first days of confirmation trip 2015

I’m finally getting a chance to sit down and jot down some notes from this wonderful trip on which we (ten Temple Emanu-El teenagers, Yaffa, our friend and travel agent from Israel, Petr our European guide and Richard our bus driver) have embarked. I apologize for any errors in writing… My editing will be cursory at best, with my limited time.

We took off on Father’s Day Sunday with some enormous delays. We were told that there were technical difficulties with the plane in front of us on, first in order to take-off. What were “technical delays” seemed to entail a plane surrounded by emergency vehicles with their flashers going off. Hmmm. An hour and a half delayed, we realized we wouldn’t be making our connecting flight in London. Somehow, though, we were all calm. Things would work out. We have such wonderful teenagers in our community, everyone calm, collected and relaxed. And everything worked out, in the end. We only had to wait at Heathrow for a few hours— they booked us all on the next flight going out. I have to say— the British flight attentants were among some of the best I’ve had. Lovely, kind and charming.

And of course, a long flight was not completely without being kicked off by the traveler’s prayer– a prayer for wellbeing and safety before embarking on any journey. We gathered together before departure and prayed together, and each shared our excitements for the journey ahead.

Coming to Berlin, we met up with our compatriots on the other side of the pond— Yaffa, our wonderful travel agent who is also staying with us as a female chaperone, Petr, the young Czeck gentleman who serves as our general guide through Europe for the duration of the trip, Richard, our kind bus driver who speaks little English, and Alex, our local on-the-ground Berliner tour guide, who just so happens to be a Canadian expat. We’re everywhere it seems.

Being late to arrive, we had little time for touring Berlin, but we made sure to stop at the Reichstag– the 200-odd-year-old German parliament building, highly secure, quite beautiful, pock-marked with the bullets of history (literally and figuratively). We climbed up into the post-modern dome at the top (apparently the fourth dome on this building), turning out not to be the coppola of the building below, but rather a space in its own right made of glass, metal and mirror, offering spectacular views of the entire city, fizzing ramps to the viewing deck and the top, and funneling light and water, through its mirrors and open oculus to the rooms below. Like much of Berlin, old and new together.

After this brief hike up, having been up for more than a day and a half, it was high time for dinner. Our first Berlin meal was appropriately traditional cuisine- German goulash with a local variation on potato gnocchi and beet-soaked cabbage. As a might have expected, the vegetarian options for typical German cuisine was not so exciting (though it was relatively satisfying)– a fried egg atop cooked vegetables and mashed potatoes. Apparently multicultural Berlin has a wealth of vegetarian and even vegan restaurants. I guess these are more for the modern palate restaurants and less from the more tradition cuisines. I was quite happy, however, with the Bavarian cream dessert. With sour cherry compote and a slice of star fruit garnished with a maraschino cherry, it was spectacularly uplifting. A sweet end to a long journey.

A good dinner it seems had to be complimented by a great breakfast. Israeli breakfast, you’ve found you’re match. Breads, cheese, meats for those who like, smoked fish, coffee, juices, eggs, vegetables, pastries… Everything was there. I could have eaten five chocolate croissants, they were the perfect balance of airy and rich (I limited myself to one per day).

A testament to the early morning creativity of some of our students– wishing to run but unable to use the seemingly broken treadmill and not allowed to venture outside without the group, they used the long halls of our hotel as a track. Boring but effective (so they say), and at six am, no one heard a thing. Thankfully, by the time I made it to the gym in the evening, the treadmill was fully functions, with a beautiful view of rainbow moss and flowers on the roof with surrounded by older churches, forests and Bauhaus apartments.

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We got to visit a number of important sites in east Berlin (most historic sites are in east Berlin, as West Berlin was mostly destroyed in the war)- Paris square, Bradenburg Gate, the Holocaust memorial, and the site of Hitler’s Bunker. Actually, this was the Jewish holocaust memorial, on an enormous parcel of land inexpensive downtown. It seems that the German government has planned 12 different memorials to different groups murdered and they’ve built four so far (two others about which we learned were the memorial to the homosexuals, and the memorial to the Roma).

After, we visited the old Jewish quarter, replete with plaques on buildingS and on the ground, making it particularly evident that Jews once lived here, and we’re very present. The great synagogue is preserved as best as it can (part was bombed out by the allies), and it’s sheer enormity is most impressive. In its day, it comfortably seated 3000 people, and it was a full house. Today, it’s a museum with bullet holes still on the front facade.

The Daniel Libeskind Jewish museum was next on our trip – an edifice telling so many stories about the Jewish people of Germany. Meaningfully, it does not only focus on the years of the holocaust– there is so much Jewish history in Germany, dating back centuries, and our story, and presence, is still ongoing. Libeskind actually designed this idea into the building, with the main stairway continuing past the top floor a few feet, showing that the story is without an end as of yet (and thankfully). There are actually four Jewish communities in Berlin– Liberal (Reform), Conservative, Orthodox, and Sephardic Orthodox. Sadly, Jewish unity is not at the forefront of the communal mind here. It seems that many of the different Jewish pockets cannot stand one another. It’s still true that there’s always your synagogue and the synagogue you don’t go to.

Something I’ve been thinking about- it’s a mitzvah to never again live in Egypt. After four hundred years of slavery and divine abandonment, we decided as a people to never go back. Except we did. Maimonides even reached one of the highest levels any Jew has achieved in the Muslim world, working as chief physician to the grand vizier. In Spain, site of a Jewish paradise passed, the inquisition and the expulsion, Jews have once again found their home and gathered. The government has even recently extended a right if return to all Jews of Sephardic descent. Likewise, the German government has offered citizenship to anyone forced out during the war. And, they’re doing their best to own their atrocities and show the Jewish people that they’ll do whatever it takes to make life in Germany good for them once again. Never live in Germany again- a modern mitzvah, and at the same time, come and take back what was once home. So many layers of conflicting emotions.

We met in the evening with a number of German teens for dinner, getting to know counterparts living both very similar and different lives. Everyone seemed to really get along and have a good time. You really can’t experience another place or people without actually getting to know locals. Humanizing can make all the difference.

This morning we left for Prague, stopping at Terezin, the site of the show-ghetto and concentration camp. An awful place, this is where the Nazis
’staged’ model camps to show the international Red Cross that Jews were in fact treated well- with decent restroom facilities (used on the three days the Red Cross was present), soccer matches, theatre, visual arts and poetry. Except, the overcrowded barracks in the smaller part of the fortress were left out of sight from the media. I’d seen so many pictures and movies of these camps. To see them in person is to experience depravity in a whole new way. It seems that the Nazis chose Terezin because it was already an perfect site, being a nearly impenetrable fortress built long before. Just as none could come in, this time none would get out.

On a different note, Prague is absolutely charming. Petr took us out on an evening 4-mile run through the old city and parks. We ran by churches, over bridges, through crowded streets filled with patio cafes and bars, and even past an intense heavy-metal band playing at the port. A nice change of pace to this afternoon’s intensity. Looking forward to tomorrow.