Week Two: Berlin Pride and Back To Warsaw

I left the Oki Doki last Wednesday morning and took a train to Berlin.  In a great stroke of luck, I ended up on the same train as Thaddeus, an aviation mechanics student in Berlin who also stayed at the Oki Doki.  He had great recommendations of places to go and we decided to meet up for Pride on Saturday.

I was really excited to get to Berlin for Pride and to see the city.  Like every other stop on the Watson journey, it was my first time to go.  I had heard great things about Berlin generally but also about LGBT life there.  Beyond two (!) Pride parades and a month's worth of other Pride celebrations, Berlin also has a classic gayborhood, a gay museum, and a vibrant night life that includes numerous queer clubs and bars.

                                       

        Windmills on the train ride into Germany.

President Obama was in Berlin on the Wednesday that I arrived and his smiling face greeted me at the hostel.  There was actually no way to go see his speech at the Brandenburg Gate; I heard from several other travelers who tried that everything within a half-mile (at least) was blocked and nobody could enter.

After getting settled in the hostel and making a list of things to see, I spent Thursday exploring the city.

I started with the Holocaust Memorial, the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism, and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma.  These are all fairly close together near the Brandenburg Gate.

Before talking about this and putting up pictures, I guess I should say that I was conflicted about whether or not to take pictures in the first place.  I did not want to be disrespectful (and although I am sure that the people who took family pictures with the memorial in the background or standing and smiling on the stones that make it up did not do these things with disrespect in mind, it felt not quite right to me), and I was afraid that in the process of taking pictures and seeing through the lens rather than on my own, I would successfully distance myself from the intended experience of the memorial and from the reality of what it was meant to call to mind and commemorate. In the end I took pictures, which are below, to document my experience, but I also spent time with the camera away.  Has anyone else had this experience or do y'all have advice about how to think about this issue? 

The main stretch turns into Hannah Arendt Street near the Memorials.

The Holocaust Memorial, or the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, is a series of stone rectangles that covers a large block of land.  The ground is uneven, so I felt off-balance throughout the memorial.  The stones vary in height, and as I walked through the aisles, I felt overwhelmed when they surrounded and towered over me.  I assume that this is the intended effect, and making visitors feel disoriented and overwhelmed even in the midst of what would appear to be a highly organized system seems like one way of memorializing the very specific kind of horror of the Holocaust. 

A view down one of the aisles of the memorial. 

                                                                

This is the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under the Nazis.  It is an unmarked box in Tiergarten Park, across the street from the Holocaust Memorial, and although I passed it several times, it took me some time to realize this was it.  Only when I stuck my head in the little window did I realize that this must be the place.  A film runs on repeat: in one section, a young gay couple is happy and affectionate in a number of locations and in the end, an older gay couple notices them and shares a kiss of their own.  The second section is much the same, with a lesbian couple.  After watching the film, it's difficult to be anything but happy, and I left the memorial feeling both happy to have seen that affection in a very public place and obviously upset at the reality of the persecution of gay people.

This is the memorial to the Sinti and Roma, also in Tiergarten Park, set aside behind a glass wall tracing the history of the Holocaust persecution.  The water is surrounded by stones, some of which bear the names of the concentration camps to which those memorialized were sent.  

I spent the rest of Thursday and Friday visiting the East Side Gallery, the Reichstag, the Schwules (gay) Museum, the Brandenburg Gate, and Checkpoint Charlie. 

In front of the Reichstag, the German Parliament building. 

The dome on top of the Reichstag, which you can visit with free tickets.  I waited for about 2 hours and met some nice travelers from India, Japan, and Canada.  The dome offers views of the whole city and of Parliament in the building below. 

The center of the dome is a series of glass panels that gets larger and larger as you go up the walkway of the dome.  Reichstag selfie.  Couldn't resist. 

In the Reichstag dome.  I'm terrified of heights so I was shaking the whole time but it was beautiful.  

In front of the Brandenburg Gate.  There was construction being done on both sides so it was difficult to get close to it. 

The top of the Gate. 

Getting ready for the Christopher Street Day Parade, which is the name of Berlin Pride, outside of the Gate.  Christopher Street is where the Stonewall Riots, an LGBT rebellion against police brutality, took place in the US in 1969.  

 I walked along the East Side Gallery, which is a 1.3 km long section of the Berlin wall covered in art.  Here are pictures of some favorite pieces.  

Although there are no traditionally gay neighborhoods in Warsaw, Schoneberg is the gayborhood in Berlin and has been since the 1920s. The Schwules Museum is located here, and after exploring their exhibits on gay history, I got lost and went exploring in Schoneberg.  Found some extremely happy bunnies in a garden.  

Although I was slightly disappointed with the Schwules Museum, which was not as organized or thorough as I would have hoped, it and Schoneberg were still part of the reason that I was really excited to get to Berlin.  It has a history of at least somewhat open gay life and culture tracing back almost 100 years now and the CSD, which is a huge demonstration shutting down a major tourist center, carries on that queer visibility.  It's an interesting contrast to Memphis and to Warsaw, where gay life exists in a very different way.  

On Saturday I woke up and took the U-Bahn to the stop where the CSD was supposed to begin at 12.  As soon as I stepped off of the train, I heard the music.  There was a huge crowd. The lines at the side of the parade were treated more like suggestions and the crowd pushed itself as close as possible to all the floats, which were surrounded by security officers with ropes meant to make sure that nobody got hit.

The beginning of the parad

Russia just passed a bill punishing anyone who distributes "gay propaganda."  Much like the "Don't Say Gay" bill in Tennessee,  it's anti-gay legislation that proponents argue protects children from the well-know evil of the gay agenda...There were protests against the bill throughout the parade both from German marchers and from those visiting from Russia. 

Berlin Roller Derby

Canada was present to distribute material for World Pride, which takes place in Toronto next June.  I'll be there as the last stop on my Watson! 

The end of the parade. 

There was a fair set up around the Brandenburg Gate with music and lots of booths. 

With the excellent Thaddeus.  

In addition to the CSD, there was also the TCSD or transgenialer CSD.  This is the "alternative" pride, meant to be more inclusive and to avoid what is seen as the commercialization of radical queer politics.  Where it was very easy to find the CSD, it was not so easy to find the TCSD.  In fact, there was so much conflicting information going around about the TCSD that I was unsure that it was even happening.  Early in the morning I heard that it was not.  Later, there was information that there would be a rally at what had originally been the end point of the parade.  Then it was supposed to be somewhere else.

Ultimately, I got lost on the way to the park where the rally was supposed to be and with some really excellent luck stumbled upon the actual parade.  I am so grateful that this happened.  I was able to hear the opening speech and while it was in German, I could understand enough to know that there was a lot more discussion of racism, capitalism, and Islamophobia than there had been at the CSD.

The chant, "Queer Feminism is Anti-Fascist," opened the parade, which was unlike the CSD in a number of ways. For one, it was made up of a huge mass of people and three or four small vans or trucks with signs.  I was able to watch the entire procession and join part of it.  The parade took place in Kreuzberg, which is an extremely diverse neighborhood filled with artists and a large number of immigrants.  My hostel was there and I enjoyed the food and the night life.  It is a much more low-key location than the Brandenburg Gate.  There was less music and more chanting.           

The small van where the speeches were made; it led the parade.

The group marching through Kreuzberg.

I was thankful to be able to see both the CSD and the TCSD, to be able to see two sides of the queer community and to observe the different ways in which a public demonstration might take shape and proceed.  The split between the CSD and the TCSD is familiar, mirroring in some ways the debate in the US between more mainstream and more radical political agendas.  There was a large group in the CSD of folks holding "Everyone wants to be happily married" signs. There was nothing like that at the TCSD.  Much like at home, it seems like there is a debate over where the energy of the community should be focused.  Even in Berlin, there is still that divide, and given how difficult it was to get any information about the TCSD, one side has a much louder microphone.  

The night after the parades, I went to one of the many celebrations with Thaddeus and some of his really nice friends who were also visiting the city. It was a great day and a really fun night, a perfect way to end my time in Berlin. 

I headed back to Warsaw Monday morning and was picked up at the train station by the owner of the apartment where I'll be staying for the next month.  I've spent this week getting settled and making connections (more on that next post), and although hostel life was helpful in being social and getting to know the city, it is a nice change to have my own space for at least a little while.  

This week I am particularly thankful for: 

1. Berlin's queer community, in all its forms

2. Courtney Mott

3. Thaddeus, who is awesome and who should come visit me in Warsaw, and the lovely Brians and Matt with whom we spent Pride night

4. Caroline Todd

5. Kebab, which is a great thing and which was particularly delicious in Berlin

Thanks for reading, everybody!