wow. this is blog #14, and it's on the 14th of february. how strange.
happy valentine's day to all who see this. everyone else can have a reasonably average day.
only yesterday did i come back from berlin, and yet it feels like it was ages ago. although i'm not entirely sure as to whether i liked the place or not, i miss it. or i miss being away from home. and i miss that sodding pillow which was shite, but i became accustomed to. man, i am tired - probably some form of jet lag.
berlin, as a city, was a very strange place to be only because you can see the conflict between what it was and what it is trying to become. you can walk down a street and see a brand new car shop, but next door will be some office block built in the 50s with mouldy curtains. i also got the feeling that it's trying to be something it's not; trying to compete with the other capitals of europe. i don't say this regarding to the people. although there are some really odd people there, they are to be admired because despite the troubles they have encountered, they seem to be able to continue on with their lives despite living in a place where the unemployment is as bad as when hitler came to power and despite living in a place where their government are furiously spending money that they don't have.
i think berlin is also a very hard place to take in. there are many aspects to enjoy, like potsdamer platz and the like, but only 10 or 20 years earlier, where the massive complex stands today was a barren death strip seperating the east from the west. and like my sister said, it's a city that contradicts itself. like the jewish memorial, which i thought was fantastic. you see the numerous lines of black marble blocks that form the memorial to represent the fear of living in berlin and germany back in the 40s as a jew, and then across the street you see a dunkin donughts. and the chain "kaiser's". that has reduced the title of ruler of germany to some obscure supermarket chain.
(if you don't like graphic imagery, then skip the next paragraph.)
and then there was sachsenhaus. possibly the most disturbing experience of my life, but well worth visiting. this may sound wrong, but it wasn't particualrily the ways in which the nazis tortured and murdered the prisoners, as sick as those ways were, but it was more the complete lack of reason and nonexistence of sense shared by every nazi soldier, guard or person of any position there. like the babies. our tour guide, who was really good, said how if there twin babies with say a brown coloured eye and and a blue coloured eye in the camp, the so called "doctors" would take them away, kill them and then cut the babies in half to examine the differences between the half of the body with the inferior brown eye and the arian half of the body with the blue eye. and they also used to conduct experiments like cutting people's arms off to see how long it would take them to die or lying to people by saying they'd be given freedom if they jumped out and tested the parachutes at 1, 000 feet, but they'd take them to 10, 000 feet instead and make them jump from there - this would lead to the people to explode under the air pressure, so the remains of the dead bodies would be the real test dummies for the parachutes. some of the other techniques they came up with for killing the prisoners were disturbing simply because they seemed to be made by someone who would enjoy aiming sunlight at an anthill through a lens. it really was an experience that you could not enjoy, but everyone should visit a concentration camp. it really makes you realise that these things did happen.
(graphic bit over)
another sad thing about sachsenhaus was the old czeck man who goes there everyday to talk to the tourists about his own and the other prisoner's experiences because he feels it is his duty as a survivor to let people know and because he feels like unless he tells the stories, no-one else will.
it was very interesting to have the tour guide we did, because he was german and his grandfather was someone who was connected to the camp, so you might expect him to feel guilty for what happened, but he said when asked if he feels guilty about what happened, he says no, not guilty, but instead he feels that it is partly his responsibility to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. that was re-assuring to hear.
the trip to berlin was a strange experience on many levels, but given the chance, i would have no hesitation to go again.
and so, on valnetine's morning, i leave you to try and sleep. night.
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