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Berlin, Germany
Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Last travel blog for this trip. After a day in Dresden, and three in Berlin, tonight I sleep in Vancouver.

Berlin was primarily spent in visiting, not touring, but I did manage to get to the Jewish Museum, which I found very engaging, the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, which I didn't, the Pergamon Museum whose massive indoor archaeological reconstructions from ancient Greek, Arabian and Babylonian cities are overwhelming, as well as long walks through trendy neighbourhoods, squatter neighbourhoods, and the art gallery which is the remains of The Wall.

On reflection, my glimpses of Prague, Dresden and Berlin offered not only thoughts about urban renewal, but a metaphor about personal renewal. After days spent in Prague, wandering among the spires, architecture and narrow streets of Europe's last great intact city, I moved to Dresden and its deliberately restored/replicated heritage structures, modern functional architecture and bomb-created broad plazas. Polar opposites in war experience and in surface feel. Yet Dresden has its beautiful walkways along the river, an energy in the streets (they were holding a Dixieland festival, with outdoor bandstands featuring every German band that could play Dixie plus a lot more that couldn't), a respect for memoried past mixed with a forward look. Prague carried the psychological scars of 50 years of oppression, mixing history with hustle. And Berlin does a dance - prewar and former East Berlin sectors being restored to old glory or replaced by massive glass&steel ugliness, plus an activist anti-gentrification movement resisting the $ocial cost$. (Reminiscent of Vancouver's anti-Pidgin protests, I saw a sign beside one massive encampment near the former Wall - "We don't want no yuppy flats. We are happy with our rats.")

But the personal metaphor is not hard to find, especially as this is my time of memory and moving forward. Memory offers me a cityscape of good times with Ruth, of an intact culture and beauty. All that was firebombed in the Dresden of cancer. How to rebuild? What to recreate as before and what to build new? Am I a squatter in myself, torn between the rats of my pain and my yuppy Golden Years?

Ruth and I began this trip in Vienna, to spend time with the family she embraced but that she'll never get to know. We ended it in Berlin, seeing how Jane's daughters are moving forward with their careers and relationships - the daughters that Ruth took under wing in Vancouver to be the daughters she never had. And along the way she took me to Prague so I could start to meet new people in my new independent life.

Three weeks of museums, of ruined castles, of language challenge, of walks through woods and vineyards, of Jewish history and European conflicts, of fruit dumplings and white asparagus, of good beer, good coffee, good conversation, of architecture and of gardening, of art galleries and concerts, of helpful officials and stupid assholes, of excitement of discovery and of tears of loss. Thank you, my beloved, for bringing me here and being beside me.

And thank you to those who chose to eavesdrop.

Avi

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Comments

I am a grateful eavesdropper...you write beatifully, and are a lesson in personal strength and resilience ...,good on you!,...
See you on Hornby soon, for dinner, wine, a puff or two, and some special Avi stories...
Richie From Richard L., on May 23, 2013 at 04:12PM
Welcome home brave and gentle soul. Thank you for the privilege of eavesdropping. From Leora, on May 29, 2013 at 12:15AM
so glad to travel with you on this part of the journey ... much love From Carol Rose, on Jun 3, 2013 at 04:33AM
Finally got to a wifi zone & I too discovered german pouring out of my mut (maul?). Peg & me got to see & listen to a Mozart string quartet in Mozart's home in Vienna in a perfectly acostic small domed room; we were enthralled. We loved Prague & Budapest, but Budapest was disturbing & recently they elected a very right wing possibly antisemitic govt. by the way 'en' is Spanish, in German it's 'aus' I think?! Auf Wiedersehn,Paul
Incidently those incredibly long german words that are strung together are called 'tapeworms'.Apparently 67 letters is a world record! From Paul KIrmmse, on Jun 5, 2013 at 10:32PM

Pictures & Video

 
At the Berlin Wall
At the Berlin Wall
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