BERLIN, Germany - If studying abroad in Prague seemed like a quasi-Disneyland experience to me, with magical cobblestone steps and a dreamy castle, my first weekend getaway in Berlin was my jolt back to big-city life in 2005. No longer were the metro lines pretty primary colors, but rather a system of confusing, overlapping U2s and U9s and S7s that brought forth flashbacks to graphs in high school calculus and famous rock bands. Yet even a rocky train ride couldn't dampen my eagerness to experience a city heretofore divided by world politics, world wars and one very famous wall.
At first glance, Berlin is a city of remarkable beauty; from the juxtaposition of the Reichstag and the Sony Center to the Prussian grandeur of the Berliner Dom and the Schloss Charlottenburg Palace, I was blown away. But for all of my chai-latte-induced excitement, for all the glitz and glass, there was also the sense that I was standing in the middle of a history that made me wholly uncomfortable.
It was a conflicted feeling, knowing that Berlin's history was responsible for the systematic genocide of a people and fears during the Cold War, and that for all the bustling commercialism of today, 20 years ago there had been barbed wire and the Wall of 1961. You see pictures of the Berlin Wall in the media, but you don't understand it until you stand three inches from it. It oozes frustration, human injustice and over 50 years of hatred and emotion in 12 feet of cold concrete.
More than that, though, being in Berlin challenged my sense of self as a nonpracticing, half-Jewish Hebrew School dropout. As I walked through the Topography of Terror exhibit and saw pictures of millions of innocent children and adults herded like cattle from ghettos to labor camps to gas chambers, I couldn't help but get emotional, knowing that this was the history my grandparents were affected by. It felt like I was adding insult to grave injury to be giving my money to a city that profited off museums depicting the reign of a monster. I was angry at myself for visiting, moved to tears by the knowledge that I was standing on the stones which held the injustices of the past, and secretly wishing I had just visited Copenhagen or Stockholm. Those were harmless cities, right?
But then a saying from one of my history syllabuses back at Brown hit me - the idea that the true sign of intellect is the ability to hold two opposing viewpoints in mind and still function. I realized that not challenging myself to make sense of the images, documents and the overwhelming statistics would be missing an opportunity to learn and see everything I've studied on College Hill up close. And to ignore Berlin's history and plethora of amazing cultural offerings would be as foolish as passing judgment on Germans nowadays for events more than a half-century ago.
So for the next two days, I made the most of Berlin. I visited the Jewish Memorial, a haunting field of gigantic cement blocks symbolizing only a fraction of the death toll and the country's readiness to face up to its grim past. I took off in a full sprint in the Gemäldegalerie to see a group of the 17th century Flemish still life paintings I studied in HA 62 with Professor Jeffrey Muller and then spoke about Caravaggio's works like he was some misguided teenage crush. I visited the Reichstag on the day of the elections and stumbled upon an Asian cultural festival. I ate schnitzel and bockwurst in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate before taking pictures of where Checkpoint Charlie divided Berlin and walked to see the ancient Pergamon Altar. By the end of the day, I came to recognize that the city itself was stuck in a paradox, struggling between erasing trails to its embattled past and preserving them.
We walked over 15 miles those two days, toting our backpacks and wallets and metro passes 3,000 miles away from College Hill, but in some ways I felt as much - if not more - like a Brown student as I did six months ago walking down Thayer Street wearing a T-shirt with the University name across the chest. Instead of just taking notes and running off to practice or to play online, I was applying Russian history, Flemish art, Chinese culture and my interest in foreign foods to real life outside the confines of a dark and detached auditorium. More importantly, I was exploring the world with an open mind, knowing how cool it really was if I gave it a chance.
Courtney Jenkins '07 is kind of a big deal.
