Germany Trip - Hamburg/Belsen

There are some funny features of German hotel rooms. Universally, the light to the bathroom is outside the room, requiring both planning ahead and also a faith in your roommate not to mess with you. The bathrooms don't have any ventilation or exhaust fans, which is sub-optimal, but in the plus column they all had big/small flush buttons. I've seen those in the US too, but not universally. 

The beds don't have top sheets, just duvet covers. Most of the double beds had a pair of single duvets, for regulating separate and distinct body temperatures. All the rooms we stayed in had windows that opened easily because Germans believe strongly in Lüften. There were no screens, but no bugs either. 

Our first day in Hamburg was left to individuals to schedule for themselves. My mother had made arrangements to meet up with her friend Gabi and Gabi's teenaged granddaughter, and Rachel and I elected to accompany them. 

Gabi and her husband came to stay with my family for two weeks in 1973 as part of a teachers exchange program. (You should read my mother's account of that visit -- it's sweet and funny.) Gabi and Julie had been in sporadic correspondence over the subsequent half century, but this was their first in-person meeting since that long-ago summer. They picked up right where they left off.

Rachel and I had also arranged to see our college friend Manjula, who grew up in the States but now lives in Hamburg. The seven of went to see the Elbphilharmonie concert hall overlooking the Elbe river. The Elphi has some resemblance to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia -- it's a beautiful box containing two concert halls (one Groß, one Klein) and they maybe ran out of money before the job was done; in Philly, they just closed up the Western side of the box and called it finished, but in Germany it was a national project and they just grumbled through the cost overruns. 

Our walk was conducted at the land speed of my parents, stretched between the speedy one and the slow one. It was a good way to periodically switch conversation partners. After taking in the view from Elphi's observation deck, we walked along the wharf, the better to see the enormous container ships that unload goods foreign destined for Europe.

Gabi (left) and Julie (right)

All along the harbor, German tourists were buying keychains and eating the town's signature herring sandwich. I made a suggestion about looking for herring Ritter Sport chocolate and I short-circuited the 16-year-old. Germans don't ever seem prepared for me to say nonsensical things, which of course makes me want to say them more. 

An AI-generated image of the kind of Schokolade you should be able to find in Hamburg

At lunch in an Italian restaurant, the waitress jabbered something at dad when he tried to pick up a fallen napkin. I asked him how it felt to have all this atmospheric, environmental German language around him. "They're always telling me what to do," he said with a grin. 

After a boat tour through the harbor, Rachel and I called an early evening with my parents. Most of the family had gone to see a new modern opera about a physicist and a psychic healer. A few of them stayed past the intermission, the rest went to find beer.

The next morning, we loaded our suitcases into the bus's underbelly and made the trip to the Bergen Belsen memorial, located at the former concentration camp where Pete was interred with his mother and brother for three months in 1945. Like at Ravensbrück a few days earlier, we were met by a small squad of historian guides upon our arrival. Dad gave them a printed copy of a piece he wrote in 2021 about a camp memory to add to their collection, and we started inside the museum. 

Unlike the repurposed SS Officer housing used at Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen has newly a constructed, brutalist, concrete structure housing their exhibit. I had seen all those ghastly black and white photographs before so I knew the images, but on this trip I thought for the first time about how Dad saw it all in color, married to the fetid odor of open latrines and decaying corpses. 

After we walked through the museum, it was time to visit the former camp site. It's all meadows now, with about a dozen mass graves, each a grassy mound with thousands of dead bodies lying underneath. The staff had determined that Dad and his brother were likely in hut 211, so we walked there in the misting rain. It overlooked a huge burial mound that was an open pit when Dad was last there. He remembered it. He said that he spent his days there just wandering around inside the fenced-in perimeter, because nobody was looking for him and he had no place he was expected to be.

outside hut 211, where Dad and his brother were housed

We lit a yahrzeit candle and said Kadish for my uncle Sam, who died two years ago, and then we walked back to the museum to get lunch at the cafe. The atmosphere felt sour and sad, but not scary. As before, Dad was not overwhelmed and showed no fear about confronting the place.

At the cafeteria, the historian who had taken possession of Dad's story came back with exciting news, it had exactly matched some details they knew and filled in a gap about some details they didn't. One of the children in Dad's account had reached out to the memorial site team in recent years, and the historians were excited to share Dad's story with her.     

Bernd Hoffman from the memorial site shares his findings about the people in Dad's story

After lunch, we piled into the bus to see the military base adjacent to the camp. The British army had taken it over when they arrived in 1945, and the camp survivors were housed there. Dad and his family lived there for almost a year after their liberation. It looks unchanged from the mid 20th century, and if you've ever been on a military base, you already know what it looks like. 

I fell asleep during this part of the trip. Maybe it was because of what we had just processed, or perhaps because the guide, whose English skills were sorely tested, was mumbling, or because the bus ride was lurching, but I learned after we hit the road for Hanover that my reaction had not been unique.  

Germany Trip - Berlin/Ravensbrück/Hamburg

Our first full day in Berlin was dedicated to acclimating to local time. I woke up well rested at 7:45, which felt like an achievement, and the day was off to a good start. We had a muster time of 1 PM at the schnitzel restaurant that promised authentic German food with adequate seating for 15, and the morning was open to people to fill with any activities they wanted. Some people went looking for street art, others to flea markets. I was just excited to ride the subway again, a different line this time.

The market explorers were all taking their first advantage of our chartered family bus. We have a 40-passenger bus with a driver (Alex) who will show up and take us anywhere we want to go, as long as we give him a heads-up by text a little bit ahead of time. He's like a genie and we just rub the bottle, and he's following us all week long. I don't know where he sleeps or what he does when we don't need him, but he seems content with this gig. 

After big portions of thin-pounded pork and many potato salads, we summoned Alex and his bus to drop us off at our next destinations. I took a small group to the DDR museum, which I'd seen ten years ago. The museum collects artifacts from the former East Germany and stitches them into a narrative about the way half of the destroyed country was swallowed and digested by the Soviets from the 1940s through 1989. 

The museum emphasizes how the East German culture was warped by impossible economic goals and oppressive collectivism, bullied by Moscow. The feeling I remembered from my last visit was the constant terror from the state police, and the way everyone was encouraged to report their neighbor's improper behavior. The current curation suggests that every East German citizen was clued in to the cynical joke of how much propaganda was dropped on them and how broken everything was, and that society was simply limp without the ability to achieve individual excellence through Capitalism. As we were leaving, I saw a Bitcoin explainer in the adjacent book shop and I thought "Oh, that's who's running this museum now."

At dinner that night, I was introduced to a German woman (Amalie) who had done some genealogy on behalf of the family. My dad told her his theory about how he has a conventional German name (Peter) even though he was born after the Nuremberg laws requiring Jewish children to have Jewish names -- the government didn't publish some of these laws until after the 1936 Olympics, to avoid drawing bad press. (His parents named his younger brother Samuel, because Sam Spade was proof that Sam was a name that could pass in America.)

Amalie gave my dad a book that contained 1930s art from the Jewish ghetto, including a picture memorializing a cat that had to be given away when Jews were banned from owning pets. I hadn't heard about that before.  

The next morning, we loaded up our suitcases on the bus and rode 90 minutes north to the Ravensbrück memorial site. On the drive, Dad said that the food we were eating was bringing back sense memories. The beer garden we'd visited our first night evoked some of the only happy memories of his German childhood. 

Before we went into the gates, we walked through an SS commander's house on the camp perimeter. The Red Army had taken it over in 1945 and used it for officer's quarters, and the evil soaked into the place was of the administrative flavor. Our guide Matthias talked about the way the locals swore they had no idea what was happening in this place. They must have seen the slave laborers from the camp working in fields and repairing roads around them, but they would have taken those degraded, stinking bodies as proof that the propaganda they'd been fed about the sub-human enemies of the state was true.   

Matthias also mentioned that we were not in a concentration camp now, we were in a memorial site. We were entering as free people, visiting as free people and able to leave as free people. I found this conceptual framework very helpful in getting through the next few hours. 

Outside the gates, we looked at a map of the original camp layout. My cousin Alan said that the documents they found suggested that the family had been in barrack 10 or 11. We knew that the Red Army had razed almost everything inside the gates to the ground, so we were just going to see the general area. 

I had been nervous about visiting this awful place, mostly because I was worried that it would be traumatizing for my dad. But he strode in, no sign of hesitation, empowered by the sight of his family alongside him. Inside, he recognized the showers where new prisoners were forced to stand naked in front of everyone. He remembered the general area of the infirmary where he was sent for some procedure, and that his mother had snuck over to see him there and suffered some retribution after another prisoner reported her. 

He remembered the roll call square where camp prisoners had to stand for hours. We saw the textile workshop where prisoners were forced to line German army uniforms with fur confiscated from Jews' winter coats. He recalled his mother had been a field laborer, and she had snuck in some carrots for him and his brother -- but he didn't know what she would have done in the winter. 

It was a lot of standing for our group, so we shortened the planned walk around the perimeter and went into the museum to look at the well-documented horrors captured by typewritten forms.

Over lunch, I asked one of the interns about how the residents of the adjacent town feel about this memorial site. He told me he suspects many of them resent it, and the implication that they are guilty of crimes that happened before they were born. There's an open wound in their midst and people come from all over to see it, and there's no way to cleanse away the shame. I was not surprised by this interpretation. 

After three hours at Ravensbrück, we got on the bus to Hamburg. It was a three hour ride, much of which we all slept through. We checked into the hotel and put on nice clothes for our fancy restaurant dinner with Cousin Martina.

Back during COVID, Alan got notified through a genealogy website that a new match had appeared in Germany, linked to my paternal grandfather. We were surprised, but not nearly as surprised as Martina, who had no idea she had Jewish family in America. Martina's mother was dead, but her grandmother was still alive, and Oma finally shared the astonishing information that Martina's mother had been handed to her as a 10-day-old infant to raise when the Nazis hustled the next-door neighbors away.

Dinner that night, a generous gift from my brother and organized on the ground by Martina, was a five-course meal in a private room. I haven't had many of these dining experiences in my life, and this was a particularly memorable one. We ate our meal over three hours and might have stayed even later if Alex the bus driver didn't have a curfew. I sat in the middle of the table, between the adults and the kids. I was particularly grateful in this moment -- the happiest part of a day with a huge emotional range -- that all the young people had taken the time from busy lives and careers to be with us. Usually, it takes a funeral to get a whole family together. 

  

Germany trip - Arrival Day

Our plane landed at Berlin's Willy Brandt airport at 7:04 AM. I'd slept a few hours on the trip over, perhaps more than I thought, based on Rachel's jealous description of watching me sleep during the flight. 

When we exited the jetway with our carry-on bags and backpacks, it was just the six economy-class family members. My parents had debarked with the other Business Class passengers about 10 minutes earlier. Andrew and I took our red passports and followed the other Europeans from our flight while Rachel, Liz, Bill and Lisa all went with the Americans to Passport Kontrol. 

In the EU Express Entry lane, Andrew and I put our passport picture page face down on the reader, scowled at the facial recognition camera, then waited for either the klaxon and the red "FRAUD" light to go off or the gate to open. Both of us were slightly shocked at the way we were just let into the country as Germans. 

This easy border privilege made little difference to us, though, since we had to wait for the Americans to catch up with us. 

Our hotel in Berlin was full of red-clad Stuttgart soccer supporters, who were in town for the national final against Armenia Bielefeld, whose fans were also filling the streets wearing blue. To an outside observer, it would appear as evenly matched as any Stratego game, but Alex's fiancé Matan figured out that Stuttgart is a heavy hitter in the top echelon Bundeslige and Armenia Bielefeld is from the third tier of competition, which includes farm teams for big clubs. This was like the Saint Louis Cardinals meeting the Akron Rubber Ducks in the World Series. We Sterns tend to root for the underdogs, and we were staying at the Hilton with fans of the Uberdogs. 

After stashing our suitcases, we commenced with our plan to get sun on our faces and walk all morning to beat jet lag. The grandparents checked into their room to nap.

In the streets of Berlin, taking tourist photos of Brandenburg Tur, the soccer fans weren't so much civil to each other as pretending the other side wasn't there. I had seen this behavior on my previous visit to Germany, when it was 40° in July and we visited a swimming pool. That day we saw 200 Germans stripping down to swimming trunks, none of them more than a meter away from their neighbor, and none of them looking at anyone else or even sensing being looked at. 

Despite the strong social contract, the streets were full of politizei, leaning on their vehicles, looking bored but alert. Matan told me that he didn't love the vision of all these conspicuously armed Germans staring at us, but I thought it was prudent considering the volatile red/blue mix circulating among us. I later would come to understand there was more going on, but that was when I still assumed the giant sound stage was for a soccer event. 

We got lunch at a currywurst stand, and I placed orders in German from a picture menu to a patient, multilingual vendor. "Eine zwie, bitte", I said, holding up two fingers in what turns out to be an obscene gesture. 

After lunch, Andrew and I detoured off to look for a particular cookie of childhood memory that my Opa would bring from a German food store when he visited us. We walked back to where we thought the others would be in Tiergarten park and found ourselves in a little rally with a heavy politizei presence, just next to the Soviet War memorial. I couldn't understand the speeches, but I deduced from the FCK AFD flag that it was an antifascist gathering. We stayed a few minutes, so as to show some support for the vibe, then snuck out the back where we inferred that we had just left some kind of unauthorized counter protest adjacent to the big one we had seen setting up by the Tur. That one, I'm still not sure about. We saw plenty of lefty symbols (doves, rainbows) and used Google to translate some posters but AFD also had a booth on the side of the road, so I couldn't be sure. Again, I had no clue what the man at the microphone was emphatically proclaiming. 

Andrew and I rejoined the larger group once we figured out which memorial park they were waiting at (we'd gone to Jews, they were at Homosexuals) and we split up again into different travel blocs, with a plan to maybe hit the zoo later in the afternoon. It felt a lot like 7:30 PM but was really just 2:00 PM local time. I checked into my room and passed out for 20 minutes. 

Back in the lobby, I learned that Liz had gone with the Boston branch of the family to the Berlin Zoo by train. My cousin Alan has always said he wished he had become a zookeeper, and we had baked time for this side quest into our trip plans. Dad said he wanted to go to the zoo too, so it was decided to get a taxi from the cab stand in front of the hotel. Matan said he would take public transportation since we were too many for a cab and I leapt to join him. 

On the ride to the zoo, Matan and I were amused to see that the very orderly German natives were losing their inhibitions as match time approached. The Zoo station, which is adjacent to the football stadium, was covered in Stuttgart stickers. The floor was littered with beer bottles and the aroma of pee was obvious. We heard the Germans singing and chanting and roaring long before we turned the corner and saw them. I could not have told you which songs were for which team, but I saw both red and blue throngs on the train, now riding in different carriages.
    

Matan and I got to the zoo at 4 pm. It closed at 6:30 and the entrance gates were mostly shut. I wondered if it was like the subway, where you are supposed to buy a ticket on the honor system. The listed admission price was €25 per person, which I probably would have walked away from, but Matan plunked down his credit card and asked for two (no finger insult). I had treated him to subway ticket fifteen minutes earlier and made a show of refusing his offer to pay me back, and now felt outmanned.

Inside the zoo, we immediately saw lions and felt like we'd gotten our €50 worth, so the pressure was off. We used our phones to track Liz' location and reconvened the group in time to see lots of birds, which is my favorite part of any zoo trip.

We heard from the taxi team that they had not pushed through the admission price inhibition and immediately set about finding a cafe to eat at. We sent them bird photos for the next two hours. 

     

We probably would have joined the group waiting for dinner a little earlier but as Alan's wife Lori confided in me, it's difficult to get Alan to leave a zoo. I was mindful of Liz' stamina, as her vascular anomalies sometimes make her legs hurt, but our first attempt to follow Apple Maps direction to the rest of the dinner party were thwarted by zoo fences. A crow could easily have flown from our location to theirs, but we had to walk the long way around. 

When we arrived at the beer garden Alex had chosen for us, we found it to be the perfect spot. It was outdoors but not too hot or too cold. It was not loud (no ambient music) and there were vegetarian, gluten-free and zero-alcohol options to complement the abundant fleisch und bier menu. Once again, The Germans around us acted as if we weren't there. Before we left for this trip we had wondered if anti-American sentiment would be palpable but at least in Berlin, it's an unnecessary worry.  

Alex told me that she ordered two plates from the window using her basic German, and when she received an arched eyebrow about the vast quantity of food she was requesting, said "ist für mein Grossvader" which engendered an even more skeptical look. She said she was fairly sure that she used the work grandfather correctly but perhaps she had said "large father" instead.   

After a pleasurable meal, we started thinking about how the very long day should end. Dad said he was interested in walking back to the hotel with Mom. Rachel also wanted to walk but lacked the confidence to make the trip with her phone battery at 2%. I attached myself to the party, and the four of us strolled through the park, along embassy row, inching towards the hotel. At the 60% mark, Alex texted me and Rachel and asked us to consider a cab, because the gang was gathered in the lobby to mark Andrew's 24th birthday with cake, and was in danger of falling asleep before we arrived. I called an audible and marched my posse to the U-bahn. It came within 90 seconds of us arriving on the platform, which would be a karmic miracle in the United States but is simply the way transit works in the rest of the world.

The reassembled family ordered beers and drinks from the hotel bar. Rachel tapped out, exhausted, and skipped the birthday song (sung in Spanish, since none of us knew the German words) but I managed to stay conscious until 9 pm before I bade my leave and went up to the room to crash.        

Stray observations:

• Printed English is everywhere in Berlin. Is it because of the Allied presence after WWII?
• There are many tall, blonde women in Germany who from the back can be mistaken for Rachel
• Andrew and Liz suffered little ill effect from their first international plane trip. Liz often has to adjust her wake-up time to match a day's schedule regardless of when she went to bed, so it's fair to say she's no stranger to jet lag.
• Our trip includes the use of a 40-passenger coach bus that we can summon anytime we want it. I'd prefer to ride a subway, but it is definitely handy for moving people from a beer garden.