Up in the Air

After almost 24 hours of travel (including three delayed flights...all three, all delayed, all the time) I'm writing this post from my hostel in Berlin.  I don't know if it's fully hit me yet that I'm actually here, even though everything is auf Deutsch; somehow, it's different from Israel, where even though I'm technically in a foreign country, I understand a large portion of the cultural nuances, I understand the language, and there's that whole part about the fact that we're all Jewish.  Here, not so much.  Thankfully, despite all the chaos of traveling, I've been very lucky to have encountered some pretty nice people willing to help out ("können Sie mir helfen, bitte?" is the key phrase of the day).  General rundown, and then some thought-thoughts:

BOS to JFK was pretty easy (5PM-6PM).  JFK is the worst airport on the entire planet.

JFK to CDG (left 9PM EST, arrived 10 AM? local) was late, but they did have free champagne and wine on the flight.  So that was good.  I tried to save the bottle for my mom--it had a chicken on it--but I forgot about it and the guy at security in Paris had a laugh over the fact that I hadn't finished it and forgot that it was still half-full in my bag...whoops.

We got into CDG late, so I ended up on a later flight to Tegel, which was also delayed both in the airport and again on the plane for missing passengers whose luggage had to be removed. However, I did meet a guy named Darren who is in some management capacity at Royal Caribbean; we chatted while we waited for the flight, and he woke me up because I totally passed out waiting to board the plane.  I hate overnight flights because you can't see where you are, and the world looks so amazing from a plane; the clouds were absolutely ridiculous between Paris and Berlin, and that never ceases to amaze me (pictures below do not do it justice).  It was a beautiful ride to Tegel, which is a teensy-tiny airport, and Darren found me again after the flight and offered a ride with him and his wife to a train station because he felt bad that I was just going to wing it and try to find this hostel  (generally I'm not in the habit of getting in cars with strangers, but I'm here, so clearly it was fine).  They were both super nice and dropped me off at the U-bahn; it took a while to get to the hostel, but I got in around 5.  

After I dropped my stuff, I walked around Warschauer Straße (the main street near the hostel).  I was pretty exhausted, so I didn't last long, but I did manage to find their frozen yogurt place.  Within 10 minutes.  The food in general looked pretty good, but I was overwhelmed by all the options so dinner ended up being roasted cashews, frozen yogurt (with rhubarb, pomegranate seeds, poppy seeds, and boba...!), and a massive bowl of vegan paprika-fennel soup.  Somehow I managed to drag myself back to the hostel, chatted with my roommates, and passed out for a few hours. 

#fröyölö

Warschauer Straße, covered in graffiti

Julie said it was pirate themed, which is a total lie

So that's that.  The first two flights were meh, but the flight from CDG to Tegel was lovely, and I actually managed to form some relatively coherent thoughts, which I wrote down and I'll keep in mind when everything starts up on Monday.  As follows:

As a 3G, I have a sense of pride at how extraordinary my grandma is.  There are pictures of her from the few years after the war (I'll try to post) smiling, happy, at the beach--there's a scandalous one of her blatantly making out with my grandpa Charlie, ew/aww--and I had trouble figuring out how they could look so happy with everything so close in their past, but here's the thing: they were just happy to be alive.  My grandma grew up with both parents, a bunch of grandparents, three brothers, and various other family members.  My grandpa Charlie also had a big family--a brother and sister, parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.  The picture of their wedding in the States is seven people: my grandma, Irene Wolff Lichtenstein; her brother Karl Wolff; my grandpa Charlie (KarlHeinz Lichtenstein); his brother Günther and sister Rita; his mom Selma Lichtenstein/Oma; and his 90-year-old paternal grandfather, Karl/Opa.  Many Karls.  But that's who was left, from this huge community; we don't feel that often, just joy at being alive.  

Knowing that, and having this sense of pride and gratefulness and wonder, I was thinking about how the other participants in this program--those whose families took active roles in carrying out the Holocaust--contemplate and consider their families' histories.  Is there a feeling that they have something to make up for? Can you still find pride in your family history? I know there are some participants who didn't know that their parents and grandparents were Nazis until much later in life--how do you build that knowledge into the schema of your family?

Anyways, on a different note, I just wanted to thank everyone again who has supported me re: this trip. I haven't even been here a day, but I can tell this is already going somewhere.   

Tomorrow at some point, one of the German participants is picking me up and bringing me to the house, so I can go for a run, get settled in, etc. before things start on Monday.  I'll post again either tomorrow night or the next.  

Gute Nacht!

ARL