Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

The Memorial Church in Berlin is a victim of World War II. It was bombed during the war and has spent the rest of its life as a ruin. They've covered up the main tower of the church as they do restoration work.

'Til 2012.

They're not rebuilding the church or tearing it down or anything. They're just preserving the ruin, as a part of the Berlin skyline. Which I think is a wonderful thing.

The church they have up is modern hexagon with walls of stained glass squares. I came in, once again, in time for a quick evening mass. The priest looked so small below the giant Jesus hanging from the ceiling.

Floating, really...

Again, the service was in German, so I mumbled along. My heart is kinda breaking for a Good Word in my own language, but I can float through another hymn in German. I can't help but get annoyed at the tourists who come to look at these churches and then sneak out when they're actually used as a church. They take their pictures and go and I'm not quite sure what they're going to do with them. Then again, I guess I'm the same thing. I just sing along when I'm there after I take the pictures.

After the service, there was a woman sitting in front of the Stalingrad Madonna, of which I really wanted a picture. I was just going to wait around the corner for her to finish praying, but she was pretty dedicated so I stood back from a distance and snapped my picture.

There's so many stories wrapped up in this building. It doesn't do me any good to retell them, but I'm glad they're not forgotten. As long as who we are is aware of who we've been, I guess we're good. Though the euro I dropped in the collection basket on the way out is certainly not enough to assure a memory, I'm sure there will be.

Marienkirche

Every time I go into a city, I have a list of at least two churches, most time three or four, that I want to see or that interested me when I looked at the city. Of course, you have your run-of-the-mill gorgeous cathedral, like Prague Cathedral or the Berliner Dom, but I also try to pick churches that are interesting for historical or architectural reasons. St. Mary's in Berlin is like that. It's got this mural around the inside called the Dance of Death, dating from the 15th century, recently recovered under centuries of paint. It dates from the time of the Plague and it shows people from all walks of life "dancing with death, moving at a slow and dignified gait."  I'm kinda fascinated with the whole thing, so I figured I'd look for it.

I searched for it after I found the Berliner Dom, looking at my directions and my map and figuring out that it was on the same street as the Dom. I walked up and down the street, consulting my handwritten instructions to turn right after the river. Running out of time and frustrated, I walked towards the square where I was going to meet up with Christine again, thinking I had time at least to check out one of the churches surrounding the fountain.

I walked into the one with an open door, thinking I could glance around for a bit. It was literally less than two minutes from my intended destination and I had at least twenty to poke around. As I walked in, I noticed that they had this plastic protection over the walls. I also noticed a sign that said that an organ concert started five minutes ago and I couldn't go in without paying. It wasn't much, but I didn't have the time to wait for an organ concert to finish. As I turned to go, thinking that I'd catch up on my writing as I waited, I noticed a skeleton on the wall in a white cloak, talking to a bishop or a duke or someone else like that.

Exactly like this picture I had looked at of the Dance of Death. In Marienkirche. In Berlin.

Well, goodness.

I looked around for a while outside, taking pictures of the tower with its late add-ons and baroque dome, convincing myself that I'd return sometime soon.

I came back on Sunday morning because I had already seen the Berliner Dom and a smaller church could be nice. I left extraordinarily early got to town extraordinarily early and sat in the nave of the church for a good half an hour or forty-five minutes before the service began. I got to listen to the choir practice. It's funny how choirs everywhere have the same quirks. I could tell what the director wanted them to do differently from the way he stopped them and the way his words affected the way they sang. All choirs have the same laugh, too, so I could tell the director had made some joke about churches or singing in general. It was almost fun, guessing what these German people were talking about in their different language.

I started writing in my journal, trying to note the structure of the nave (there's this awkward section of pews that's sideways- they were moved after WWII when the pulpit was moved to the second pillar) and the decorations. Marienkirche actually weathered the war quite well and artifacts from other churches that weren't so fortunate were moved here. Soon the church started to fill with people and I guiltily put away the camera with which I couldn't bring myself to take pictures. The normal members of the congregation sat near the front. Another church surveyor, like me, sat near the back of the sideways section, staring around the church when the organ and choir started.

I jumped to put my notebook up when the music started. Choirs are meant for a space like this, with the glorious echoing. It's wonderful and beautiful and I almost think that every stone used in a building such as this were worth it, if just to be able to hear this song, sung this way, just to hear the way the notes from the organ bounce around the sanctuary, following us in worship.

It was also wonderful to have a bulletin with music and words. I don't speak any German, but you can recognize the order of service and guess when the words make up the Apostle's Creed or the Lord's Prayer. They're pretty universal. I mean, you never know what you're missing in translation, but it's pretty easy to find God the Father, Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, plus the Holy Spirit among all of the other words I can't identify. It made mumbling along much easier. They also sang a hymn based on Matthew 7, which I knew! It was even the same tune, just in German.

There was a baptism of a young girl, maybe in the upper elementary grades. I was very confused as the pastors left the chancel to talk to the congregation. I even got a little nervous- what could they make us do? What sort of things happened in services when I wasn't paying attention? But they just talked to the girl and her family, and then the whole family walked up to the chancel to stand behind and support her as she got baptized. It was really wonderful to see. It's a good bit different from infant baptism, though they used the same amount of water from the font.

As the service progressed, I was feeling pretty confident, even though I understood not a word of the sermon, and felt good enough to walk up for communion. I would feel like I was cheating if I took it at a Catholic church, but a Protestant church should be fine, yeah? So I walked up to the front of the church with the rest of the masses and they had us form a circle. I watched as the head pastor along with two associates, one of whom was a woman, made their way around the circle, offering first the little circular wafers and second the glass of wine. I was super thankful when the person in front of me dipped the wafter in the wine, taking communion by intinction rather than sipping from the cup. I don't think my little Methodist soul could have stood that much difference in one morning. I like my grape juice.

Then, after everyone had been served, the pastor said something and people around the circle grabbed the hands of the person next to them. We had already passed the peace, but I smiled and held the hands of the two men on either side of me, knowing that they would have no idea what I was saying but glad they were welcoming me into their circle. Maybe we were blessed or maybe we were sent out with a good word, but we passed smiles around the circle. Then one of the children broke the moment and we all walked back to our seats.

I walked out of the church after the postlude, quite happy with my first service overseas. I dunno, there's something wonderful about not understanding a word that was said and yet, feeling like I'm a part of something. I mean, knock ritual and tradition all you want, but it's extraordinarily comforting. It's wonderful to have universal aspects to the church. As much as well disagree, it's good to know that there's still something there. Music, though goodness knows no one agrees on one kind, even within one congregation. Baptism, though it often has a differently weighted importance. Communion, though what it really means can be different for each creed.

And, of course, if we forget, there's always death on the way out of the church. We might not agree on where everyone ends up afterwards, but we all know how everyone leaves this space we share. It's a good reminder, every now and then.

Berliner Dom

I wasn't originally going to go inside of the Berlin Cathedral. It's an impressive building, sure, and I loved taking pictures of it and just sitting in front of it, but the man behind the desk at the hostel had assured me that it was just like any other cathedral. He suggested several other places to go besides. It wasn't until I saw the people walking around the top of the dome that I decided that I needed to go in. It wasn't very expensive either, plus seeing the inside now freed up my Sunday morning as I had planned to go to service in this "Protestant St. Peter's."

Just like any other cathedral, the Berliner Dom has a lot of history. The first structure on this site was a chapel dedicated to St. Erasmus (who wrote Praise of Folly, which I wrote a paper on in my only English class in college, and made a copy of the Bible that scholars used for centuries, which I read about in my only book on New Testament textual criticism) in (wait for it...) 1465. 1465. That's a couple of decades before Columbus sailed over to America. Just to throw that into perspective there. Then, about three hundred years after that, they tore the chapel down to build a new cathedral in 1747. That cathedral was renovated in 1822 in the neoclassical style (to celebrate Prussia's uniting the Lutheran and Reformed communities). Next, Emperor Wilhelm II tore down that cathedral to build a new one in the baroque and renaissance styles that was finished in 1905, which was bombed during World War II and has since been renovated to show a simpler style, re-opening in 1993. And if you think that's a ridiculous amount of history, you should see the cathedral museum on the way up to the top of the dome. Ridiculous.

So the outside's deinitely impressive, with all these angels and then there are the fathers of the Protestant church (there's a lot of Luther) and there's Jesus, welcoming you in, and these gold inlay signs... it's a sight to see.

Inside, it's what I've come to expect from the older Catholic cathedrals I've visited- ornamentation, a decorated pulpit not in the center of the chancel, a crypt and a lot of biblical people looking down at you. Instead of the Latin or Greek church fathers, though, you have Protestant Reformers staring down at you. It's a little bit of a different experience.

Why hello there.

Whenever people ask me what brings me to whichever city I happen to be in, I say travel unless I want to get into a discussion about religion and the church. There are many questions tied up in studying sacred architecture. I'm always afriad of Why do we need cathedrals? I'm always tempted to brush it aside as a power and pride thing, ostensibly insiting that people are trying to display the glory of God in a building, the same way Handel or Beethoven would try to display it in a composition. It's easier to do when it's a Catholic church because I'm not Catholic. It almost makes me curl up in a ball of ignorance and guilt when I think that I had assumed that Protestants of any kind wouldn't spend their time building these ornate buildings. And yet here we are, Luther and Calvin glaring down at me from the heights of the cathedral.

You might think I'm being dramatic, but really. They're staring. It's impolite. 

Maybe to escape it all, I climbed up the stairs, my original purpose in buying a ticket. It's not a bad climb, though it was lengthy. I loved the view of Berlin from the top, though, so I'd consider it worth the time and effort. From there you could see the spires of other churches, the tops of other buildings, distant smoke stacks, tiny ant people in the park. From one side, an angel appeared to conduct a band on the bridge far below. From another, the angel sang out proclamations to the lady sitting in the middle of the giant heart I hadn't seen before.

Climbing back down led to staircase after staircase and I ended up in the crypt, which, ironically, is right by the bathrooms. I dunno, I just feel like we shouldn't be waving the dullness of everyday living, breathing, existence in the face of our dead. I also feel like you shouldn't have a bathroom right beside a crypt of the honored dead, like kings and queens and war heroes. I mean, what kind of message does that send, especially to vindictive ghosts?

I liked the crypt, though. It was quiet and respectful. It's easy to mourn someone else's loss. I paused for a long time in front of the tiny caskets and pondered over the paired tombs of husbands and wives. The best part of the crypt, though, was its focus on promises. Following the main path will lead you from the entrance to either the exit, the tomb of an emperor, or a marble statue of a young man sitting on a marble bench in front of a cross draped with a white cloth.

On the bench beside the young man were the words Er ist nich hier, Er ist auferstanden. He is not here. He is risen.

I like it when I leave a church pensive. I like that the building has given me something to think about or turn over in my head. It gives me different ideas about the structure and purpose of a church, though, when the most meaningful places were the metal walkway high above the sanctuary and the cold crypt far below it.

St. Hedwig's Cathedral

St. Hedwig's was a serendipitous mistake on a sunny afternoon in Berlin. We had sat in front of the much larger, much more impressive Berliner Dom basking in the peaceful rest only soft grass in the sun can provide before walking around and exploring the other fancy looking buildings around. We ended up in a plaza where the cathedral was slightly tucked away behind the construction work on another building. Admittedly, the domed building with its white columns doesn't scream cathedral like you expect in Europe.

Inside, though, you get the story of the cathedral. It's the seat of the archibishop in Berlin and the church that was built on this spot in the 18th century was the first Catholic church allowed in Prussia after the Protestant Reformation. Like many other churches in Berlin, St. Hedwig's sustained damage during the war, burning in an air raid in 1943. The structure seen today was constructed in 1952-1963 and it doesn't pay tribute to any previous styles of building. There's a skylight at the top and windows in the walls, but no pictures in the stained glass and no candeliers for lighting- just these odd orbs of light on strings hanging down from the ceiling. The altar is in the center of the room, surrounded by pews and the additional chapels are down a staircase right in front of the altar.

Downstairs, they have a chapel for St. Hedwig, of course- her relics are kept here in the cathedral that honors her name. St. Hedwig has little or nothing to do with the more famous (I think) snowy white owl, but she did go barefoot in the winter and donate to the poor a lot, so she's solid in my book. There remains of Bernhard Lichtenberg are in the crypt as well. Father Litchenberg was persecuted by the government after praying for Jewish families in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. The chapels are good and quiet, each with a different purpose and atmosphere. On the whole, though, the entire cathedral was rather deserted. I don't think St. Hedwig's is on a list of cathedrals to visit in Berlin.

Upstairs, there was a little nook that had a statue of Mary and two candelabras, full of votive candles.

I lit mine for the women in the park in front of the Berliner Dom, who each told a different story of a different country's unrest or tragedy that brought them to the streets of Berlin. One of them had wandered over to St. Hedwig's and sat just outside of the door, rocking her baby. I know that handing them a euro coin won't make their lives any better, but one of the reasons I still believe in the church is that it still does good deeds. Maybe the euro I put in for my candle will sneak into a fund for the people on the streets of Berlin.

The smoke didn't drift up to the bulbs they had for lighting in the sanctuary, but they caught my eye anyway. Looking around the room, you'd almost forget that this cathedral belonged to a religion millenias old. I thought of the places the women had claimed to be from. Libya. Egypt. Afghanistan. A modern church for modern problems, centuries old.

Berlin: A Map's Story

Berlin is a city.

I mean, clearly, Berlin is a city, but I mean that Berlin is what I think of when I think of a city- fancy buildings, sprawling streets, trains, trams, buses, graffiti, advertisements, museums, churches, restaurants and shops, but mostly people. People in the train station coming and going and shopping and sitting. People on the bus, standing and talking and sweating in the unexpected heat. People in the hostel making friends, getting ready to go out, talking over ideas and projects, focusing on their computers, focusing on each other, playing games, cooking, eating, drinking, laughing, listening. People painting, people dancing, people playing songs in bands, on their own, over speakers, to themselves. People talking. People listening. People acting. People watching. People.

My story of Berlin is mostly a story of a map. I didn't notice it when we checked into our hostel in east Berlin, but there was a book of maps big enough to be a place mat sitting on the counter. After being on a train and (successfully, again, I might add) finding our way to the hostel via public transportation, I wasn't really noticing much. We spent the evening eating dinner and then chilling in the common area, where I got a couple of posts done and listened to the conversations of the groups of people going out. Even before I got my map, I spent a good couple of minutes being distracted by the map of the trains in the lounge hostel where the most available plug was. It is a thing of beauty, I think, this crazy, almost unreadable map of stations and colored lines.

Click here to go to a clearer version of the chaos.

We didn't even get a map to head back to the train station to buy our tickets to Vienna the next day. We had gotten burned a little by the price of tickets from Prague to Berlin and were determined to book ahead, so we walked back to the train station (it's really not that bad of a walk), got tickets and walked back, stopping by a market on the way back (where I bought a watermelon slice and proceeded to eat it all the way home). It wasn't until I stood at the counter finishing my watermelon that a guy from our room tore one of the maps off the stack and brought it over to show Christine where a huge flea market would be on Sunday.

I started to pour over the map the second Christine left it in my hands. Already in red were circled our hostel location, the location of the market north of us in Maurpark and a section of town southwest from us where the longest intact piece of the Berlin Wall stood.

Berlin is huge. It's hard to know where to even start in this city. I had a couple of churches in mind (I ended up going to St. Hedwig's, the Berliner Dom, Marienkirche and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, as a reference for future posts), but nothing much else other than that and that, my friends, is not the best of plans. The best of plans is to have an idea of a few things you'd like to see, leaving a lot of time open for the adventures that life can bring you but still giving structure to your day. I sat and stared at my new map for extended periods of time while Christine went up to the room intending to nap.

The guy behind the desk noticed my apparent fascination with the piece of paper in front of me and began to help. This man requires a little bit of description. He's tall and balding, with Latin American skin, a German accent and an interesting personality. The first time I encountered him I was sitting with my bare feet up on a coffee table in the lounge by reception, typing away on my computer, trying to figure a plan for the day. He walked by on his way to the smoking area in the fire escape and went to tickle my feet. I immediately put them down, because he's an adult that works at the hostel and your feet don't belong on tables, etc. He smiled at me from behind John Lennon sunglasses and told me to put my feet back up. "No, you know, it's fine. I do it at my house all the time. Now, this, this is not my house and maybe you don't want to put your feet up because they just cleaned and maybe you want to eat something here and feet are not clean, but no, it is fine, just go ahead and put your feet up. It's just that I like to meet new people, when I see people here, to avoid late night phone calls, you know. All of you, you will go out tonight and I don't expect you back before five tomorrow morning, and you will be laying here on these couches and I just like to see who will be here tomorrow morning. So," he finished, gesturing for me to put my feet back up.

He stood across from me at the bar and started to circle places. "This line is where the Berlin wall was. Basically, you have the East Berlin here, then the French, British and American sectors." He pointed them out on the map. "Now, here, this is your base in East Berlin. This place," he drew a pie piece east of our hostel, "You want to go here. It is nice shopping, you know, where everyone fancy," he did a dance that I assume signified 'fancy,' "wants to go, but also very interesting. And so, Addie Jo," he had a very intentional way of saying my name, "Next question." I hadn't asked one in the first place.

For a good fifteen minutes, he pointed out places on my map, circling and outlining locations in black marker. As Christine said, he doesn't hear a word you say, but he's got a lot to say. I left still a little overwhelmed but more prepared to deal with the mass of opportunities that is Berlin.

My good friend.

Back in the room, Christine was getting ready to go art exploring with one of the guys from the hostel. I'm good at tagging along, so we walked down the roads and ended up at this graffiti covered-old building. Now, graffiti-covered describes much of Berlin, and old building describes much of Europe, so I know I'm not being very specific, but this graffitti-covered old building wins, as far as I'm concerned. Inside, as you climb the stairs through this mess of art and writing, you come to exhibits and exhibitions, artists selling their work and blasting their music from rooms that they are clearly living in. Every once in a while, a jar or a basket would ask for a donation, but it was free, just wandering up and down the floors of what might have been an office building or an apartment building or who knows what else. I wish I had marked it on my map.

Saturday brought a train trip down to Alexanderplatz and museum island. I was constantly folding and unfolding my map, checking the train stops and the streets. Christine and I wandered through festivals and shopping centers before coming to the grassy area in front of the Berliner Dom. We spent a good quarter of an hour in the sun, listening to the bells chime less and less, dying away as the passing of the hour got farther away in time. We found a book sale, almost got run over by a bike tour (BIKES- THEY'RE EVERYWHERE IN BERLIN AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE) and split as when I went to go visit my churches.

The Berliner Dom in the sun. Quite nice.

I climbed the two hundred and some ridiculous number of stairs up to the top of the Berliner Dom to see the city from there. I listened to a band on the bridge and counted the steeples in the skyline. Some of my favorite pictures from Berlin are from here.

Reflection of one of the domes of the Dom in a nearby office building

Watching the city

Hey, look, there's a band!

I swear, this is a lion with headphones on. On the Berliner Dom.

You know, just a field. Better from above, though.

Then Christine and I adventured to a new part of town to watch performance art. Basically, there were these moveable wooden stations that had speakers on them that played repeating random noises, a sound like clicking for a while and then a sound like drops clinking against a pipe. In the discussion beforehand, one of the panelists had said that the whole experiences was like an experiment in being free. Freedom, she said, might not be something that we either have or don't have, but more like something that we practice having. And I could kinda see that. As the performers moved, they didn't move with any kind of rhythm I could here. They used and changed the space, regardless of what it seemed like they should be doing. Thought provoking for someone who spent the last eight years practicing being in time with a perpetual drumbeat. I spent a couple of minutes before and after the performance recreasing my map so the train lines showed on top, checking to see if there was a station closer to where we were.

Sunday brought a church service in Marienkirche, where there was a baptism and communion, which ended with me holding hands with two people I've never met before speaking a language I don't speak but with whom I broke bread and drank wine and it just kinda gave you hope for the Church universal.

Christine and I spent the afternoon in Maurpark at the flea market circled on my map. It is something to see. I didn't take pictures of the market itself, but there was a sizeable crowd by the stage and plenty of people walking from stall to stall, browsing and haggling, speaking French and English just as much as German.

Not entirely representative of the many people in love with this place.

As for me, I saw my first real life rat, bought a bag (not from the same place) and listened to German kids sing along to American songs. We walked over to a coffee shop and met another guy from the hostel, who's writting a book on Americans teaching English in Berlin. After a couple of hours of work on blog posts (these suckers take more research than you think), we split and walked over to a poetry reading.

Let me pause and recap. By this point in my trip in Berlin I have:
a) been to an art exhibition in an abandoned building
b) been to a performance in a converted sewage processing plant
c) been to a huge flea market
d) been to a poetry reading. A POETRY READING.

I would like to note that all of these things were entirely unplanned by me.



And then today, after a quick trip over to the Turkish place down the street, we rode the trains out to the Berlin Wall, circled in red, where I couldn't help but take pictures of the murals that dominate it now.

Then we took trains over to the Brandenburg Gate, which used to be the entrance to the city and is right by where the American embassy is. Happy Memorial Day, home!

And tourists. Gotta love the tourists.

Right down the road is the Holocaust Mahnmal, which I am unsure about.

There were, prior to this shot, French children running up and down the aisles.

And then another train ride over to the Zoo, down the road from where is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.The rest of the evening was spent walking around the old American sector of Berlin, consulting my security blanket of a map, turning it around to read street names and folding it to look at the tiny unlabeled icons representing who knows how many other features of Berlin I wouldn't get around to seeing.

Though there was a statue enjoying himself...

Dance off with skateboards.

Again, the people here really made it happen. From the four girls in our room who went out every night, tighter than the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, to the man at the desk, to the author in making, our hostel provided us with all sorts of people to meet, acquaint ourselves with and share our experience of this city. I can't say I'm sad to leave though- a skylight that lets me see a few stars at night is not enough to deter me any longer from Vienna. Wish me luck on the nine hours of a train ride to Austria tomorrow!