London and Berlinby Gwen Lindberg The sixteen sophomores in the 2017 Fall Europe 1 Program began the

London and Berlin

by Gwen Lindberg

The sixteen sophomores in the 2017 Fall Europe 1 Program began their academic year by spending seven days in London and ten days in Berlin. In a class studying European Politics, taught by Rainer Braun, we spent our mornings in three-hour self-directed lectures based on readings assigned the night before. Our afternoons were spent on experiential education excursions (okay, field trips), where we explored historic and famous locations, museums, and monuments across the two cities. Our evenings were spent wandering the cities on our own, finding little jewels and eating an enormous amount of delicious food. (If you happen to find yourself in London with a free afternoon, try to find one of the culture containers spread across the city; I particularly recommend the one called Artworks Elephant at the tube station Elephant and Castle. They are little shipping crate container areas that have been taken over and transformed into little ethnic restaurants. If you’re looking for places to eat in Berlin, take the train to Rosenthaler Platz; you will find a huge selection of restaurants with food that ranges from schnitzel and spaetzle to kimchi and kebabs, with special 24-hour homemade pasta places.)

If you haven’t already guessed, this year’s sophomore class is entire, completely, irrevocably food-motivated. Ask us if we are interested in going somewhere, and you’ll probably get a mixed response. Tell us there will be a snack…and every single person will show up. We eat good while talking about other food, while thinking about more food. What a wonderful way to live.

Our lectures in London primarily focused on the concept of the state and the creation of modern nation-states. We studied the interaction between nationalism and the state and its effect on governance. We visited Buckingham Palace, and as exciting as seeing a secret passage behind a mirror was, we were all rather disappointed we didn’t get a glimpse of either the Queen or her corgis. We toured the house of the EU Parliament and learned of some of the rules that give British politics a rather stuffy reputation. Our day at the UK House for the Representatives to the EU was spent understanding the ramifications of Brexit and the public’s dissatisfaction with the way in which information was provided before the vote. Thursday included a visit to the Black Cultural Archives, where we had the opportunity to study authentic newspaper clippings from the civil rights movements across the UK. Though our original plans to tour a mosque on that Friday fell through, we did have the chance to view an exhibition of Islamic Feminism, with small yet incredibly powerful displays designed to elicit personal responses from each viewer.

Berlin was spent focusing on the interactions between nation-states and how the formations of such relations continue to echo post-war sentiments to this day. Our visit to the Topography of Terror on our first day in Berlin set the stage for us to focus on historical contexts mirrored in today’s political climate. We visited Checkpoint Charlie, and we were captivated by a collection of personal photographs from the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and an interactive, panoramic display of the wall just before its fall. The exhibit made history a tangible thing, something we could see and hear and almost touch. We also visited the German National Museum, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals Under Nazism, and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. Each memorial elicited a different response; the abstract blocks of the first brought unexpected emotions to the front for many of us, while others were more affected by the interactive aspect of the Homosexual Memorial or the calm pool and engraved stones of the Sinti and Roma Memorial.

Our visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was powerful and thought-provoking for all of us, regardless of whether or not this was our first visit to a camp. The usage of concentration camps in the post-WWII era was a new concept for many of us, and it was equally fascinating to see the monument set up in the middle of the camp honoring only the communist prisoners in the Soviet era.

Our class agreed in unison that the most interesting afternoon excursion was the walking tour we had early on, led by a Syrian refugee, who tied post-WWI and -WWII events to the current violence in Syria. The connections made during this tour were something that never would have occurred to me on my own, and it has inspired me to look more deeply into the interconnectedness of history.

The first two weeks of the semester flew by as we reconnected with classmates and rekindled our spirit of passion and adventure for the upcoming semester in Spain.