My dormmate – or rather, roommate, since it’s only a two-bedder – is a young German university student from Stuttgart. Here with his girlfriend. Later find out they're both studying physics. He says she's interested in theoretical physics at the atomic and sub-atomic level. I tease her that she might as well be doing pure maths instead. She protests and says she'd get bored of it because it’s so abstract. I say, what's the point writing equations and deducing physical behaviour that can never be experimentally tested? That’s just as abstract. She just smiles and doesn’t take the bait. Either smarter or more mature than I expected. Or both.
I’ve decided to take a tour to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp today. This was the first camp built by the Nazis just outside a village called Oranienburg an hour or so outside Berlin. This was meant to be a “model” camp, where they would test various new ideas before implementing them in other camps elsewhere on a larger scale.
I’m a little late for my tour and end up having to run the last 2 km or so. Sweating in cold climes feels so different from sweating in Singapore. The perspiration pours down after a while but it’s not icky-sticky and dries off quickly once I stop running.
I’ve chosen a tour run by a non-profit called Mosaic Tours. I think they only do this tour. Sachsenhausen doesn’t charge an entry fee and I’m told that Mosaic contributes part of its takings towards maintenance of the camp. The group is small today and quite diverse. Teddy from New Yawk (he had a New York accent you could cut with a hammer), Eugenia from Venezuela (pronounced “Yo-HAY-nia”), her other half (who somehow missed the round of introductions), a Slovakian girl who lives in Geneva whose name I’ve forgotten but it began with an M, and our Scottish guide Ryan (30, about 5’9” or 5’10”, black-rimmed glasses, in case you ever want to take the same tour I took) who's lived in Germany for more than 7 years.
Ryan at the start of the tour
The tour is absolutely terrific, mostly because of Ryan. I’m physically affected early on and can't really speak or take pictures for a while. Standing on the very ground on which an uncountable number of atrocities have been committed, for no real reason, not only by the Nazis but also later by the Soviets and then the East German communists, is a surreal experience. Or I should say, an experience that made these events very real, not just something you read about or watch as a film. In the same vein, I'm sure my writing about this here isn't giving you the heeby-jeebies. You just have to experience it yourself.
Despite the initial feeling of dreary despair I’d got when entering Berlin the previous day, the city has really grown on me and I consider changing my onward train ticket to Munich to allow me to extend my stay by a day. For instance, there's a huge number of museums that I don't have time to explore. I'm not normally a museum person but some of the descriptions seem too good to pass up. It eventually turns out that I’ve unknowingly managed to get myself a discounted train ticket (glory be!), which doesn’t allow itinerary changes (unglory be). I’ll just have to come back another time.
More pictures here (no captions, free to access) or here (with captions but requires Facebook log-in).
This post is the fourth in a series. The full series:
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