This week was a bit of down time. I wasn’t feeling well, weeks of arduous (for me, anyway) physical activity, the need to catch up on my studies, and a sick roommate slowed my progress down considerably. To top that off, my first visit to a concentration camp took the wind out of my emotional sails to a surprising degree. Of course, I started the week celebrating International Worker’s Day, which was possibly the drunkest I have been in 15 years, but was an amazing night.
J’accuse, Ben Kohn. Now pardon me whilst I spend the rest of the day dying in a dusty corner like an old moth. I vaguely remember staggering around Kreuzberg drunk as hell being obnoxious Americans… I think we danced… I might have hit on a German cop (or I dreamed it, not sure)… there was a French guy…. I took the U-Bahn home by myself because everyone wanted to keep drinking and I just couldn’t. I was so drunk I couldn’t sit upright waiting for the train… there was a harmonica player on the train… I managed to get home just fine and without incident, and nobody harassed me. Achievement unlocked.
I don’t really have anything I could possibly say to make the gravity and horror of a concentration camp make sense to anyone who hasn’t been to one. It doesn’t even make sense once you’ve been to one. This place is an unholy despair factory designed by sadistic brilliance. And right now I am sitting at a mass grave, in pleasant neighborhood listening to the autobahn and the blackbirds whir and chirp in the background. They built the modern police training barracks next to the camp. As a warning. This is what happens when authority goes unchecked and brutality takes the place of protection. This is a terrible place filled with the memories of terrible acts that illustrate how far that can go in the blink of an eye.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Oranienburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
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Today’s trip to the concentration camp has left me feeling pretty fragile inside. It was so much worse than I imagined it would be. It isn’t the same as reading about it. It’s so much more visceral standing where tens of thousands experienced cruelty and pain none of us will ever know. I genuinely loathe the idea of people suffering such unimaginable atrocities, to the point where I can’t shake it. I always assumed this was normal, but after watching people runaround the camp with their selfie sticks and then talk about where to go for lunch on the bus afterward, I don’t know anymore. I felt sick and horrible the whole time, like there was a stench in the air but you couldn’t smell it. I had to force myself to take pictures because I knew I would regret not documenting it. I sat for a really long time at the mass grave and didn’t even realize there were tears in my eyes. Is it stupid to get that emotionally worked up about anonymous people who died 70 years ago? I don’t think so. Someone has to mourn them, and anyone who remembers them is most likely dead by now.
Toilets, Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Oranienburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
*** This place had a sign out front that said, “the most beautiful concentration camp in Germany” and I was really perplexed that that would be a bragging point. And if this is what a beautiful concentration camp looks like, I’m not sure I want to see the “shithole” version. And I think that was the worst part, getting into the heads if the people who were there. How could you survive that? When the war was over, what the hell did the guards do? NONE of the guards at Sachsenhausen were convicted after the war, they just went on with their lives. I mean, these people were someone’s parents, grandparents. “Gee daddy, what did you do in the war?” “Well, son, I drowned homosexuals in toilets and tricked over 10,000 Soviet POWs into getting shot in the neck. We had a great time!” Seriously, how can you live with yourself? I hurt someone’s feelings and it haunts me for years, can there really be that many psychopaths out there?
In researching a song for my hiking and drinking song class, I found one called “Ein Vogel wollte Hochzeit machen” (A bird wants to have a wedding). I tried to learn more about it on Wikipedia, but according to what I could translate, the page mostly seems to be arguing about how birds can’t actually get married and a blackbird and thrush can’t mate because of biological incompatibilities. Or something….
To sincerely paraphrase Stevie Nicks: O, Deutschland. You are the poet in my heart. Never change, never stop.
Week 4 was officially when I started to spread my wings. I also started drinking, which I don’t normally do but I found actually quite fun in Berlin. The laws here are extremely loose and it is basically treated the same as any other beverage as far as consumption goes. You can drink on the street, purchase alcohol 24/7, and aside from drinking and driving laws you are basically treated like an adult who can make their own life decisions. What a novel concept. Surprisingly, the only time I really saw people drunk in public, they were usually American tourists… embarrassingly enough myself included.
I should go out to Mauerpark today, I really really should. But my feet are killing me and my body is aching. I can’t even find the energy to take a shower right now. Guess I will stay home and try to get some work done here. In other news, when we were sitting in the bar yesterday with Ben, we heard a German version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, but I could tell the lyrics weren’t the same. I finally found it, and it was recorded in 1972 about a guy who dies of a drug overdose. Because Germany.
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Emailed German Customs about how to get my new laptop here. The response was nightmarish maze of paperwork and forms and different departments and offices I need to deal with. It prompted me to compose a song to the tune of “Brazil” that included lyrics like “It’s like a Kafka Christmas treeeeeee…. and all the presents aren’t for meeeee…Bur-a-cra-cy… in Ger-man-y…”
Why is Der Kommissar in town? Is there a convention? The Boat Show? And why can’t I turn around? Is he behind me!? Should I be afraid? I mean, if he’s just come into town I can safely assume he’s out his jurisdiction, so he can’t arrest me. Is he a ghost!? He’s a ghost, isn’t he! Jeez, man, what kind of messed up boat show has cop ghosts that follow you around? That’s some really over the top security. You know what? I’m skipping this years boat show out of protest. I’m glad that’s settled.
So we went out and had the most awesome and perfect day in Berlin today. Beer and radlers in Viktoriapark, doener at Mustafa’s in Kreuzberg, wandering in a gorgeous old cemetery, buying liqueurs at a small distillery (after liberal sampling of their wares first), a crazy and eccentric book shop run by a British ex-pat who was a total character, pulled pork and sauerkraut at Markthalle IX, gelato for dessert, then off to a totally amazing little bar that was playing incredible music from the 80s for legit absinthe, then stopping for more beer at Gorki Park across the street. Come home and Prince is dead. Well, shit.
This day was totally mental, but in a good way. Went to Museumsinsel, saw some sort of Armenian ceremony thing that we couldn’t actually see but there was singing at St. Hedwig’s. Then went to the Altes Museum (Old Museum) and saw all the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan statues. As we were leaving, the church bells started to ring at the Berlin Cathedral (which is right next to the museum). Then, just as that finished, a large group of Syrians showed up in the Lustgarten to celebrate a wedding with music, dancing and singing. We walked to Alexanderplatz to catch the U-Bahn, and saw a guy with a giraffe head playing the buckets while a bunch of football fans danced and sang “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in German.
And to think, we didn’t even get out the door until after noon today…
Days like today, where I just stay at home and work on my research, try to plan next year’s class schedule, and make borscht are the days where the homesickness really hurts. Nothing to distract me, I guess.
Berliner Weisse is the shit. 2 Berliner Weisse is even besser.
Signed,
The Girl Who Should Never Drink
And now I move on to my first Radler (50/50 beer and lemonade). Jesus Cristos these people know what to do with a beer. And no, this isn’t a daytime drunk, it’s 9pm here
… why is it that the beer that sounded so awesome at 9pm feels so awful at 3am?
