The Jew in the Box and Other Adventures

First, with the exciting news: I am going to Prague this coming weekend!

You see, it's a long weekend here in Germany, so I thought I ought to take advantage of the extra day off. Prague was high on my list of places to visit while here this summer, so I thought I ought to check it off straight away at this earliest opportunity. It's a bit last minute, so unfortunately most of the hostels were booked up already; I ended up going with this apartment through airbnb--the same website  I used to find my wonderful place in Berlin. It seems like it'll be great--right in the old city centre and in a lovely old building. I'm taking the train early Saturday morning and will be returning Monday evening (Prague is only four and a half hours away--Europe is so small!!). I don't really know much of anything about Prague, so I'll have to do some serious Googling this week.

Besides booking all of that, I was busy this weekend doing some more kennen lernen. Saturday I went to the Jewish Museum with Amy and Evan (the Americans, remember?). They had never been before, but of course I had visited the museum several times during my last trip to Berlin under the auspices of the Leo Baeck Summer University. So I like to think that I know a lot about the museum. I was really looking forward to going this time around because they have this special exhibit going on right now that's all about the fact that most Germans don't actually know anything about Jews and Judaism. Indeed, because the Jewish population of the country is so itty bitty--out of 80 million Germans, about 150 000 are Jews--it's true that most Germans have never met a Jew before. And yet, for obvious reasons Jews are a very prominent minority group and they hold a lot of political clout here in Germany. Still, though, because the Jewish community is so small, most Germans don't know any Jews personally, and the point of the museum exhibit is to remedy this situation, at least superficially.

How is this accomplished? Well, the museum has posted, and answered, sometimes funny and sometimes serious questions about Jews--Jewish FAQ for Germans. Some examples: What do Jews do on Christmas? (The answer, of course, is eat Chinese food and go to the movies. And this is true.) What is kosher? Is it okay to make jokes about the Holocaust? Must Germany necessarily be an ally to Israel? etc., etc. But in addition to these common questions, the exhibit also has an interactive component. You see, the museum has asked Jewish volunteers from the community to take turns sitting in a glass box in the middle of the exhibit and answer questions put forward by the (goyish) museum visitors.

Yep. A Jew in a box.

The Box. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to take photos so I apologise for the poor photo quality--I snapped it quickly. The question on the bottom of the box asks if there are any Jews still in Germany.

You'll likely notice that there is no Jew in the box in the photo above. This was due to a tactical error on my part, because I didn't realise that since it was a Saturday that there might not be any Jew "on duty," so to speak. Alas. There was a sign saying that the Jew (a Jew?) would be back on Sunday...

Oh look!

...So, I sat in the box. Because I'm a Jew. And I'm in Germany.

Of course, almost immediately a security guard rushed over and yelled at me in German to get out. I wanted to explain to her that it was okay, that I could sit in the box because I was a Jew, but I didn't think I'd manage to find the words. Even to write the phrase "Jew in a box" in English is difficult for me now

Because the fact is, there is something deeply unsettling about this exhibit. I mean, I know that it's very tongue-in-cheek (see the exhibit's ad below, for example), and I think it's good that Germans are being a little less somber about this history, but really...really?! I don't think I have to spell out why this is uncomfortable. I mean, it's Germany, but really anywhere this wouldn't be a good idea.

At the end of the exhibit you could write your own question or comment on a sticky-note and post it on this huge concrete wall. I think I'll just let my post-it note comment speak for itself:

I could have written this in German: Ein Jude in einer Kiste? Echt?! Vielleicht keine gute Idee, Deutschland...

"The Jews are the chosen people." Chosen to be abducted?! Is God really just an alien? WHAT?  I am not sure how I feel about all of this.

I like the Jewish Museum, in general. Of course, the building is more remarkable than its contents. It's an architectural triumph, that building. Pretty funky. Torontonians will appreciate that Daniel Libeskind is the museum's architect--the same guy who designed the Crystal at the ROM. Only his building here looks less like a crystal and more like a zinc lightning bolt fallen flat from the heavens (some say it's a broken Star of David, but considering that the building was built before it was decided that it would house a museum on German-Jewish history, that seems unlikely to me). The experiential aspects of this museum are superb. From the Holocaust Tower (a cavernous, silo-like space, nearly completely dark save for one sliver of natural light four storeys up--the design was inspired by a young survivor's story about her journey to Auschwitz aboard a cattle car) to the Garden of Exile (see photo below), the museum upsets you--physically and emotionally. My favourite exhibit is the Fallen Leaves exhibit, an array of hundreds of metal faces laid across the floor in one of the museum's soaring "voids." You're invited to walk over the exhibit, and the resulting discordant clanks of the metal upon metal, and the overlapping echoes in the void, is, quite simply, haunting.

The Garden of Exile is this completely disorienting experience. The ground tilts and falls and rises again, and basically leaves you feeling queasy and unsteady--much like the feeling you might have as a Jew in the 1930s setting out aboard a passenger ship heading for unknown lands--if, that is, you were lucky enough to be able to leave Nazi Germany in the first place.

Fallen Leaves.

And again.

My Sunday was a much lighter day--no eerie metallic screaming faces whatsoever. I started the day with a tour of Kreuzberg, organised by the Goethe Institut. The tour itself was not necessarily that interesting, although Kreuzberg is a gritty, happening multicultural neighbourhood in Berlin. But what was great about the tour was that it was conducted, of course, in German, and I understood most of it. I think my brain is finally starting to adjust to being here. Of course, I still don't understand a great deal of what people in stores and on the street say to me, and part of that is I lack a developed vocabulary and part of it is that people tend to speak pretty quickly when they're not lecturing or giving a tour. But still. This was huge progress for me. I mean, I couldn't have asked the guide a question, or at least it would have taken me several minutes to phrase it out in my head before I could have, but I still got about 75% of what he said, I'd say. So not too shabby!

Kreuzberg has some of the oldest--and prettiest--buildings in Berlin.

Pretty Kreuzberg.

Gritty Kreuzberg.

Pretty and gritty Kreuzberg. Spring is bleeding into summer.

A couple of my classmates had signed up for the Kreuzberg tour as well, and afterwards I went up to Mauerpark with one of them, Irene from Spain. Mauerpark is this great park in Prenzlauer Berg (my neighbourhood, although at the other end of it from my apartment) that holds a famous flea market every Sunday. We never made it to the park itself because it started to rain, but we did have a wonderful lunch at Cafe Krone, located on this fabulous street near the park called Oderburger Strasse. It's this wide boulevard surrounded on both sides with turn-of-the-century apartment buildings, each one with a restaurant or cafe on its ground floor.

The view from our table on the terrace. I had an Alsatian pizza called a Flammenkuchen. It was pretty delicious. Also, I discovered that Germans don't do doggy bags at restaurants. A good lesson.

Yesterday, Monday, I took another tour organised by the Goethe Institut, this time about the U-Bahn, or the Unterbahn, Berlin's subway system. Once again, it was conducted in German, and once again I was got a rush from understanding most of what the guide was saying. We actually went on the U-Bahn and went all across the city, changing lines multiple times and getting off at stations so the guide could tell us something new.

Here's some of what I learned: Back in the day, they had two classes of travel on the U-Bahn, much like we do today on inter-city and long-distance trains--the plebeians were stuck in third class, although there was no second class for some reason. During the Cold War, when the city was divided, some of the U-Bahn stations were blocked off, but two of the lines were allowed to pass through East Berlin from West Berlin. The trains were not allowed to stop and had to just continue through until they were in West Berlin again, and the stations located in the East were closed to East Germans, obviously, but still. This must have been a pretty eerie thing for the West Berliners on the trains, passing through all of those empty stations guarded by GDR border officials, who just watched them go by. And it must have been even worse for those East Berliners who could hear and feel this train from the other side passing so close to them, yet were unable to access it at all. What a bizarre and cruel thing that must have been.

One of the third-class cars from an early incarnation of the U-Bahn, on display in one of the stations.

Today after class I went with Amy to this vegan grocery store she discovered near her apartment. It was pretty freakin' exciting. I even found some of the Tofurky and tempeh products I use at home, not to mention some vegan bratwurst that I plan on cooking up sometime soon for myself. Amy and I were so inspired and high on our vegetarian success at the store that we decided we would host a vegan dinner this Thursday night for some of our classmates. So I have to start brainstorming recipes!

Oh, and more soy salami slices and some vegan marshmallows!!!

So, all I need to find now are Quaker crispy minis, and then it's official: I could live here, like for realz.