The first time I went to Germany, I was a member of an exchange group. There were fifteen of us in all (give or take), and I attached myself to the only other girl of the group who had no intention of being intoxicated for the duration of our stay. We did have a good time. We were trusted to go off by ourselves in Berlin (with one other student). Laura and Chris and I went to the big museums... antiquities, art, history. We walked along a section of the Berlin Wall and tried to translate the poems written on it and wondered at the murals and were awed by the implications of such a comparatively small bit of concrete. It was interesting to see East and West Berlin in a modern context. Our hostel was in East Berlin. The buildings were still rather uniform--grey and white, blank faces standing stoically like uneven teeth, clenched in a grin extending from the banks of the river.
One of the things that I remember most fondly happened by accident. The three of us were attempting to find a chocolate shop about which Chris' host family had told him. It sounded wonderful--like the Hershey's store in Times Square, but with German good taste. We never found it. But we did wander around a more residential area of Berlin for an hour or so, and finally found a chocolate shop. This one was not the chocolate wonderland of our Willie Wonka dreams, but a confection of unusual flavors and chocolate darker than coffee--like Juliette Binoche sprinkling chili pepper on hot chocolate in Chocolat.
No comments:
Post a Comment