touring Berlin

Sometimes photo-ops are just overwhelming...

It has been really hard adjusting to a city where there is a picture perfect moment with every corner you turn. I don't want to constantly be recording every single moment. But, at the same time I am torn by constructing a living memory that I can carry on as a keepsake for years to come. And for the meantime, share with my friends and family who may or may not ever live to see the sights I am seeing right now. But I think I have been for so long yearning to escape to somewhere new, that I just want to be accepted as a part of the community instead of a foreigner. I'm sick of constantly feeling different and looking for people to connect with, and I have been approaching Berlin as if I already am accepted here.. even without knowing the language. I mean I haven't had too much trouble trying to communicate.. I am sensitive and apologetic at my primitive language skills and people don't seem to bothered by it here. Berliners have a special skill for living among differences and still getting along, at least for the most part.

Nevertheless, back to the topic of the day.

Okay, so it was irritating trying to coordinate getting on the right tour bus which came every like 30-45 minutes when it was supposed to come every fifteen. The construction in Berlin is terrible right now.. and that's a whole 'nother dumb politically corrupted issue that maybe I'll post about later..
Anyway, so by the time we finally got on a bus and had some lunch it had taken so much time that the day had become something that we all kind of wanted to escape from. So yeah, it was cool to go tour the Reichstag and look at the view - but it is so much historical facts and trivia bits to take in at once. Maybe it would have been better to go as a personal group with maybe one historian who could just casually take us and not feel like we are basically hurrying to wait for all these generic tours. I don't know, I shouldn't put too much thought into these things.

Anyway, it was beautiful, and dense with history. I mean to leave the Reichstag and to go into the city makes you look for more - because the tour just pointed out all these new buildings and identifying parts of Berlin that really did help ground my desire to explore. Plus, seeing one of the pieces of the wall that still tands is definitely chilling in it's own right. My mind began to try and reconstruct it for myself in what is such a modernized and restless cultural center, and it was basically impossible. For the most part, people here have forgotten it existed because of how the consumer and cultural industry has united this ground that was previously so divided. Yet, as far as the people in the more center parts of the East and West - they know a difference, and the city still knows a difference. Again, this must be a post for later at a time when I can expound further.

I am looking forward to getting a chance to see the East Side Gallery and then two different concentration camps. Although I did see the Holocaust memorial, I just feel like it isn't quite the same... I mean it is an interesting memorial because it is abstract - full of different height rectangular concrete blocks that is fairly expansive.  I'll post a link to a picture below..
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSSbaMchWhnCbNCN8pkdLtY3c2Wg_hPVEjlvLLEG9bgdoxeNcpD

I guess the big issue with this memorial in Berlin is that a lot of people hang out near the statues, eat lunch, relax.. and it's just a debate whether or not that's appropriate. I mean the artist intended for it to be up to interpretation and not so rigid on how the Holocaust should be remembered, but is it still in the domain of appropriate to treat it as if it is a sort of park for fun and entertaining? Sensitive issues.

Anyway, back to my original dilemma. Today I was much better at taking some pictures (I even took one of myself and another fellow!) I am a part of some group pictures once in a while, so I know that I'll locate my face in Berlin via some camera/facebook postings. I think I am getting slowly better at writing in my personal journal and keeping this updated. Perhaps by the time I finally get comfortable with balancing collecting notes/pictures and enjoying my life here, it will be time to go. I am trying not to think about this, but sometimes it is hard not to foresee the end when I feel like my time here is far too limited.

As I say about many things...
as long as you are breathing, you better be fighting.
Or in this case, simply thinking about more than the end.

I really do believe death is more seriously a state of mind than a physiological characteristic.