My Time in Germany

I arrived in Germany on the eve of the election. Political ads complemented by impassioned graffiti decorated Germany's cold concrete cities. In conversations with German friends made, I looked at the situation in a way that news articles can't quite see. It's no secret that Germany has a tragic history - history in a very recent sense. It's impossible to ignore. Even on the train coming from Amsterdam, the aged buildings of Europe that Americans find so fascinating phase out as you arrive in Cologne, which was near-completely destroyed during WWII. The sidewalks are memorials in the form of golden square plates with engraved names. There are remnants of devastation all over, you just have to know what you're looking at. So, elections are not taken lightly. The German consciousness is well aware of what can happen when someone is granted too much power.

In conversations with German friends made, it was impossible to ignore the election. Before leaving home in July, I intentionally opened my mind to be changed. What a waste this year would be if I returned the same!? I've had a sincere change of heart on more than a few issues in the past 8 months but one completely unexpected happened late at night in a German pub. Mandatory conscription. There are many places around the world that, for different reasons, require service in some form or another: Singapore, Israel, Switzerland. I never expected to hear a group of young people wishing that their country had mandatory conscription. They said that mandatory conscription would diversify the military in terms of political leaning. They told me that there is a tendency for those who sign up for the military to be quite conservative and, sometimes, German nationalists. To entrust the safety, protection, and military power in the hands of, essentially, one side of the political spectrum could make anyone uneasy. An idea, which had always made me thoughtlessly uncomfortable, began to make a lot of sense.

Berlin is a museum lover's dream. Not only are the museums numerous and impressive, many of them are close together, confined within Museum Island. I was especially moved by an exhibit in The Germany History Museum called "Roads Not Taken. Or: Things Could Have Turned Out Differently." The exhibit provided context for a few important history-defining moments and imagines what could have been otherwise. The one that stuck out most to me was about a failed assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler. What would have happened if the assassins had succeeded? Another asked, what would have happened if a particular bridge had fallen? Is a well-built bridge the reason that the U.S. chose to drop the atomic bombs on Japan instead of Germany? What could have been if the bombs had been dropped there? Or not dropped at all?

On a more touristy note, I visited the Cologne Cathedral with my friend Fenja, who I met in Malaysia. She and I climbed to the very top, up an eerie and narrow spiral staircase. The intricacy of the Cologne Cathedral is unmatched. After Cologne, I headed to Düsseldorf for a couple of days. There, I saw Little Tokyo, a Japanese enclave in Germany. Then I went to Hamburg, a religiously diverse city with Middle-Eastern and Asian influences. The majority of my ten days in Germany, though, were spent in Berlin.

Recently, I have been focused on the Jewish experience. Exploring the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam to Berlin's Jewish History Museum and the various of memorials around Germany has prepared me as I begin my two-week collaborating with the Krakow Jewish Community Center. As I'm writing this, I'm only a few days in to my time in Krakow and I feel incredibly fulfilled. Krakow was a city that I arrived in without expectations or preconceived notions of what it would be like. It's beautiful, comfortable, and feels like somewhere I could see myself living.