I arrived in Berlin on Wednesday May 13. Only one other student had arrived early as well and we had some adventures (that I'll write about at another time).
The next day was the first official day of the program, so people started to show up throughout the morning. That morning I met with my classmate Robert and my T.A. Andrew to go to lunch.
On the way back to the hotel we ended up stopping to try to translate a sign on a gate (thanks Google for you're fabulous translating app that works without an internet connection).
The gate ended up being to a graveyard. We theorized that we could walk through the graveyard to an exit on the other side to get to the road that our hotel is on.
In reality we were farther away from our hotel than we anticipated, and there was not connection to our road. So we just ended up wandering around this very old cemetery (most of the people buried there had been buried before the 1970s).
It was amazing to realize how much these people lived through in this city.
And how much this city itself had been through.
We couldn't quite figure out what had happened that led to this pile of grave-markers. Since we were in the former East Berlin, it could have been any number of things.
It is a beautiful, peaceful and eerie place.
But the reminder that some people didn't make it to see the end of World War II was constantly around the corner.
And the constant reminder of those who died too young.
We saw this huge tree near the end of our exploration, and it occurred to me how much this tree must have seen and managed to live through in it's lifetime.
This tree lived through the rise and fall of East Berlin. It probably lived through the complete destruction of Berlin during World War II. Maybe it even lived through World War I.
We'll never know for sure what happened here and the only people who were there can never tell us.
We only have the information that we can see.
No matter how tragic it is.
The history is there for us to absorb.
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