I visited Berlin yesterday. I had no idea what I was in for. It's one thing to study something in school or remember back to when I was a kid and saw the Wall coming down on the news, but going to the city itself (having done no research of any kind beforehand) seemed like a very abstract idea; I was not actually all that excited. This continued even right up to the point where we got off the train and started walking around. I turned to Joel (one of the guys I'm here with) and said, "Yep... it's pretty much a city." Had it not been for our amazing, mind-blowingly great tour guide, I doubt I would have enjoyed it all that much, simply because I would never have known where to look.
If you're ever in Berlin, you MUST use this company: http://www.insidertour.com/
And you ABSOLUTELY MUST request Brian as your tour guide. The experience would not have possibly been the same without him there to walk us through the story of the city.
We spent the entire day on foot; we walked around from 10:30am to 6:00pm in the cold and rainy weather. I hadn't slept the night before and I hadn't eaten anything all day. But the thought of stopping the tour or leaving for a moment to grab a bite to eat never even occurred to me. That is how wonderful this tour was; even after being awake for 32+ hours, I still wanted to hear more of what he had to say.
The story of Berlin is something that I cannot hope to summarize via the limited medium of text, but I'm going to do my best. Brian managed to spend the entire day building up the sad, hopeless, bitter plight of Berliners during the years of the iron curtain that I could not help but feel deep sympathy for these anonymous people whom I had never met. They were cut off from their loved ones from August 12, 1961 until November 9, 1989. Families torn apart, grandparents separated from newborns they hadn't yet met, newlyweds who lost all contact with the rest of their families, and the list goes on. In the final speech of the day, Brian took all of these oppressive feelings we had been given throughout the day, all of the sad memories we had shared with these anonymous people, and completely blew the lid off of them when he told the most moving story of the night the wall come down you could possibly ever hope to hear. I was deeply moved. It was absolutely beautiful.
I'm about twenty five years old. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose contact with someone for twenty-eight years, because I can't even imagine what twenty-eight years must be like. That's how long these people had to live in isolation from those that they loved. Thanks to Brian for helping make that real to me.
The man loves that city to death, and I understand why now. I would live there in a heartbeat. If I come back here in a few years to get a job, I would love to live in Berlin. Or Weimar. Or anywhere, really. This is a wonderful country.
Now I've just got to learn some German.
