Day 6 was another day of no plans until the evening. So, Amanda and I went adventuring through the city of Berlin! It was an incredible day of walking for hours (honestly we probably walked about 8 miles).
The day started very late, as Amanda and I woke up around 11 a.m. We ventured out into the world around noon, with our first stop being the Hochenshule fur Musik. This building was huge. It seemed to be built into a small old palace. There were multiple levels of practice rooms, huge performance halls and cafes for students. Amanda and I started out hesitantly walking around but soon started approaching students with instruments, asking if we could talk to them about their experiences and take pictures of them. All of the students were extremely friendly and interested in our photography projects. Then, figuring we weren’t allowed in the school, didn’t ask anyone if we could go in and just proceeded to venture around the campus. We went up into the practice rooms and listened as students of various ethnicities and years were practicing their instruments. It was an amazing experience for me; it met my quota of band nerdiness for the day.
After we were done venturing, we attempted to find the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Figuring that taking the tram would take about as much time as walking, we proceeded to make our way towards the museum. Along the way, we took pictures of people walking the streets past us and sitting in parks we passed. It was an unusually warm day for Berlin, so there were quite a few people out and about on the streets. We got to see a whole new section of Berlin, and just the two of us being together made us less conspicuous than the 19 of us had during the trip. Finally, we made it to the Jewish Museum Berlin, which, in fact, was the wrong museum. So, looking up the correct museum (which was another 30-minute walk from the museum we were already at), we made it to the actual museum we were looking for. It was here we walked around for nearly an hour reading about the atrocities of the Holocaust. I’ve been to a few Holocaust museums in my day, but this one seemed to affect people more than most. Students from other groups were sitting on the floor by hand-written messages of Jewish prisoners crying. No one was talking throughout the whole museum. It was eerie and sobering. But the museum was beautiful and an experience I’d recommend to anyone.
Finally, we ended the day by meeting with Christoph Niemann. He has worked as an illustrator for such groups as the New Yorker and is now working on writing his own books about illustrations. He showed us his books, including his newest one that is to be released soon. He took us through his Sunday Sketches and the work in virtual and augmented reality that he’s done over the years. He gave advice on how to make it on your own as a journalist and illustrator and told us we should get into coding as soon as we could (which was great because Gaby is already working with coding). He was amazing, and beyond intelligent. We left his studio that evening to eat burritos and be content with our memories of the week.
A Finkel in Time: Berlin Edition 