A Trip Back in Time

Tuesday, March 29th

On Tuesday, class began as normal in the morning, but around 10 am we took a small field trip with our professor. We visited the El-De Haus in Cologne. It was only a short walking distance from the CDC. The house is now a museum, but was actually a prison during WWII. In the basement, we saw the cells where communists, Jews, and other “enemies of the state” were kept for extended periods of time. You could see the original writings on the walls from prisoners. It is interesting to note how immediately after the war, this building became an office building and the prison cells simply became storage rooms. Decades passed after the war and those who worked in the building simply ignored the inscriptions on the walls. It wasn’t until years later that Germans began to stop denying the Holocaust’s existence. When a journalist noticed the markings on the walls, a large write-up was compiled and the house was converted into a historical site for the purpose of remembering what had actually passed there during the Third Reich. We explored the museum and walked through a timeline. Our group of 13 broke into subgroups and we each had to explain an exhibit while speaking only German. It was a heavy topic, but one worth visiting in a German light. It is a very sensitive subject in the country where it happened. By that I mean that it is not casually spoken of… nor should it in any country… but here especially. The current German mindset is that something such as this will never happen again.

In the afternoon, we traveled to Haus der Geschichte (House of History for Germany) in Bonn. One of our GIZ program coordinators took us there by train. The museum was rather well put together. It was one of the most complete history museum experiences I have had yet. Entrance is free to the public (brownie point number 1) and they supplied us with an incredible guide (brownie point number 2). We were well received and the guide was pleased to hear we could all understand German fairly well. To our advantage, a rather smart device was used to aid in our listening experience! Every received a headphone and receiver. The guide then had a microphone hanging around his neck so that we could hear him crystal clear regardless of our position in the group. This would be VERY useful for large groups of students! …uh… or a group of newbies to the language…

We wrapped up around 5pm and were exhausted from the day. Two museums will do it! Up to speed on Germany history, we retreated back to Cologne where half of us took off to do laundry. This is now the second time I have EVER been to a laundromat. The first time was in between band camps during my first year of college! …let’s just say they aren’t as cheap as the machines in a dorm or apartment complex. It took a little while to decipher the instruction rubric, but we succeeded and victoriously walked out the Waschsalon with a load of CLEAN laundry!