Almost
a week into the traveling portion, and we are all exhausted. Tuesday,
we went to the German History Museum, which was massive. It spanned from
roughly the Period of Migration to post WWII. Our third assignment is
based on this visit. We must each pick out a topic from three periods:
roughly, the first one thousand years, then the time up to napoleon and
lastly from the period between Napoleon and the post WWII section. We
are to write a few paragraphs over each topic that we choose to make a
short paper… so far, we have been assigned four of these kind of
assignments.
In my free time, so in the heat of day, I have been trying to squeeze
in naps whenever possible. Or go swimming… I went to a Badeschiff (main
photo) that night, which is a floating pool on the Spree river. After
the heat of the day, it is nice to get back out and explore the
surrounding region. A small group of my classmates and I went to the DDR
museum, which was really interactive. The museum explored life under
the DDR and had a replica house which we could walk through. We could
open different drawers and cabinets and learn about the technology they
had and the products they had access too.
One of the most interesting
things was that there was an overabundance of money but that getting
goods was actually really hard. There were shortages in just about
everything including toilet paper and basic food stuffs. The salaries of
people were low. It showed a salary being about 600-1,200 Deutsche Mark
(although I’m not sure if that’s annual or per month), with rent being
on average 100 Deutsche Mark per month. A colored TV was 5,000 Deutsche
Mark.On Wednesday, our last day in Berlin, we had another somber day at the Berlin Wall. We went to a visitor center where we watched two short films over the construction of the wall. Afterwards, we visited a remembrance site that and Check Point Charlie. I can’t explain the emotions that I felt, or how overwhelming it was to visit these places. I also don’t know how to “appropriately” touch on the subject or what can and can’t be said…
In
my free time on Wednesday, I had a hard time getting up the energy to
do anything. Visiting the monuments was emotionally exhausting and it is
hard for me to switch from such a serious topic to whatever else I
might want to do for fun. In the end, I went back to the hotel and took a
nap to help me reset my headspace before going out with some of the
group that evening. We had a bunch of fun, and woke up early for another
travel day on Thursday. Hopefully, I’ll remember to follow this post up
with another one soon.--
Follow Claire on her travels to Germany at https://nutzedentagdot.wordpress.com
Read more about studying German with the University of Arkansas
