Our first full day in Berlin began with a 3.5 hour boat tour under the bridges on the Landwehr Canal and Spree River, going through several sluices due to uneven water levels. Following a delicious lunch at Cana, an Egyptian restaurant on the Spree River, we explored the Jewish Museum of Berlin.
To reach the permanent exhibits – powerful alone – one must first travel through the Libeskind building. “The building zigzags with its titanium-zinc façade and features underground axes, angled walls, and bare concrete ‘voids’ without heat or air-conditioning…Daniel Libeskind designed the floor plan based on two lines: the building’s visible zigzagging line and an invisible straight line. At the points where the two lines intersect are the ‘voids,’ empty spaces that cut through the building from the basement to the roof. The crisscrossing, oblique slashes of windows appear unsystematic and make it impossible to distinguish the individual floors from outside” (https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building).
When we left the Jewish Museum of Berlin, a major thunderstorm burst, so we sheltered in a restaurant for dinner. I had a traditional Bavarian meal – Pfifferlinge and Steinpilze with Serviettenknödel – along with beer and Jägermeister.
Boat Tour
Scenes from the boat…
Homemade lemonade at the Egyptian restaurant
Enjoying one of the many decorated bears of Berlin – similar to San Luis Obispo’s cows.
The Jewish Museum of Berlin: so powerful, so heart-wrenching, so emotional… It is a place that brings to light not just the life and actions of Jewish life and death in Germany but also the deep unambiguous pain of the Holocaust. Sharing this experience with Jutta and Barbara makes the museum even more meaningful. Seeing the Holocaust along with and through the eyes of these modern, kind, and intelligent German women evoked a vast range of emotions within me. Remembering while moving forward, forgiving without ever forgetting, learning from the past to not allow horrors to ever again occur… So many thoughts, so many emotions…
While walking on these plates, I could hear the screams of children being separated from their parents, of loved ones torn apart, of so many millions murdered.
Walls and walls lined with laws persecuting Jews.
