Berlin Day ? : Concentration Camp

Dear all, today was not the day I had planned out. Not at all. Yesterday I thought that since it would be Sunday and not much would be open, I would just sit in a cafe near by, drink some yummy coffee and eat some pastries while working on my thesis for the better part of the day. While this was a lovely plan, with great intentions, I just woke up feeling different. So I did a bit of research about the holocaust monument, museums etc. in the area and learned that there are lots of museums etc. in the area but there was actually a camp, called Saschenhausen (don't ask me how to pronounce that), just north of the city in a small town called Oranienburg, which is about 1hr from where I'm staying by train. It's open every day, and it's free entrance. So I forked out the 7euros to take the train, got up at a decent hour and out the door. As I was on my way to the train station I learned that the race was continuing from yesterday (more about that later) and so it's probably a good thing I was heading out of the city today.

I hopped on the train, and it was really empty and I think I was one of the only people who went all the way to the last stop. When I got off, it wasn't much different. The ride went through a bunch of really little suburban type areas and this was pretty much the same, and quiet - like Canada quiet - with very few people even walking around and most of the stores closed. I saw 2 or 3 groups of tourists as I got closer to the camp but much much less than I had anticipated. I got there and paid the whopping 50cents for a map because I thought, well, I don't really know what to expect and I don't want to pay for a tour, so this can at least tell me what I'm looking at incase nothing is in english (as many of the signs here aren't). I went back to the "museums" as the sign directed me and was stunned. It was not at all what I expected. It was a huge, vast, open space and I was expecting to see row upon row of barracks but it was mostly a big empty field. I felt a bit disappointed but carried on anyway to the first building that remained. It turned out to be the infirmary barracks, 2 of the 5 have been restored and now contain tons and tons of information. I must have spent an hour in their just reading, listening to audio, watching video, looking at artifacts, etc. There is just SO much information and you can't possibly stay and read or see it all because you could be in those 2 buildings for days alone. It was incredible, and the stories of course terrible and heartbreaking. Connecting the 2 barracks, there is an underground tunnel that you can walk through which is where bodies were stacked after people had died (or more likely been killed) in the infermaries. They have documented as much as they could and it seems like the memorial buildings have moved around on the site a lot, as different authorities kind of took control and decided what to do and how to do it with the site, so the inside of these buildings are more or less just museums but original floors, wall tiles and things like that still exist in some rooms.

Just so you have an idea of the difference, this is what the camp looked like originally, and below is what it looks like today. I'll put up my own photos when I get back.

After that you could go see the underground cave I guess, I don't even know what to call it, where bodies were stored, low ceilings but just huge amounts of space and I can't imagine these being so full that they began to pile them elsewhere. Of course everything is cleaned up, but it's still not a nice place to be.

Then I walked along the wall, past all the guard towers, and ended up in the "Special Section" where the mass murders took place by gassing, hanging, cremating etc. There is a really nice monument here and some of the old industrial buildings still exist behind. There are of course mass grave sites where victims ashes were buried - just one of many. Every spare corner seemed to be used as a mass grave site.

I carried along and saw inside brick bunkers, wooden bunkers and didn't even have time to go into the laundry building or kitchen building. There was simply just too much and 4 hours had already passed. I think I saw 10% of the material that was there. I truly think this is one of the best museums I have ever been to and I can't believe no one recommended this as one of the things to do while I was in Berlin. One really strange thing that I always wonder about though, is how people could live right next to that and claim they didn't know what was going on? And who would want to live in a house now, where their backyard faces onto that? I don't know if you could pay me to live within 20 miles of there. Apparently, they used this camp as one of the "tour camps" to show the media etc. but it was all very false and selective in what they showed of course, but even still - could visitors really not realize what was going on when they got there? Insane. Just insane.

So that was today.

Yesterday! I walked. and I walked and walked and walked. I must have walked 20km. Berlin is really  not a small city. I originally though I would head over to tiergarten where I thought I could see part of the original wall, but turns out just the Brandenburg gate is there and actually all the way along that street they were setting up for some kind of giant rollerskating marathon so it didn't look all that special at the time, but the park was beautiful and it was a nice Fall day so I enjoyed walking through. I walked through lots of neighbourhoods and saw some churches, markets, shopping areas, the edge of the zoo, lots of other smaller parks and eventually tried to find my way home until at some point I got frustrated and just hopped on the metro. It was a nice, but exhausting day!


And now, well I'm going to go heat up a can of soup and then try to work on my thesis a bit! More tomorrow :)

Berlin Day 3 but 1 Officially

Well I got to Berlin on Wednesday afternoon with the team from work. When we arrived it was a gorgeous day, as in not too hot not too cold, just perfect for jeans and a t-shirt with lots of sun. We had a bit of an interesting time trying to get a cab, which is odd for an airport, but once we got one we were on our way! We went straight to the hotel which was right beside the University campus where we were having the event and so that was really convenient, but it was literally in the very outskirts of Berlin which is huge and sprawling, not too unlike some of the cities at home - except there is amazing public transportation of course. So anyhow, for basically those 2 days we didn't do or see anything because we were just too busy working. After the event finished we went out in search of a bar in the center, and couldn't find the one we were looking for but took up a recommendation from some guy in the street and ended up at some bar called White Trash Fast Food - which I swear is an old chinese restaurant that they converted to this really eclectic strange tacky bar just adding everything wierd and kitch to the decor. However, they had live music and it was packed which is always a good sign, so we stayed and had a good time for a few hours.

This morning I checked out of the hotel, started to figure out how to get to the place I am staying now, which is a room I booked through my new favorite website - which is great because I get a whole massive room to myself and pay less than a hostel, where I would be sharing with probably 10 other people. This makes it much easier to continue working on my thesis in the evenings, because it gets dark quite early and actually the streets are very dark at night, Barcelona is lit up so intensely that everywhere after seems dark. So anyhow, I made it here and the 2 German boys are both very nice, gave me some sight seeing tips and then went back to work. So I dropped my stuff and decided to head off walking around to check it out. I thought I was going to walk to the portion of the wall which is still pretty intact but at some point I just started heading the other direction and then ended up at Alexanderplatz, which is sort of the main square that they have. When I got home I saw that it was over a 5km walk from where I'm staying but on the map it doesn't seem that far. Anyhow, the neighbourhood I'm in is really nice, lots of great little cafes and restaurants and its a very very green city with lots of parks and great trees so it was a lovely walk. I had an amazing lunch consisting of potato and sausage (hot dog) soup, everything bagel and chai latte. They drink a lot of chai here which is great because I love it and it's really cheap! So I'm going to be having lots of chai and bagels, getting my fill before I have to go back.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to make a plan because there is a lot to see and it's as you can imagine quite divided by east and west so you have a plan kind of laid out and make the most of it. One thing I can't get over though is the amount of construction -it appears to be a city that's really booming with cranes everywhere, road construction, new buildings etc etc. and the prices are not much higher in comparison with Barcelona. So far I have to say that it has far exceeded my expectations of Germany! I hope tomorrow will be just as good.

La Merce

So right now (this week) the festival of La Merce is happening which means lots of things going on, free concerts, tents set up, events, free museums and stuff like that. I haven't really done a whole lot of stuff but on Friday there was a light show at Sagrada, put on by some Montreal artists so we went to see that. It was kind of cool - they basically use these laser beam lights some how and make it look like all kinds of different things going along with some music Here is a link to a snippit of it for you to get an idea. And then yesterday we were going to go to a free concert and I knew it would be really crowded because it was for free and a pretty well known band - however I was not expecting what we met when we got off the train.

The metro was pretty busy, and if you figure that each train probably holds close to 1000 people (when it's at capacity, and it was) and those trains are coming every 4 minutes - well, you can imagine how many people are coming up from the underground station. Well - when we got to our stop, where the light show was also happening and so a lot of people were going to that - they had completely shut down one exit of the metro so now ALL the people had to go up one set of stairs to exit the station. This was bad enough, but on top of it, all the people waiting to see the light show outside had blocked the exit to the station and they WOULD NOT MOVE. It was pretty scary actually, because I couldn't see how far the mob of people went and no one was willing to move AT ALL so I just started kind of slowly but strongly forcing my way through them and of course people didn't like being pushed but they are standing 10 ft away from a metro exit! What do they expect? So they are yelling, and getting mad and I'm yelling back and telling them that there are hundreds of people underground with another train every 4 minutes - blech. But eventually we made our way out of it. It was not a good feeling at all though. The police are so stupid - they are standing around when they should have been there telling people to move away from the exit and also they didn't shut down the streets! I mean - this is just another typical Barcelona issue - they have HORRIBLE planning skills. Who plans a concert for THOUSANDS in a tiny narrow street? Especially when there are so many other big, wide open places that wouldn't disturb traffic at all in the city? Rediculous.

So yes - we finally made it to where the concert was happening and we were 1 full block away (100m) from the big screen - the band itself was atleast 4 blocks away and it was starting to become like the seen near Sagrada so we decided not to stay. It just wasn't worth it when you can't see anything and you can't even move. So we had a drink in Gracia and headed home. Not the most fun I've had.

In other news! I'm headed to Berlin on Wednesday and pretty excited about it. I have about 4 days on my own to really see the city and hopefully enjoy the peace and get a lot of work done on my thesis as well. It's always easier when I'm away and don't really have distractions. There seems like a lot to see there and I don't really know any of the history so there should be a lot to learn. I decided to spend more time in Berlin than Stockholm just because it's a much cheaper country and also I've actually never been in Germany at all now that I think of it. I expect to eat lots of sausage! Haha! I'm staying in a place that I booked on airbnb (my new favorite website) and so I'll be in a house with 2 locals who can help tell me where to go and what to see. Maybe I'll even learn a bit of German - apparently it's actually closer to english than spanish (although I don't believe that!)

Well, today I'm just takin it easy, hanging out with Nuno and watching movies, he's also helping books stuff because he knows these cities better than I do for when steph comes in 3 weeks. Hope everyone else is doing well!

<3

Stockholm is Cold

Really. Really cold and rainy, like 15-20 degrees colder than spain and the wind is blowing like crazy today (the one day I had to go sight seeing). But we got up early and sucked it up and went out and after going fairly far I decided that I was going to pay for a hop on hop off bus so that I could see the city. It was fairly expensive but I did the entire 2 routes that they had so that took about 2 hours and I did learn some interesting things. It's really confusing though because there is so much water all around and nothing is really very tall so it's nearly impossible to not get turned around. There's water all around and the buildings are fairly similar (but very nice). And the University Campuses here are reallyyyyyy nice. The event yesterday went quite well, but it was a long day. They fed me well as always and then today after wandering around and bussing around for about 5 hours I decided to have some lunch at a place just on the corner - it wasn't swedish food (couldn't find any, but there was plenty of asian, spanish and italian!) but it was really delicous. As we know from before, Sweden is a VERY expensive country - VERY. But I got myself a few chocolate bars to take back and other than that I haven't seen any souvenirs that I NEED to have. So - yep, anyhow, sorry I don't have too much to really tell you about Stockholm other than it's a very nice green city and I think if I was a bit more climatized maybe I could hack living here, but I don't know for how long haha!

Off to the airport soon, love to all!

Nunos Version of Fajitas

Well, it's been a while. I've been very busy thesising! I actually was editing Maricela's for a good portion of the weekend because she is submitting hers this month and I wanted to help her just tidy up the english a bit. And now today I'm getting mine ready to send off a rough draft and then pack my bags to leave for Stockholm tomorrow! I've been checking it out on the map, to see where we're staying and what not and it looks like we are staying right near the center so it's going to be very easy to walk everywhere. But you know what I didn't know? Stockholm is made up of a bunch of islands! It's like a bigger version of Venice, but I had nooooo idea. So that's quite interesting! I'm quite excited to get there actually - get a break from my house, the heat, the noise of the city and all that.

So anyhow, Nuno is ALSO submitting his thesis this week and I told him I'd help cook so that he could study more. Yesterday I made fajitas. He thinks I'm totally disgusting for putting rice and mexican salsa in mine. I however have witnessed him put french fries, ham flavored potato chips, garlic mayonaise and olive oil in his..... but YES ... I'm the weird one hahahh.

So, today is a holiday (again) which means the library is closed but I think I can go to the archive at school and work there later this afternoon. I'll post again from Sweden :)

<3

The Return to Normalcy

September has arrived! It's so amazing the difference that a week or two can make, especially in such a touristy city. The mass flocking of tourists has come to an end, making places like Placa Catalunya once again tolerable, the weather is just perfect (shorts and Tshirt) and the libraries are all open again as of today! Also the stores are back from vacation and I'm buckling down. Well, actually I have been the last couple weeks, it's just been a bit of a challenge. I also found out today that I'm headed officially to Stockholm on the 12th, but just for work so it'll be another whirlwind trip and I won't have a lot of time to see the city but I'll try to make the most of the short time! I'm excited. There's something I really like about Sweden, maybe because it reminds me of home in some ways :) Also! Our last houseguest of the summer leaves tomorrow and then it's down to the 3 of us at least until Nuno moves to Brussels next month (I'm not happy about this at all). Today I had great intentions of going to the gym but I don't know if that's going to happen, I'd rather go to the library!

I'm trying to think if I have anything more interesting to tell you, but apparently I don't - sorry!

Anyhow, Happy September and everyone going back to school, good luck!

<3