wall so they wouldn't have to see their victims--because apparently point-blank execution was sometimes a problem for Nazis), gas chambers and crematoria. Today the ruins of the crematoria remain, but everything else was destroyed by the Nazis as they fled the camp before the advancing liberating Red Army in the spring of 1945.

Remnants of the crematoria.

The memorial set up on the grounds of "Station Z."

Memorial stones left by visitors, in following with the Jewish tradition of leaving stones on graves.

On my last trip to Germany five years ago, I visited Dachau and Buchenwald, so this was not my first visit to a concentration camp. I think that made it easier for me, but visiting the camp still made for a pretty emotional day. It just doesn't really seem possible, that such evil existed, that such things occurred.

And, that the racism that served as the justification for such atrocity still exists.

Twenty years ago, the barrack that had been used to house Jewish inmates at Sachsenhausen was nearly burnt down in an act of arson by right-wing extremists.

A few years ago, the Arbeit Macht Frei sign at Auschwitz was stolen by a group of twisted Nazi memorabilia collectors.

Just last month--a few days after Hitler's birthday--a swastika and other antisemitic slogans were spray painted on the wall of a concentration camp in Lithuania.

And it was just a few days ago, on Monday, the day after my visit to Sachsenhausen, that I went on that walking tour of Jewish Berlin and saw armed police guarding every Jewish institution we visited--synagogues, community centres, schools--a routine reality here in Germany.

So, you know. It's not like you can walk away from a visit to a place like Sachsenhausen and take heart in the fact that the world has changed. It has, sure. But not enough.