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.