Random sampling of a series of thoughts that went through my head on the 9th of November (in no particular order): “I want pancakes.” “Oh great, this place has pancakes.” “Wait a minute. These aren’t pancakes; these are crepes.” “I’m too hungry to care, I’ll eat them anyway.” “Everything looks fairly normal, and no one [...]
Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Random Thought Collection One Week Later
Posted in General Musings, History, tagged Brandenburger Tor, Mauer Mob, Mauerfall on 17/11/2009 | 3 Comments »
On Memory and (Not) Forgetting
Posted in General Musings, History, tagged Austerlitz, Deutsches Historisches Museum, The Emigrants, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, W.G. Sebald on 21/10/2009 | Leave a Comment »
I recently returned to W.G. Sebald, a 20th century German author whose novel The Emigrants (Die Ausgewanderten) had positively blindsided me in my last year of college. Profiling four different characters, one of whom, as I vaguely remember, was an uncle or distant cousin of his, Sebald paints a rich and moving portrait of a [...]
The Wall as Metaphor for Everything
Posted in History, tagged Alexanderplatz, Berlin Wall, Brandenburger Tor, Holocaust, Indiana Jones, North Korea, Number the Stars, Reichstag, Schindler's List, Spree, Stasi, Tag der deutschen Einheit, The Devil in Vienna, The Devil's Arithmetic, The Lives of Others, Unter den Linden on 11/08/2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been doing a lot of biking lately. Well actually, that’s an understatement. I haven’t used public transportation in quite a while. And when you do a lot of biking in this city, it inevitably means you’re going to be crossing the wall. While any attempt to contextualize this experience may fall flat if you’ve [...]
