...Two Week Summary...

I came to town on 19.09.2007 and I immediately got used to using that date format. It was pretty amazing and more than a little cinematic that I flew away from the sunset in NYC and into the sunrise in Europe. And, just as if I were the main character in this little movie, the clouds parted right above Germany. As we descended into Berlin, I looked out of my window and saw the Fernsehturm and thought to myself, "Well, I'm here..."

I felt that the best course of action was to move quickly and with purpose, so I found a T-Mobile store, bought a phone and a phone card, called one of our facilitators, Jason, to coordinate a meeting time and then hopped in a taxi. The taxi was well worth the 20€ that I spent. I was a passive tourist and I was just letting the city pass before me. We turned around one corner and all of a sudden there was the Seigessäule. A little farther along and there stood the Brandenburger Tor.

I was here. I was most certainly here.

I got situated in my apartment and then became petrified to go outside and wander. I tried to nap, since I had been up for 24 hours by that point, and couldn't relax. As soon as I heard people speaking loudly and in German, I became quite uncomfortable. I decided to shower, but then realized that I had "forgotten" my soap at a friend's house in Atlanta, and thus I had to go outside. I had to make my way through the streets. I had to find a store. I had to do these things. And I had to do these things while the light was still winning its daily battle against darkness, to sort of awkwardly reference a recent class reading.

Later that evening, after buying a few basic groceries and soap and toilet paper and and and...I got a call from the buzzer downstairs. A couple of classmates were outside wondering if I wanted to go to the store, and so I came along and bought junk food and Pepsi, by god, Pepsi. I then got to notice the very same surroundings at night.

And later on, when we read about "nightwalking" and how the night seems to make the streets endless, I couldn't help but think back to other things I had written, like four years ago maybe. The nights create a different type of life, and there is a very distinct electricity that goes along with it. I remember what prompted me to write about it. It was my first time flying by a window seat at night. During red-eye flights you really get to see the expanse of the darkness and the little constellations of towns and cities some six miles below you. All I could think of was the fact that the city lights at night were a lot like man-made stars to make man feel less lonely.

I got out and did a little bit of exploring my second day once Joel and Jessica were out of their language class and I got to see some amazing things, such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche. During our initial readings and our first meeting with Thorston, we discussed the very open ways in which Berlin memorializes the past. This particular building struck me. When I first saw it, I had to remain quiet as a point of reverence, both for the events the lead to its near destruction and for what it meant to leave it in its particular state.

I know that we have read a few articles and have discussed to some extent the matter of reconstruction within Berlin. While I understand and appreciate those points, my eyes are always drawn to the very real and very visible ways in which Berlin deals with its past. In particular, I have been focusing on the brass walkway stones that I come across. Whenever I see one, I stop and I read it. It is a small and tangible memorial to a person, a life, and a life completely destroyed:

Hier wohnte...
Deportiert...
Ermordet...

If you walk around Berlin, you realize that it really is a haunted city. And it will touch you on a very basic level if you are open to it. When I reflect on my days, and I allow myself to think about the history here, I am always moved very deeply. I am lucky to be here in the privilege of the present. I am lucky to be able to move back and forth across the former footprint of the wall. I am lucky to be here and realize that this city, more than any other, was the crossroads of the 20th century. So much of what defined the past 100 years has direct ties to this city. WWI and WWII, Naziism, the fundamental divide, both literal and figurative, between Western Democracy and Eastern Block Communism, the end of the Cold War.

I have clear memories of Regan in front of the wall saying "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I remember being glued to the TV and watching people dance at the Brandenburger Tor in 1989. I remember people hacking away at the wall and swinging it back and forth like a loose tooth.

And I remember the first time I heard the song "Zoo Station" by U2.

This city is still a crossroads for history and a meeting point between East and West. I live only a couple of blocks away from Kreutzberg and Berlin's Turkish area. It's an interesting place to be in an interesting time to be alive.

All of that said, I have been working on the film project for our course. I was falling asleep on the second day that I was here and I just started seeing these flashes of scenes. And they kind of made me smile. And then I heard dialogue and I knew that I would have to get up and write the stuff down. Almost two weeks later, we have a group of 4 people, a script, and motivation.

It has been an interesting experience thus far. I enjoy collaboration. It is important to keep in mind at all times that film, in deed, is a collaborative art form. My group has brought some interesting things to the table that have complimented the original idea that I had and, in some instances, completely augmented it. I think that we have the potential to do something pretty special, if everything falls into place with casting a German girl and all that. Our goals are to capture the idea of memory, but at the same time entertain. To me, that's what the best films are able to do. We are only college students.

To paraphrase Michael Valentine Smith from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, we are just eggs. But hopefully what we put together will achieve the goals we've set.