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| I could see the Brandenburg Gate in the distance. I started walking toward it along the promenade of the Unter den Linden. | I was getting excited as I approached the Brandenburg Gate. This is the end of the Unter den Linden. | |
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| Finally here at the Brandenburg Tor, the Brandenburg Gate where I saw many tourists from all over the world. They all looked so happy as though they had achieved their goals! | By the way, there is a small house named the Raum der Stille, the Room of Silence, right adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate (near my left shoulder) where everyone is welcome to visit and momentarily escape traffic noises and the crowds, relax, rest, or meditate. It’s easy to pass by and little to see in there, and yet, it was worth visiting. | |
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I was a little tired, and took a break, sitting at the table outside Starbucks right beside the Brandenburg Gate. It had great views. And carrot cake was so delicious as well. |
But soon, I felt a bit surreal, sitting and having latte at Starbucks, viewing the Brandeburg Gate, a symbol of German reunification, in a place flanked by the embassies of the United States and France. |
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As I went to the other side of the wall, I found the picture of the day of the fall of the wall displayed. It was hard to believe the walls existed right here, to divide the city from 1961 to 1989. |
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And just south of the Brandenburg Gate, I reached the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It is the memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. I was so overwhelmed by what I was seeing, and was left speechless. It opened to the public in 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II. It is a collection of 2,711 concrete slabs of different heights, arranged in a grid pattern purposefully placed on a sloping field, which was like a vast maze. |
I slowly stepped inside the memorial and walked through the cold, hard concrete slabs on uneven ground. It made me feel uncanny and soon disoriented and lonely. |
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I then felt so dark and distant from the world. As I walked further down into it, the slabs around me got taller and taller, and swallowed up. I felt myself so small, even insignificant. I understood what the architect of this memorial really meant by it. It was what Jews must have felt like, taken to an unfamiliar place after being torn their families apart. |
How overwhelming was this site. I headed on to the the Berliner Philharmonie. |
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