Blog #4 Favorite Part of Berlin / Language Barrier

Well, we're back already. Not too excited about that part. Don't get me wrong, it's been great seeing family and catching up with friends, but being abroad was such a great experience and it went by way too quickly. Already I've been repeating the same stories over and over as everybody keeps asking about my favorite sites and favorite countries, etc.
My favorite part would have to be the Holocaust Memorial. It was tough deciding from all the different things- swimming at the Wannsee beach, the bike tour throughout Potsdam, the Olympic Stadium, laying out in the park during the Obama speech, my birthday, it was all just very exciting. I guess the reason I chose the Holocaust Memorial was because of all the different Holocaust sites we visited, to me it was the most impactful and meaningful.
I think the reason that the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was not as impactful for several of us was the weather. When I went to see the Buchenwald concentration camp a few years ago, it was drizzling out, the weather was gray and gloomy, and it was just a depressing scene. Yet the weather at Sachsenhausen could not have been more different. It was the warmest, brightest day of summer and all many of us could think of following our tour of the camp was to find some shade under a tree. It was just too nice out to get overwhelmed by what we were seeing.
The reason I liked the Holocaust Memorial was because it really made me sit down and think about the feelings these people had for their friends and families- feelings they knew would not be felt in return. As discussed in class, the room with the lit-up boxes on the floor that showed some journal entries and letters to friends and family was a very deep and depressing room. Moving from the brightness that the sun pushed through the windows in the previous room to the darkness of this room really added to the effect of the room. It was also interesting to see during class later that day that many other people felt that this memorial was perhaps the most meaningful and impressionable site we had visited.
As for the language barrier, I guess I had less problems than most of the others may have encountered because I had taken German classes in high school and a couple at UW-O. So instead of focusing on problems encountered, I'll talk about the highlights of my weak attempts of speaking German. My first attempt at getting some Spaghetti Eis (ice cream that looks like spaghetti) failed miserably at the Ostbahnhof as the younger lady told me in German that they were all out. Rather disappointed I asked for a kugel (scoop) of chocolate ice cream instead. I think she could tell I was rather saddened (who wouldn't be?!) so she gave me a couple scoops and only charged me 50 cents (thought that may have been more because I am ridiculously good looking, something I am sure Tracy experienced several times). While on the S-Bahn during the scavenger hunt, I was looking at a map of the trains to make sure we were going the right way. A guy asked me if I needed help (in German) to which I replied that it was alright, we knew where we were going. He was a little persistent and once I got lost in our conversation, and he determined that I spoke English, he determined I was no longer worth his time and he muttered something to the German next to him- an example of just how often things don't turn out as well as one could hope for.
The best conversation I had in German took place not in Berlin but in the air on our way to London on our connecting flight home. The man sitting next to me did not speak the best English, so when there was an announcement from the pilot saying there was a lot of traffic on the runway and we would be delayed slightly, I began talking to the man in German because he did not understand. We ended up talking a lot in the last half hour of our trip to London. I learned that this man was originally born in Sierra Lione and had studied abroad in Berlin when he was in college. He returned home only to come back pretty quickly to Berlin, where he has been living in ever since. He was taking his four year old son to visit the states, specifally Virginia. Upon our landing in London, we said our goodbyes and that was the last real conversation I had with a European. Now we are back in good ol' Wisconsin... at last I finally have my Brewers.