One year later

Exactly one year ago on the 4th of July, I officially arrived in Germany.  I landed at the Dusseldorf airport with my German grammar book in hand, took a train to the city of Bonn, the Ubahn to Tannenbusch, and schlepped by suitcase to the Acora hotel just in time to meet my fellow BuKas for an American-organized Independence Day BBQ.  Maybe you remember... there is probably a blog about it.  What followed was an extraordinary  year.  My time in Germany is of course not yet over, but exactly one year after my arrival we fellows met together one last time as a family of 30 for our three day closing meeting.

Monday the fellows not based in Berlin arrived, and we all had dinner together at a Lebanese Restaurant near the hotel with representatives from the foundation as well as Friedrich, who has organized all of our gatherings and meetings, and in the meantime become a friend to us all.

Yesterday was our big political day which began with a meeting at the Auswärtiges Amt (the Office of Foreign Services), which funds our fellowship and had the opportunity to ask questions of representatives from Germany who specialize in relations with the US, China, and Russia.  Then it was on to the Chancellor´s office to... meet the Angela Merkel.  Ok most of the day was a tour of the facility, which is actually quite modern and beautiful, and only 5 minutes actually consisted of meeting with Angie herself.

Nevertheless Angela Merkel was a pants-suit wearing delight.  She asked us what we thought of Germany, and when we told her we were having a nice time, she claimed we hadn´t been here long enough.  Then she poked fun at the Deutsche Bahn.  We stood ready for our photo op, and she said "Say cheese, or as we say these days in Germany - Greece".

After some more official meetings and meals with important people, plus a visit to the Neue Museum to see Nefertiti´s head - the highest insured object in any museum in the world at €550 million compared to the Mona Lisa at around €220 million - it was time to say goodbye.

It was weird to say goodbye.  For one thing, my fellowship is not over.  It will last at least until the end of August, and hopefully a bit longer.  But mostly I just can´t imagine that I won´t be seeing my 29 colleagues and friends in just a few weeks for some meeting or trip.  I think one of the biggest surprises about this year was how close I ended up feeling to the other BuKas.  I had hoped I would find a friend or two among the group, and then of course there were times over the summer and throughout the year when Germany was incredibly lonely, and I felt very much alone.  But, somehow when I wasn´t looking, probably on a long bus ride, or sitting around the dinner table, or posing for one of our many group photos, they started to feel like my family in Germany.  There are some I know better than others, some I can talk more openly with, but we are a group - 30 BuKas in Deutschland, and I can´t quite grasp that we will probably never all sit in the same room together again.

This is the sad truth about the globalized world, which seems like the phrase that is always on everyone´s tongues.  The ease of technology helped bring us together, and it may very well allow us to stay in touch - I hope it does - but it won´t solve the logistical challenges of bridging 3 continents, 30 busy schedules and separate lives on distinct tracks.  I will miss them, but I am excited to find out where they each end up next.  I am grateful, more than I can express, that we got to share one year together in Germany.

Continuation:Treasure Hunt (Please Begin at First Entry)

Chapter 5

My work at the Centrum Judaicum is varied.  It´s a bit hard to explain what exactly I do each day - sometimes I do work from the Museum, other times I focus on my independent research.  One of the major projects for the museum is an upcoming exhibition about the Jewish Museum of Berlin 1933-1938, an historical examination of the Art and Judaica collection of the Jewish Community of Berlin, which became one of the world´s first Jewish Museums, and was then tragically forced to close after the Pogrom Night of 1938, after which the art was taken by the Nazis.  After the war a large portion of the collection was rediscovered in Berlin and subsequently restituted and/or distributed to other institutions around the world, as the Jewish community of Berlin was at that time too small and weak to even consider reclaiming the works.  Nevertheless, this art collection was extremely meaningful to the community, along with being quite valuable.

My task has been to examine catalogs, lists and other documents made about the collection between 1945-1955 to help the museum understand where the art went during these years, and where it might be now.

One of my coworkers, who is more involved in the project than I am, actually managed to find two "lost" pieces of art that wound up in a retirement home for Holocaust survivors in London.  And, given my talent for English (uh, yeah) and frequent (ok, occasional) travel to London, I got nominated (I asked) to retrieve the rediscovered paintings from London and bring them home.  This was possibly the most glamorous and exciting moment of my life.

Until this point in my 24 years on this earth, things have been good, ok really good, but not exactly action movie worthy.  If my life were to be made into a movie, right now it would be more of a modern day "Little Women" than, say, "Indiana Jones".  But, whatever.  That was all about to change, because I was about to bring World War 2 stolen art back to its rightsful home - hello Nobel Peace Prize.

BuKa the Movie:

Scene 1: British air flight to London with my parents (in the movie we will cut the parents - sorry, and swap British air for a helicopter).

Scene 2: Hanging out with the family in Greenwich - birthplace of time.  We will leave this in the movie, because it was kind of fantastic.  We took a boat ride to Greenwich, took pictures standing on the Prime Meridian, toured a museum entirely about clocks, and learned about Sympathy Powder.

Ok, brief hiatus from the movie to explain this ridiculously cool concept.  Basically, the Prime Meridian and in fact time itself (more or less, ok less) were invented, because sailors were unable to navigate properly resulting in a lot of shipwrecks.  So, it was determined that they needed a way to tell time aboard ships, where pendulum clocks were of no use.  Lots of scientists, scholars, and all around genius-y types were called on to try to solve this problem.  One of the suggestions was Sympathy Powder, which is a powder that was believed to have special powers.  The plan was to GENTLY cut a bunch of dogs with the same knife, send each dog on a different seafaring vessel, and then have someone in London plunge that same knife in a bowl of sympathy powder everyday at noon, thereby causing all of the dogs in various parts of the world to yelp in MILD agony, thus indicating to the ship´s captain the time of day to be noon.  Clearly this did not prove to be so successful.

Scene 3: Family trip to Brighton to walk along the pebbly beach, and explore an awesome palace wherein we learned the word "Chinoiserie", the attempting by europeans to imitate (poorly but elaborately) the artistic styles of Asia.

Scene 4: Return Priceless Lost Art to Germany
Setting: Elder Care Facility in Golders Green. Note: This will likely be the first action film to take place in an elder care facility or in Golders Green.

With my parents in tow, we arrived at the facility and were given a lovely tour, which I actually found really interesting.  Finally we were shown two beautiful pieces of art.  One which I recognized from my work at the CJ, a simple but elegant still life, quite large, definitely too big to transport home to Berlin alone.  The other was still hanging on the wall, and was a huge portrait of a rabbi that our guide said the residents were sad to see go.  But, no way was I going to be able to lug that thing home.  Then we were shown some other pictures and portraits that, along with these two paintings, had been at the old facility for many years.  I took pictures of everything.  It was pretty disappointing but it seemed there was no way I could carry these two paintings across state lines.  I left feeling slightly disappointed, but knowing there was just no feasible way I could carry those two paintings.

The Getaway Scene: Without any art, I flew home to Berlin, met a nice Palestinian couple who offered me a ride home (but they didn´t actually understand where I lived, so I ended up riding with them to the opposite end of the city and then taking the ubahn home).

Conclusion: A little less Thomas Crown Affair, a little more I love Lucy

Upon returning to work on Tuesday, without any art, I showed my bosses the two paintings I had seen.  The Still Life, yes they agreed, far too big for me to drag home alone, and the Rabbi painting.
The Rabbi painting???  My bosses looked shocked and confused.  Even more when they saw the picture of the giant painting hanging on the wall in London.

It was the wrong painting.  Looking back through my photos from the previous day, I had a beautiful photo of the small, portable, etching which had belonged to the Jewish Museum of Berlin in the 1930s.  A phone call to London and the whole confusion was cleared up.

And that is the story of how I accidentally almost but didn´t steal artwork and transport it across national lines.

Part Three: Still haven´t not stolen that art

Chapter 4: Plotting and planning

A not so secret side effect of moving to a random place, say Germany for example, is becoming the local tour guide, travel agent, hotel, hostel and bed and breakfast to anyone you know or sort of know who decides they might want to visit your location of choice.  I take this role with pleasure, but never with as much pleasure as when showing my family around Germany, because I want them to love it, or at least like it, or at least not be miserable.

Fortunately, before my parents visited Berlin, I had a good dry run with my brother.  Together we analyzed each and every detail of Berlin, to figure out how to orchestrate the ideal visit for our parents.  It began with meeting them at the airport with pretzels in hand (links will soon be available to my father´s pretzel blog entitled "twisted").  We continued to eat pretzels, basically as meal substitutes, at least once a day.  I attempted to show them all things in the near vicinity that could be considered both pretty and old - downtown Dresden, the palaces and Dutch quarter in Potsdam, and a personalized tour of the New Synagogue - Centrum Judaicum.  I also showed them just enough of the grit of Berlin to get a feel for the local color without inviting the American notion of certain danger/gang violence (sometimes graffiti really is just an art form, mom).  And, of course there was a healthy enough dose of history and historical analysis offered by moi , for the entire experience to be deemed, "kinda like a week long field trip with Rachel".

After too little time, we were off to London to see J and O, and to look in on some art...

Part Two of: Tales of an unintentional but fortunately unsuccessful art thief

Chapter 3: A tour of Europe... ehem Germany with a side trip to Brussels

As a small child, when I asked my grandma about her family´s origins and how they came to America, she told me, "They took a tour of Europe".  I think this was a happy combination of not wanting to horrify me with the notion of centuries of Pogroms, honestly not really knowing where the family came from, and her knack for embellished storytelling (I guess it´s genetic).

As a German Chancellor Fellow, I also have the opportunity to take a little tour of Europe in the form of a two week study tour through Germany with my fellow fellows.  Actually for months my friend Jen has referred to this as the thrity of us "going on tour", which makes it sound a lot more rock star than the reality.  You may recall earlier posts about our orientation seminar, and this was pretty similar, except this time we were really on the move, nearly everyday a new city, meetings from early in the day until late at night.  Mostly I was just thrilled to be back with my BuKa friends.  It had been six months since we were all together, and what better way to reconnect than by spending hours packed in a bus together cruising the Autobahn.

So as not to bore you to pieces, and seeing as we´ve still got an art heist ahead of us, I´ll just fill you in on the highlights:

Stop 1: We meet in the city of Leipzig (the Paris of East Germany according to my boss at the Centrum Judaicum, who I must not assume has never been to Paris).  Just kidding, in reality, Leipzig was a nice enough mid-size German city.  From there we visited some more brown coal mines and solar power factories (if one year in Germany has taught me one thing it is that Germany is really into energy sources and showing them to visitors).

Stop 2: Ingolstadt - home of the Audi Factory (where all that brown coal and solar power won´t do you a bit of good).

Stop 3: brief stop in Bayreuth, recently made famous as the University town of Germany´s most famous plagiarizing politician.

Stop 4: München.  A beautiful city, where we visited Siemens, the Max Planck Institute, a beer brewery, the Philharmonic (right after the beer brewery... we barely stayed awake) and then had some free time which I used to see one of the most boring Operas (even for Opera) ever.  I don´t remember the name of it, since we got there late and had to spend the first half sitting in the light box, but basically there were some really upset seeming nuns/religious cult members who were very unhappy and whose compound exploded at the end.  The explosion was by far the highlight of the piece.  Part two of free time involved a delightful hike through the Alps which ended at a Monastery that produces its own beer (quite common apparently - drinking beer is the trick monks used to "fast" for days on end and end up with amazing visions) and makes a pretty delicious pork knuckle (I was also unaware that pigs had knuckles... but life is about learning).

Stop 5: Karlsruhe, to see the highest court in Germany and a nearby Organic Farm, and then to taste some local wine and sing with locals (singing after, before or between alcohol tastings is a favorite BuKa activity).

Stop 6:  a day in Frankfurt to visit the European Central Bank, see Goethe´s house, spend the night in a tiny village called Bad Münster am Stein (long enough for me to remember how much I like tiny towns in Germany more than basically anything else) and on to visit a factory and workshop for disabled people.

Stop 7: Brussels to visit NATO (and ask semi-intelligent questions about Libya) and the EU commission, and long enough to insert the phrase "ooh la la" into any and all sentences.

The best parts of the trip, for me at least, were the hours of bus time simulating some type of strange family road trip, if, say, your family was Russian, Chinese, and American with a German dad named Friedrich, who reminded you constantly not to look like a slob at the EU Central Bank, or to prepare good questions for NATO, and gave you fun facts before rolling into unknown cities like Ingolstadt.  Basically there is nothing quite like BuKa time.

It was sad to say goodbye and know we wouldn´t all be together again until June (hmmm not so far off thanks to my procrastination in writing this entry).

That Time I Almost Accidentally Stole Art From a Nursing Home and Moved It Across National Borders

Chapter 1: The First Escape

Hello noble reader.  Before you get yourself agitated, contacting the authorities of the various countries in which this story will find its settings, allow me to let you know, that there never, in the real or imagined versions of this story, existed the intention to steal art.  Whatsmore, no art was or ever will be stolen, unrightfully removed or relocated against the will of its owners by the author of this blog. And yet, everything that you read is true.

It begins with an escape.

It was a brisk March day when I woke up, looked around my room on Krossener Street and realized, what I needed was an escape.  I had lived with the most awful roommate I could imagine for going on six months, and the prospect of even another day seemed suddenly unthinkable.  I went to work.  I began frantically emailing every apartment posting I could find online.  That night I came home, sat my two roommates down, and broke the news.  I would move out before the end of the month.

Chapter 2: The Search

Apartment searching is never an easy task.  It is however more complicated when the search must be conducted in a foreign language on a tight time table.  Fortunately, my standards were at an all time low.  After living with a roommate who was so beastly, I was willing to live just about anywhere.  But... not ANYWHERE.

The visits:

1) The bed with a hole:  A tiny apartment being shown by a very nice guy who had built a non-removable high-bed which took up half the room.  The only trouble is that the high-bed had a large, deadly hole in the middle.  I would have fallen to a certain death.

2) Middle-aged chain spoking depressive:  Nuff said.  If you are older than 45 you should say so in your posting.

3) If it´s too small for a bed, you can´t list it as an apartment:  Although this out of the way apartment got extra points for having an extremely attractive landlord who lives nextdoor and swore he "knew how to install a kitchen", you just can´t list something as a living space if it is not large enough to fit a bed.  

4) Mandatory Man-Hating Bonding Time: These two cat loving ladies, separated from each other by decades have a weekly appointment to cook dinner for each other and talk about how society plans to keep them down based on their reproductive organs.  Sorry girls.  This feminist declines.

And finally:

A last ditch effort.  Just minutes after he posted, I called the writer of a no nonsense post, visited within the hour and had an offer to live with a totally normal person in a totally normal apartment that happens to be across the street from (ok about to nerd out big time) one of my favorite monument/historic sites in the city, which memorializes the Berlin Wall.  

From there I just had to survive a few more weeks before I could officially move into the new place.  Well, the idea of more time with just a door between me and my ogreish (it´s a word - i checked) roommate was more than I could handle.  So, what did I do?  Well first of all, as the holiday of Purim was about to take place, I baked large numbers of hamentaschen (triangular shaped cookies that recall another evil person, the antagonistic Haman of the Megillah) hoping to quiet the evil beast with and toss cookies at him, should he attempt to attack (i think it works with bears).  I also invited dear Hopkins friend and former (good) roommate, Anna Y, for a last minute visit from London to Berlin.

Finally, a friend helped me move my things to the new apartment, and then it was so long to Berlin for two weeks.

The Longest Concert in the World

On Friday, February 25, I began my second adventure to Sachsen-Anhalt, this time to see the city of Halberstadt and meet with the director of the historic synagogue and museum there, Frau Jutta Dick.  Like many of these smaller cities, getting directly from Berlin to Halberstadt would have been quite a trip, and arriving in time for my scheduled appointment with Frau Dick at 10 would have been... impossible.  Fortunately, some friends in Braunschweig, a medium size city in the state of Niedersachsen (yeah there are three states in Germany with the word Sachsen somewhere in their name) invited me to come visit and spend some of the weekend with them.  Braunschweig and Berlin are only 1.5 hours apart, and Braunschweig and Halberstadt are also about 1.5 hours apart.

The trip from Braunschweig to Halberstadt required that I change trains in Vienenburg.  Unfortunately, strikes in western parts of Germany were causing major delays, and the message over the loudspeaker indicated that it was impossible to predict when/if a train might come...  By this point, standing on the platform, I had already begun to make friends with the other stranded would-be travelers.  Stu, who was also waiting for the train inquired about my work, and on learning of my interest in old buildings, pointed out that the train station in Vienenburg (which is about all there seemed to be in Vienenburg - population 10,000) was actually the oldest standing train station building in Germany - dating to 1840 (wikipedia has confirmed).  Unfortunately (and fortunately), before Stu and I could go exploring (it seems there is a museum inside the train station - and I am pretty sure I have already mentioned several times in this blog how much I love transportation/transportation museums) a bus driver showed up and herded all three of us onto our replacement vehicle.


The trip from Vienenburg to Halberstadt took approximately three times as long by bus as it should have by train, but I´ve got time, and it was kind of beautiful.  We stopped in every village EVERY VILLAGE between the two towns.  In other words, Stu and I basically became best friends over a lovley discussion of debunked myths about life in the USA (being American is not EXACTLY like what you have seen on tv, but yes, CSI Miami is pretty crazy, and Los Angeles has a major traffic problem).


I finally arrived in Halberstadt, and using the very helpful street signs, was able to find my way to the Klaus Synagogue on Rosenwinkel Street quite easily, and with only a one hour delay.  Frau Dick was very kind and understanding.  She took me directly upstairs into what had been the prayer room of the Klaus, and began telling me about the building.


The Klaus Synagogue was built in 1857 on the site of a previous synagogue.  It was not a gemeinde synagogue, in other words, the congregation for the community in Halberstadt did not meet there. In fact the building took the name Klaus in a play on words with the word Kloister.  It was used as a school and yeshiva that was known throughout Jewish Europe.  The 3 rabbis who were at any given time active there (and lived within the building) did not have the stresses or responsibilities of gemeinde/congregational rabbis.  They educated generations of orthodox rabbis in Europe.  However, people in the Halberstadt community would often come to these rabbis precisely BECAUSE they were not the congregational rabbis and were seen as more impartial to community matters.  They and their families lived in the Klaus synagogue.



The Jewish community of Halberstadt at its peak made up 10% of the population of the city (1000 people out of about 10,000 in the early 19th century )  The population grew in number, but not in percentage, in the early 20th century with the immigration of Eastern European Jews, for whom Halberstadt had particular meaning as the orthodox capital of an otherwise quite reformed Jewish Germany.



During the Pogrom night on 1938, the building was spared any major damage because the landlord at the time was not Jewish.  The other synagogues in the city  were destroyed, except for a piece of the wall of the synagogue across the street from the Klaus.


During the war people lived in the building.  In the post war era, in the 1960s, people were aware of the Klaus Synagogue, which was being used as housing and had thus been structurally altered.  Several local men took interest in the building and protecting it, although they didn´t have a particular interest in that it represented Jewish history, just that it represented Halberstadt history (one guy made this clear saying that if it had been an eskimo house he would have researched eskimos, that it was a Jewish house meant he researched Jewish history in Halberstadt).



After the fall of the wall the organization which had been responsible for housing in the DDR continued to exist, and at this time altered the building more than previously, painting over the ceiling decoration  and making a permanent division where the women´s gallery had been to divide the sanctuary into two usable floors.

In the early 1990s, as the restitution claims conference was held, it was brought to light that the Nussbaum family, a Jewish family from Halberstadt, then residing in Los Angeles, had owned a lot of property in the city of Halberstadt before the war.  People in the community became anxious that their homes would be taken away as a result of restitution.  As a peace offering of sorts, Nussbaum purchased the Klaus from the city and helped organize a foundation concerned with Jewish history and tolerance in Halberstadt.  Restoration of the Klaus began in 1998, and the building has been kept quite plain, almost empty, so as not to distract from the events and programs that take place within the building. 


A few years later the buildings across the street from the synagogue (which also belonged to the foundation, by that time associated with the larger Moses Mendelssohn Foundation) were prepared for use as a museum.  The museum is located just behind the ruins of the former synagogue, the site for which is memorialized as a garden which stones showing where various parts of the synagogue stood.  The museum itself narrates the history of the Jewish community of Halberstadt, giving special attention to the community´s role as an orthodox center of education.


Of course I asked Frau Dick about the significance of having an orthodox historic site administered under the guise of the Moses Mendelssohn Foundation - the father of the Jewish enlightenment.  It bothers the occasional orthodox tourist from the US or Israel, she explains.  But, she reminds me, Mendelssohn had a lot more to do with the secularization of Judaism than the development of the reform movement that followed.  The Jews of Halberstadt, she insists, though mostly orthodox, were deeply influenced by this 18th century move in the direction of secularization.  In the museum exhibit rooms from the pre-Mendelssohn era face inward and exhibits on the post Mendelssohn era face outward.


Frau Dick then invited me to lunch in the museum´s Jewish-style but definitely not Kosher cafe, and explained how such a restaurant came to be a part of the envisioning of this museum and historic site.  The building, she explains, already belonged to the complex.  When a Russian Jewish immigrant woman expressed her interest in cooking, it was a natural progression.  Even if the restaurant didn´t take off, with no need to pay rent, there wasn´t much to lose.  The restaurant, which specializes in Russian Jewish cuisine and recipes passed down from the descendants of Halberstadt Jews, was pretty tasty, and attracted visitors to the museum and gave a space for programs about Jewish holidays and laws of kashrut.  Locals only started to eat at the restaurant in the last two years.  Before that it was considered strange, foreign, maybe the negative side of exotic.  


After our meeting, I was free to spend the rest of my day exploring Halberstadt, before returning to Braunschweig that evening.  Halberstadt, population 42,000, has a beautiful historic center, with several large churches and a maze of fachwerk style houses (this is the typical style of architecture where you see exposed wooden beams often in exes).

Just as I had no problem finding the Klaus, the whole city is extremely well labeled with signs and maps for any visitors.  So, of course I was intrigued to see signs directing me towards the longest concert in the world. 


Despite the excellent signage, the usefulness of said signs was, debatable at best.  Sometimes signs for the same site seemed to point towards one another as though the longest concert in the world were taking place somewhere inbetween the tip of one arrow and the empty ground before the other.  I began to wonder if it might be possible to get so lost as to miss the longest concert in the world, in which case, it must not be such a long concert afterall.


In any case, I resolved to do my favorite activity in Germany, asking for directions.  I love to ask for directions in Germany, because its almost like having a conversation in German, and it is a socially acceptable way to interact with strangers.  The trouble is, as willing as most Germans I have encountered are to help a stranger find her way, they give quite possibly the least instructive directions imaginable.  Geradeaus, they tell you.  Translated this means straight ahead, but rarely is the destination sought straight ahead.  And, repeating the word geradeaus, geradeaus, geradeaus while flapping one´s arms vaguely in a particular direction will also not assist in the task at hand.  

Example: I ask, "Where do I find the longest concert in the world?"  They respond, "See that house? the one with the window? next to the tree?  Turn left there, spot the small brooke and then geradeaus geradeaus geradeaus and you´re there."


Well, eventually I arrived in a large courtyard, in which several buildings stood.  One building, which resembled an old stone church had a sign on the door which read, "Ring the bell to visit the longest concert in the world".  I rang the bell.  

A face emerged from a second story window.  "I´d like to see the longest concert in the world," I said.


"I´m sorry," replied the man, "you´ll have to ring the other bell... over there." He pointed to a stone cottage across the way.  

I marched over, rang the bell, and a cartoonish woman in her 60s burst over the threshhold.  "I suppose you are here to see the longest concert in the world!" she exclaimed (what was the give away?).  


I explained that I was, and she proceeded to lead the way back over to the church, for which she produced a rather auspicious key, and began to tell the story of the main event.  This she explained, was an experience about time, about the future, about life.  Everyone experienced this concert differently, and I shouldn´t be concerned to take my own time and my own space to really appreciate the concert.  John Cage, the American composer, had written this piece for the organ and instructed that it be played "as slowly as possibe".  The piece had begun on September 5, 2001 with a rest that lasted a year and a half.  The first note emerged from a pipe on February 5, 2003.  The piece will play until September 4, 2640.  Note changes are not often.  Only recently did the piece play its first chord.  When the notes change, large crowds often gather.  Other than that she entertains tourists now and again, more in summer of course.  

As for the building itself, it is an old Nun Kloister.  The building dates back centuries but fell into disuse and indeed misuse, housing livestock.  The nuns, she told me, would like it better this way.



We entered.  


The building was cavernous.

It groaned.  And hummed.  And sang.


She stood back and let me be at one with my own tiny moment of history.

Towards the middle right apse of the building, behind glass, stood several pipes - the source from which the great endless sound resonated.  I wandered around for a few moments.  I tried to feel the presence of the last 600 years and the next 600.  It was hard to keep from laughing.  This was indeed a glorious and ridiculous project.  Realizing that I didn´t really want my moment of history to commune with this ringing in my ears, I returned to my hostess to ask a few more questions.  The plaques around the wall.  There are 639 of them, she explained, one for every year of the concert.  They are available for sponsorship. 

The House of the Absent Neighbors

Day two of my escapades in Sachsen-Anhalt.

After leaving Gröbzig and returning to Halle, I had plans to meet up with a friend.  Actually, this is the same woman I was fortunate enough to befriend on the train from Italy back to Berlin - I may have looked her up online and emailed her (is that creepy?).  In any case, it was great to see her again.  Then it was off to Magdeburg, the second largest city in Sachsen-Anhalt, where I stayed in a hostel for the night before setting off for Haldensleben in the morning.  Sachsen-Anhalt, by the way, feels humongous, since it takes me HOURS to get from one of these little towns to another.

This may be a good moment to interject and explain that almost all of my sites (of which there are 15 at the moment) are in small towns or villages (Centrum Judaicum and Erfurt being the main exceptions).  The reason for this is that many of these buildings survived 1938, because they were no longer synagogues.  The Jewish communities, thanks to the industrial revolution, left a lot of smaller towns and villages in the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries for bigger cities.  This was often the case for Eastern European Jews, like my ancestors as well.  Opportunities for better employment were available in places like Berlin, Warsaw, New York (and even Baltimore) that couldn´t be imagined in a Gröbzig or a Haldensleben.

That being said, Haldensleben is much larger than Gröbzig at a whopping 19,000.  It is the first place I have been in Germany where I have seen blatant antisemitic graffiti and swastikas in plain view.

I was to meet with the director of the Haldensleben city museum who also oversees the synagogue.  Thanks to a tourist map outside the train station, I made my way to the museum, and was greeted by Herr Hauer.  We decided that before we talked too much, he would show me the synagogue a short walk away.  On the walk over I told him a bit more about my project - historic synagogues, former East Germany, open to the public - he stopped me.

Well, ours isn´t exactly open, he explained.  We´d like it to be.   But it just hasn´t worked out yet. 

The Haldensleben synagogue is known today as Das Haus der anderen Nachbarn, "The House of the Other Neighbors".  It was built in 1822 - far enough into the emancipation process of the Jews in Germany to have a spot on a main street rather than in a protected court yard.  And, to be honest, it doesn´t really look like a "typical" synagogue.  It has gothic style windows.  In the middle ages Jewish structures were just about as likely to be gothic style as non Jewish buildings, but the neo gothic architecture of the 19th century was pretty much only popular among Christians.  An extremely visible Jewish structure in the 1820s built in a very non Jewish style, could tell a lot about how integrated the Jews of Haldensleben were with their non Jewish community.

By 1907 there were only 3 Jews left in the town, so the synagogue was sold to the Neoapostolischer Church, which occupied the building until 2002, when they decided to move to a larger building.  That was when Herr Hauer and others became concerned that something would happen to this historic building, and so, in the hopes to preserve the building, the idea of the House of the other Neighbors was hatched.

The idea was that here was a building that had belonged to two religious minorities in Germany and had been freely sold or given over by each group without pressure of unfriendly governments or neighbors.  Here was a building that had not been touched by the horrors of the Second World War.  Here was a building that could teach tolerance... period.

It was a beautiful idea, and the local governments agreed.  The House of the other Neighbors was funded, restored, and reopened in April 2007.  Outside it is pink with those distinctive gothic windows, inside it is painted light yellow.  There are outlines of where various religious furniture (arks and pulpits) were located when the building was a synagogue or church.  There are models of the building during each time period (the synagogue faced east, the church faced west, the synagogue had a women´s balcony, the church did not).  The second floor, for purposes of architectural historical accuracy, once again exists where the women´s gallery once was.  Mostly the room is filled with folding chairs and wooden chests where, Hauer explains, each religion or minority group that lives in Sachsen-Anhalt can fill a chest with information, important objects, etc.  Groups can come and learn about diversity in an historic space.

"Great", I said.  "How is it going?"

"It´s not."  He replied.  For one thing, none of the groups they have called on to help fill the chests seem to get it.  The various churches, when they have filled boxes, have filled them only with paperback bibles and information about how to convert.  Most of the chests are empty.  One group suggested that only Judaism and Christianity be explained, since the building was only ever a synagogue and a church (aka they would be willing to discuss Islam or Buddhism or Shintoism, etc only in the case that the building had at one point been a mosque or a temple, etc).  "They missed the point.  It has only been 4 years, but so far they all have missed the point", Hauer said.

At a very very basic level, Hauer achieved his goal.  The building was saved.  If you aren´t occupied with this type of work, saving a building might be a difficult concept to wrap your head around.  But, saving the building is almost always goal no. 1.  Call them Buildings of Dreams - If you restore them, they will come.  Or at least, that is what we in this business, so to speak,  like to think.  If only the roof didn´t leak and the decorations were historically accurate.  If the walls were sturdy and the electricity were up to code...

Hauer has just that.  The building is beautiful.  Beautiful and empty.  He has taken to enticing school groups with free educational space and tour groups with free bathrooms.  The house of the free bathrooms.

Having seen the swastikas across from the train station, I asked, "Aside from a lack on interest, have you had any negative responses?"

He explains.  Like most places in the GDR, no one really knew there was a synagogue here.  That is was given over to the church already in 1907, no one really remembered there being a Jewish community here.  Just before we reopened the synagogue, I published a piece spreading the word in the community about the historical presence of the Jewish community and the synagogue.  Just after that someone through a bottle through the window. It made a mark in the wall, which as you can see, I left.  Historical evidence of the first and only recorded evidence of antisemitic acts directed at the synagogue in Haldensleben, 100 years after it ceased to be a synagogue.

And what about Jewish tourists?  Do people ever call up asking to see the synagogue?  Are there families of Haldensleben Jews who have sought it out?  Do people ever just pass through and want to know about Jewish life here??

He told me, "You are the first."

Tuesday Shabbat

Ever since I decided to focus my work on accessible historic synagogues in former East Germany (now known as the New States of Germany), I´ve tried to be a bit systematic.  So, I assembled information and read books on the synagogues of Sachsen-Anhalt, a state in the middle of the country.  With the help of my mentor, Dr. Simon, I made contact with the people who maintain each building, and off I went to visit my first two synagogues in Sachsen-Anhalt, Gröbzig and Haldensleben.

February 15th at a ridiculously early hour, I headed to the train station to board a train that left Berlin at 6:39 (whah?) and arrived at Halle, the largest city in Sachsen-Anhalt at 8.  There are no trains to Gröbzig.  I think there might be a bus.  Might be.  But basically, if I wanted to make my way to Gröbzig, population 3,000, I needed a lift.  Fortunately the museum director, Ms. Marion Mendez, who lives in Halle, offered to meet me at the train station, at least, that was what I thought.  Imagine my surprise when an older man approached me and asked, "Are you waiting for anyone?"

It was Bernd, an employee at the Gröbzig Synagogue.  Another man was waiting for us with a car to go pick up Ms. Mendez so we could carpool together through the rolling hills and farmland of the Anhalt-Bitterfeld region before arriving at what is likely the most complete and intact historical Jewish complex in Germany - synagogue, cantor´s house, school house, cemetery and associated buildings, congregation house, etc.

I was lucky enough (ok we planned it this way, but luck makes the blog seem more intriguing) to have arrived on a day when a school group would be touring the synagogue.  Eleven 8 year olds from a local Evangelical (just means Protestant in Germany) school.  For my work watching children this young in a Jewish space is particularly interesting.  They really haven´t learned much about the Holocaust or the Second World War quite yet (one child later mentioned something about having heard that bad things had happened to Jews - it was clearly a fuzzy subject though, and something he had overheard perhaps), and even learning about other religions and cultures at such a young age is probably a relatively new subject.  Kids this young are really open to new ideas, and they will also ask questions and suggest answers that older children and certainly adults might be too shy to ask.  So in the nerdiest way I can possibly say this - it is really exciting to watch children at this age interact in historic spaces.

Ms. Mendez had all of the children sit at 19th century school desks in the old school house.  There was a table set up for Shabbat, and the children were going to act our the Jewish sabbath, volunteers got to be the mother, the father, the daughter and the son.  It was really interesting to see how she explained the various traditions to the children, and how they reacted.  The concept of not working on Shabbat, and what exactly is considered "work" fascinated the children... even video games are work... shocking!  The idea that Jews do not eat pig (I mean, what else is there?).  It was interesting, and I´ll admit, almost uncomfortable, to hear the children say the blessings over the challah and wine and candles (funny how we realize what things we hold for "sacred").  I was surprised at the children´s patience and seriousness with subjects like male circumcision (I was surprised the subject even made it to a tour for third graders).

The synagogue in Gröbzig was sold by its congregation due to a shrinking population in 1934.  It became the town´s Heimat Museum (homeland museum), a common thing in German towns - basically like the attic/treasure chest for local history, and for this reason, it was not destroyed in the Pogrom Night of 1938 (recently learned that the preferred name for the events of Nov. 9, 1938 among German Jews is Pogrom Night and NOT Kristallnacht).

The building continued to be used as a "museum" although with basically no reference or association to its Jewish past through the war and during the GDR era.  At one point during the GDR a memorial to the victims of Fascism (basically the only way East Germany discussed or dealt with the Holocaust was to identify all victims as anti-fascists) was placed in front of the building - truthfully it was so large it basically obstructed view of the building. 

In 1988, in preparation for commemoriation of 50 years since the Pogrom Nacht, Erich Honeker, head of the GDR, decided to restore Gröbzig (as an example of rural Jewish life) and the Centrum Judaicum (as an example of urban Jewish life) in a political move that, the more I hear about, is generally confirmed as some sort of attempt to gain the favor of the West, namely the US.  It is still sort of a mystery to me how exactly that was supposed to work, but in any case, that does seem to be what got the ball rolling in Gröbzig.

Still it wasn´t until a few years later that Gröbzig, as a museum, became more than just an old building.  The breadth of work that Mendez and her very small team are doing is somewhat incredible, considering their middle of nowhere location.  She runs tours, maintains a history exhibit, entertains traveling art and music exhibitions, and even oversees overnight/weekend programs for youth to discuss Judaism, Tolerance, etc.  In the middle of the village stands a large modern building.  The first floor is not connected with the synagogue and functions as the youth center.  The top two floors are a hostel of sorts where student groups can come and stay overnight to work on projects in association with the Jewish museum (there is another building that acts as a workshop, but it is currently being renovated).

But despite the amazing facilities and fascinating historical buildings, the locals in Gröbzig are... uninterested.  Sometimes I am not sure what makes me sadder, when the nearest Jewish community has no interest in these old buildings or when the nearest non Jewish community has no interest in these buildings.  I was talking about this with one of Ms. Mendez´assistants who comes from Gröbzig. 

"I guess I understand how the villagers feel," I told her.  "I mean if I were a Gröbziger, maybe it would be hard, uncomfortable, unsettling to live across the street or one block over from the synagogue - to feel confronted everyday with the town´s past."

"Really?" she said, "Because I don´t understand."





It is amazing what strangers teach you sometimes in just a few words.  I can´t tell you how many times, in social contexts, I have hesitated to explain my work beyond saying, "I study old buildings".  I think a piece of me always wonders if I will somehow make Germans uncomfortable.  On one hand I am here to do my work, but on the other hand I am here to be a totally normal person in Germany.  I take the second part of my experience here as seriously as the first -  it was just days before leaving for Germany, on my 24th birthday, in the middle of the night, in the car, driving down nearly abandoned streets in Baltimore with one of my dearest friends, that I suddenly wondered if the two goals would be by nature in conflict.  Would Germans I met accept me as a neighbor, friend, etc., and not be self conscious or shy or agitated or overly curious that I study their interactions with Jewish space?

My colleague in Gröbzig was an important reminder to me that my own initial feeling that I had to be "overly sensitive" to Germans is just as uninformed, unsophisticated, and in the end unnecessary as Gröbziger´s shying away from or resenting an historic building. 

History is history.  Inevitably what we produce with it, and NOT that we are products of it, should define us.

I woke up early this morning to make sure I got to work on time, or rather early knowing that today I would lead my first tour of the Centrum Judaicum (in English, thankfully) for a school group from England.  The tour went well enough.  It was the first of many, and I know they will get smoother and better as I go, so no worries there.  A much more substantial impression was made on me in the process of preparing my tour.  One of the things that I like about the CJ, something similar to the Vilna, is that tour guides are given a lot of freedom in tour preparation.  Every tour group is different, every tour guide is different, and this is important to remember.  Especially when it comes to explaining religion and religious buildings, it is really crucial to be able to adapt tours to fit the circumstances.

At the Vilna I was ready to give tours basically half way through the first day I worked there.  Without sounding crazy, it is a bit hard to explain that I think of that building, the Vilna Shul, as an old friend, an elderly neighbor to whom you bring groceries and whose sidewalk you shovel in winter.  When I think of the number of hours we spent together, how well we knew each other, needed each other, explained and represented each other, I can´t help but personify 18 Phillips Street as a sort of love at first site (literally), a building that I moved across the country to be a part of, and that I miss at times, quite earnestly.  Although it has its own idiosyncracies (buildings, like people, are one of a kind), part of me felt that telling the story of Vilna was like retelling stories that my grandparents told me, and that their parents told them.  And when I took people on tours of the Vilna, no matter where they were from, or how old they were, I told them the story the way that I was told the story of Eastern European Jews, like a warm after-dinner conversation with family - equally rich in fact and anecdote and legend.

It took 4.5 months for me to be ready to give a tour of the New Synagogue Centrum Judaicum.  For one thing, German Jewish history is something I am still learning so much about.  There are the Schutzbriefe, the letters of protection, allowing limited numbers of Jews to settle in the Prussian Empire.  It is the home of the Jewish Enlightenment, and the Christian one for that matter, in fact Martin Luther and Moses Mendelssohn (father of the Jewish Enlightenment, and the guy who translated the torah into German) were born in cities just a few km away from each other, albeit a few centuries apart.  There is the process of 19th century emancipation, and the changes of identity that German Jews experience as they consciously think of themselves more and more as regular Germans who happen to be Jewish.  In this is the decision to build a building like the New Synagogue, simultaneously a symbol of permanence and pride in their Berlin community and an exotic "eastern" style Moorish architectural statement - a reminder that even an equal can remain to some extent an outsider.

And, of course, German Jewish history, particularly in Berlin, cannot be separated from the history of the Holocaust, even if I stand behind my belief that it is important not to let Holocaust history be the end or the beginning.  Still, it is an essential, gigantic, overwhelming part of German Jewish history.  And that being said, it´s a part of history I am still learning how to talk about, let alone teach about.  So, I guess I was a bit shocked at myself that reading up on the experience of Berlin´s Jews in the 30s and 40s to prepare for my tour kind of shook me up.  And I think part of it was that I am so fond of Germany, so comfortable here, so intrigued by the language and the people and the culture.  Though the holocaust never feels far away or long ago here, and my work certainly puts me in contact with this history more than the average person, I can usually (honestly I have to) approach it unemotionally (and that is not to say insensitively, but calmly and respectfully).  But reading about 800 years of German Jewish history in one night took my breath away.  Fortunately it was back by 10:15 this morning when it was time to talk to 24 high schoolers.

Later in the day I was invited by some friends to attend my first Fußball game in Germany.  It may seem like a strange activity to pair with this blog, but the game (which ended in a tie between Hertha Berlin and Energie Cottbus) was held at the Olympic Stadium, which was built for the 1936 Olympics, when Hitler presented his Third Reich to the world.  Just as much is remembered from that Olypics that was visible - the first running of the Olympic torch through various countries, the first televised games across the city - as what was not seen - namely the controlled, dehumanizing society Hitler was creating.  It is certainly not the last Olympics in which a government created an illusory society for the world stage.  The Olympic Stadium in Berlin is one of the few buildings from its era that sustained very little damage in the war, and so it is one of the few remaining examples of National Socialist architecture.

We were kind of wimpy and sat in the "family" seating section, as opposed to the general fan section, where you don´t actually have seats and just stand and jump and sing the whole time.  Next time I definitely want to see what it is like to be in that section though.  

I completely enjoyed my first really authentic German sporting experience, even though it was freezing cold, and by the end I couldn´t feel my feet.  As an American, football/soccer is a sport I am still learning to be enthusiastic about, but I am certainly trying.  A lot of people say that soccer (specifically during various World Cups) has been key in bringing a sense of pride and healthy patriotism back to a country that is understandably slow to wave its own flag. 

There were odd moments too.  Positively quirky was the jolly music played everytime Berlin, the home team scored a goal (it makes you want to grab a partner and skip in a circle), the way the man next to me gleefully shouted, "Du Scheiße!(you shit!)" every two seconds, the constant rhythmic jumping from the fan section, and the singing of pro Berlin songs to the theme of "Take me home country road".  Less pleasant was the way the fans extended their arms, often in enthusiastic cheer or anger, in a way that we all couldn´t help agreeing was eerily reminiscent of the Hitler salute.  Of course it wasn´t.  It had nothing to do with it.  Shame on us for reading too closely sometimes, for nitpicking at Germany.  But to an outsider, a first timer, it was too close, and in that stadium it just felt wrong.  In any case we happily created our own variation of a more friendly, open palmed, perhaps, arm gesture they might want to consider adopting.

Anger is a meadow.

February 2011.  They gathered in the streets.  Mobs of people.  And they were angry.  Angry with the status quo.  Angry at the will of the leadership.  And there were police.  In riot gear.  No one knew exactly what role they would play.

Rocks flew.  Windows broke.  Glass was everywhere.

No, this wasn´t Egypt.  It was Friedrichshain, Berlin, Wednesday, February 2, right in front of my apartment.  And no, they weren´s angry with Angela Merkel.  One of the last squats in Berlin had been cleared out days earlier by the police.  It was the end of an era.

After the fall of the Wall, Berlin became a haven for artists and hippies, a symbol of the grunge alternative culture of the 90s.  Neighborhoods like Kreuzberg in the West and Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain in the East were colonized by flocks of young people who didn´t want to pay rent or live by someone else´s rules.  But even hippies grow up sometimes, and little by little the city and a newer gentrified generation moved in, and alternative Berlin became a thing of the past.  That is, except for a few corners of Friedrichshain and other areas that held on for dear life.

Supposedly 2,500 police arrived at 14 Liebigstraße to clear the place of the 20 or so leftists living there.  Later that night 1,500 people protested.  I happened to walk right through the protests, by accident, as usual. A friend had offered to help me move a table into my apartment, and so we found ourselves carrying a coffee table through the streets of Friedrichshain just as the protesters were assembling themselves, not ideal, but it went ok, and now I sort of have furniture.

If the protests had been one day later, it would have been particularly awful, as Malka, the friend who had visited the week earlier, was on her way back to Berlin from a poorly timed trip to Egypt that ended in an emergency evacuation through Jordan and Frankfurt.  I won´t go into much detail, as that is her story to tell.  Basically I ended up with a few extra Malka days.  As a refugee camp we were a lot less scheduled than during the first part of her Berlin visit.  It´s even possible that I made up for my failed hostessing skills.  She got to meet my friends, the other fellows and friends and co-workers from Germany, and got a much more authentic look at my life here in Berlin.

The definition of Anger in german is actually meadow...

The worst hostess ever

There she is.  The worst hostess ever.  That´s me in case you have accidentally stumbled upon this blog via a Russian travel website - which consequently actually seems to have happened according to google statistics.  (In other fun news, this is me posing under Napoleon´s hat in the German History Museum in Berlin.  I once saw Napoleon´s (supposed) seat cushion in a museum in the Caribbean, and ever since I have basically been reconstructing the guy, one inanimate object at a time)

But anyway.  The worst hostess ever.  I suppose I am not as bad as that lady who lives in a Gingerbread house, entices young children to visit, locks them in cages and then fattens them up before eating them.  I am definitely nowhere near THAT bad.  I just get really excited about having guests.  Too excited maybe.  A little to eager to make sure everything goes perfectly...

 It is amazing what I learned about myself and my host country when two friends from Boston came to visit in January.

They were my first visitors, and I should give them a lot of credit for flying to Berlin in the middle of January.  Lucky for us all, January in Berlin was incredibly mild.  We haven´t had more than flurries basically since the beginning of the year.

Malka and Hannah arrived on a Sunday morning, and I met them at the airport (actually I woke up at 4 in the morning out of excitement).  It was pretty incredible to seem them after about 8 months and to get news of Beantown, currently under about 3 feet/1 meter of snow.  People from Boston taught me what winter really is, so it is fitting that the girls brought me long underwear and wool socks, even though they had to peel theirs off just about as soon as we reached my apartment (it was about 50 degrees F).  They also brought me chocolate chip cookies, baked by Malka´s mom.  YUM.  And, 3 boxes of matzah ball soup mix.  I have whined about my need for matzah ball soup for weeks now, and the call was finally heard.  Malka offered to bring me matzah meal so I could make my own, but I refused.  What I miss is the mix since that is what my grandma uses (she also puts the matzah balls in wantan soup broth . uhh just like in the old country...)  The cookies were rationed out by the three of us over the course of the week - the matzah ball mix I am saving (just having the boxes in my room on my table is a weird little snippet of home).

What we did:
Well, they got the Rachel style tour of Berlin, which means I walked too fast for way too long until they exhaustedly reminded me about things like, uh, food (I can´t help if I was raised to believe that eating lunch is a sign of personal weakness).  We looked at lots of buildings (Hannah is an architect), and I didn´t really know what most of them were, but I guessed anyway.  We stared at the canal a lot (I like water).  I gave them my first official tour of the Centrum Judaicum, and took them to the Berlin Wall memorial.  We sat in cafes and walked through farmers and crafts markets.  I introduced them to the Döner kebab (Turkish immigrants´fast food contribution to German cuisine... some kind of processed meat roasted on a spit, stuffed into flat bread with salad - it´s more popular in Germany than sausage!).  We visited the city of Potsdam, former capital of the Prussian empire, toured palaces and learned that gardens suck in the winter - no flowers and all the statues get covered with wooden boxes, visited one of the Russian BUKAS who lives in Potsdam who overfed us with all of the "german" food and beverage she had in her fridge (a very jet-lagged Malka fell asleep on her kitchen table).  We went to the city of Dessau to visit the Bauhaus - an important early 20th century achitectural school.


 We got a private tour (the benefit of being a tourist in Germany), and I attempted to translate the very very enthusiastic guide who talked for two hours with us (they were good sports) and then we stopped in Wittenberg where they saw the home and famous church where Luther posted his 95 Theses (ok, I sort of stole some of the tourism ideas from the Humboldt foundation study trip).  And while I worked they toured about a million museums (many of which I have not even visited yet) and due to a lack of cell phone, we had to be pretty old-fashioned and actually plan places and times to meet up.  Ok, I was sort of bossy, over enthusiastic about something, under enthusiastic about... others... but all in all, it was a great trip.

Observations we made together about Germany:
Every commercial property is either a bakery, a döner stand, or a shoe store.  Even non-German cuisine manages to incorporate cabbage in a shocking way.  Public transportation here is amazing (I told you I am sort of obsessed with public transportation).  They actually tell you when the next train is coming... and then it comes on time.  Americans smile a lot more at strangers (oh I have so much to say about this - I think the further east you travel in Europe the less socially acceptable it is to smile at strangers... apparently in Russia it means you are basically an idiot).

They learned some German words: I was really critical of pronunciation, despite the fact that my own is atrocious.  Some favorite words were "entschuldigung" which means "pardon", and is truly just fun to say, and "tschüss" which is "bye" and sounds like a combination of the word "juice" and "Jews"!  It can also be said in a sing song voice, "Choooooooooss" or made cutesy "Choooseeeee".

Then Hannah had to head back to Boston, and Malka stayed for a few more days.  At Malka´s suggestion we spent the day in a small town near Berlin, called Werder, relaxing, wandering around, enjoying the Sunday coffee and cake (kaffee und kuchen) culture in a small cafe in rural Germany.  Then we took two days and visited Dresden, a city I had not yet seen.

Malka had her first experience in a hostel (now that is a truly German travel experience), I learned about Malka´s obsession with cheese... she really likes it a lot... attended Malka´s first Opera (!!) - Carmen- at the famous SemperOper:

,












 saw the famously restored Frauenkirche, a church that was totally destroyed in WW2 bombing (literally there was a bit of a wall remaining:  (the dark area is the only part from the original building)

 and now the church is brand spanking new - not an uncommon occurrence in German post war, and post reunification "restoration" if you could even call complete rebuilding that.)  

We also visited the new synagogue in Dresden

 a giant cube shaped building meant to allude to the ancient temple, but which looks more like an Egyptian tomb.  Inside it is quite beautiful, 

 and I found it quite interested that the synagogue and the community center are divided by an empty courtyard where the old synagogue, destroyed in Kristallnacht, once stood (see, even on vacation I am still always at work).  New synagogues in Germany tend to represent some of the most innovative architecture of the last decade - and although my focus is of course historic buildings, it is quite understandable that congregations in large cities composed mostly of new immigrants from the former USSR, are making their own new, fresh marks on German city scapes.

All in all it was great to have Malka and Hannah visit.  I hope they enjoyed their first experience in Germany.


(Pictures of the first part of the trip will be added later.  Hannah has a fancy camera and was our personal photographer!)

February Resolutions

  Much like blogging, it often seems that by the time I get around to making New Year´s Resolutions, the optimal time has passed.  Rather than lazily letting life pass me by, forever remaining the same, flawed person you knew (and loved) last year, I have decided to initiate February Resolutions.  And, while I can´t tell you what those resolutions are (if you say them out loud then you can actually be held accountable for them, you know), I´ll just insinuate what a shame it is that it took me until now to get back on the blogging train.

 The New Year.  There are a lot of moments in the year when I like to be pensive and think about where I was last year, what has changed, the highs, the lows.  In fact, I will pretty contentedly take any and all opportunities to do so... where was I last February 9th... But, for some odd reason, New Years really doesn´t do that for me.  No matter how great or awful the year has been, by the time December 31 comes around, I am just ready to move on with it already.  Unfortunately I learned the hard way four years ago that if I am not actually awake at midnight to physically experience the change of the year, it takes me about 5 times as long to actually acknowledge that a new year has begun, and then I am off kilter for most of the year.  Yeah, I know, lame and pathetic.

Much like the ill-fated New Years of 2006-2007 (it was really one of the more absurd nights of my life), 2010-2011 was also celebrated in Italy, this time in a small village with new friends, gathered around a fireplace.  Without the familiar televised image of Time Square - an illuminated, electrified ball dropping,  thousands of people counting down, wearing ridiculous hats and sounding noise-makers, finding a face in the crowd to kiss, the holiday was nearly unrecognizable.  A minute or two after midnight, everyone began shouting Tanti Agori (which they had been shouting for days regarding nearly every occasion - Christmas, a birthday, anything worth wishing congratulations or well wishes) and kissing everyone in the room, everyone... twice.  And that was it, 2011.  It was real, the future, and I was in it.

A few days later it was time to leave Italy, this time by train.  For 17 hours.  It wasn´t supposed to be 17 hours.  But this is a new year, and none of us knows the rules yet.  In any case, it was a beautful 17 hours.  If they could figure out how to build the tracks, I would happily take a train to the moon.  I could write a whole blog about how much I love and appreciate public transportation, but for now I will just tell you that despite delays, missing a train, changing trains 6 times, and getting locked in the wrong train with no electricity (and being the only person with enough survival instinct to bang endlessly on the train door until someone noticed us), I still love trains.  Love ´em.  It helped that I met the most delightful Italian Social Anthrologist, with whom I shared the journey, cups of coffee, breath-taking views of the snow-covered Alps, and observations about the world.

At the end of the day, I was back in the Berlin Train Station, homeward bound, and then back in the Centrum Judaicum, doing my thing.  And this is 2011.  And this is where I will spend it.  And that´s alright by me.

Rachel and Bing discuss the birth of Christ aka Christmas in Italy 2010

Christmas.  The Christmas season in the US is said to start the day after Thanksgiving.  This always seemed a tad long to me.  And then I moved to Germany.

Christmas season in Germany begins around the first week of October, when chocolate santas (better known here as The Christmas Man) and countless varieties of gingerbread start appearing in stores.  I think it´s just that in the US we have so many other holidays that have been inflated by Hallmark over the years - Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, that there isn´t room in the stores to start stocking... stockings... until a bit later (admittedly the first two holidays mentioned haven´t really been over-marketed yet, but I won´t be surprised when they start selling Columbus cookies (spice cookies would seem appropriate) - it´s just a matter of time).

Anyway, I think Christmas is great.  What isn´t always so great or easy, is explaining to people that I don´t celebrate it.  I thought it would be easy.  Well-intentioned, concerned, caring people would ask me: Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?  And I would say, I am Jewish... end of story.  Instead this just illicited puzzled looks and a repeat of the question, "Yes, but why aren´t you going home for Christmas?" as though my response were a totally unrelated nonsensical utterance akin to:

well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"

my hypothetical nonsensical answer: "I like cake!"

wip: "That´s nice, but seriously, why no Christmas?"

To avoid a long explanation about differing views among religions regarding messianism (I had this conversation with someone once a few years ago, and just about the only thing you can actually say is: "my ancestors just weren´t convinced" about 10 times) I have considered some other, more definitive responses:

well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"

my possible answer:  "My family was consumed by man-eating lions."

wip: "I am so sorry, I will never ask you about Christmas... or going to the zoo... again"

or

well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"

my possible answer: "My family lives on Mars, and by the time I got home to celebrate, it would be Christmas 2011"

wip: "That is indeed too far to travel, better stay here."

Fortunately for me, however, I did have excellent Christmas plans with a wonderful family.  

So just before Christmas, I headed off to another country that knows how to rock Weihnacht (xmas), Italy!  

To make a long wonderful story short and less interesting, four years ago I happened to befriend an extremely nice Italian girl while I was living in Vienna.  Though she barely knew me, she invited me to come to spend Christmas with her family, who lives about an hour outside Venice.  It was amazing, and by the end of the visit I had begun a wonderful friendship and had been basically adopted by a great Italian family.

It´s hard to put into words exactly how it feels to return after several years to a place that holds such distinctive memories as those I have from my first Christmas in Megliadino San Vitale - to step off at the same tiny rural train station, to see once more the same medieval city walls engulfed in mist, to hear again a familiar and yet still very much foreign language.  Although four years isn´t really very long, I think it is through instances like this that you can actually detect the passage of time in your own life - that people around you have grown taller, shorter, more wrinkled, less baby-faced, louder, quieter, that they have been somewhere, changed in some way, despite a backdrop that is more or less consistent.

Megliadino San Vitale is a village of 2,000 people in the Padua Province of the Veneto Region of Italy.  It is one of 10 small towns and cities that together make up the "dieci comune".  The largest town is called Montagnana, a molto medievale (very medieval) city of about 10,000.

I had a great time getting to know the people, not only in my friend Giorgia´s wonderful family, but the many others in her village and the neighboring ones who took the time to speak with me.  It wasn´t easy.  I don´t really speak Italian, and most of them don´t really speak English, but I am a big believer that if you care enough you will find a way to communicate, and we did.  I can now speak a bit of Veneto dialect... most importantly I can understand things like "sentate e manya" (sit and eat), an order often given to me by    Giorgia´s Nonna.

Here is Nonna Bionda making homemade pasta.  Nonna Bionda is an incredible octogenarian who wakes up everyday at the crack of dawn to cook from scratch (her house is known by her family as the hotel and supermarket to all), terrorize the family cat, insist constantly that I am not eating enough - she once smacked me for neglecting to tell her that I don´t really like salami after sort of eating it for a week (I was being polite!).

I am incredibly thankful to the whole Munaro family for having been so welcoming to me (for a second time).  They generously took me into their home, shared their traditions with me, and treated me like a member of the family.  

Fortunately for me, I happen to have another friend from a nearby part of Veneto region, and one of the Chinese fellows, Bing, was visiting him for Christmas.  So, Giorgia and I headed to the city of Vicenza to see the guys.

I stayed with the guys for a few nights in Luca´s village Trissino at the foot of the little Dolomites.  We helped Bing prepare a 10 course Chinese dinner for Luca´s extremely patient family (they tried everything really enthusiastically despite being unaccostomed to a lot of new very spicy flavors).  As Luca´s camera broke midway through the cooking process, I took on the role of, "capturing the process".  Since this post is getting pretty long, I think I will just end with some photos and captions of Trissino, Chinese dinner, and our visit to nearby Verona.  Bing was particularly thrilled to learn that Jews "traditionally" eat Chinese food on Christmas... And of course, on the drive to Verona, Luca decided to see who was more educated on  Christmas, an American Jew or a Chinese Muslim raised under communism... hence "Rachel and Bing discuss the birth of Christ"... I totally won :)

Not spicy.

Spicy

The guys.

                                           Getting pretty good at taking pictures of myself.

                                          But I still need some work.

Verona

Trissino

                                The Little Dolomites.