We had another group excursion today, and this time we went about two hours north by bus to the Museum of the Inner German Border. Since I stayed up till about 4:30 AM again last night to watch the Huskies beat Syracuse, I was a bit tired, so I slept on the bus ride. I did have a blast watching UW football last night though, even if everyone else was already asleep.
While the museum’s beginning exhibit talks about walls and borders around the world, the museum itself focuses on the German border between the former East and West. This museum was itself a former checkpoint between East and West, and we could see remnants of the wall and bunkers in the fields surrounding the museum.
We got a tour of the inside with one of the tour guides, and he showed us some pretty neat exhibits in the museum, such as this map of borders throughout German history.
We learned about how the wall/border itself evolved over the years. It went from wood to concrete to steel and barbed wire.
There were also examples of landmines that were buried in the fields around the museum. Supposedly, 2 million landmines were activated, but 17% of them have still yet to be found. A few times a year, people stumble upon them. Sometimes they’re still active; sometimes they’re not.
I like models of things, so this mock up of the checkpoint was pretty fascinating. But it was also sad, because the concrete lane was put right in the middle of farmland. In building the wall, there was little regard for what stood in the way, and it cost people their homes, their land, and in some cases, their lives.
I also found the passports fascinating. West German passport on the left; East German passport on the right.
On Friday in Culture Class, we watched my favorite German movie of all time, Das Leben der Anderen (released in English as The Lives of Others). It’s about life in the former East, and the level of paranoia and surveillance created by the East German government and state police (the Stasi). If you haven’t seen that movie, watch it. It won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film when it came out. Anyway, I bring this up because surveillance is a big theme of the movie, and in this museum, we saw the tools used to do just this.
Our tour took a quick break and then moved outside. The tour guide brought us on a 2 or 3 km tour around the surrounding fields. First though, we saw this old helicopter that patrolled the border.
This map showed how Germany was split until the 10th of November 1989.
We walked a long way, but we saw quite a bit. Supposedly, there may still be landmines in the fields, so we had to stay on the path. Turns out, it’s a bike path people tend to frequent.
The trees in the area didn’t exist 20 years ago as the rule was to keep a clear line of sight. So everything was cut down to about two or three inches. In the fields were these little bunkers where two guards would have to stay for hours at a time.
There were also watch towers where guards stayed at. Since they only take a few hours to build, they were demolished by tying a chain around the base, attaching the chain to a truck, and then driving the truck away from the tower.
The rest of our tour took us to another tower, but since my camera battery was dying, I didn’t take any more pictures. We walked for another km or so and then headed back to the museum where our bus was waiting. I fell asleep on the ride home again and woke up when we got home around 7:30 PM, about two and a half hours after we left the museum.
I decided to make Brandon’s Italian pasta again—the one with spaghetti, cucumbers, onions, garlic, sausages, and white wine. I’m finding that it’s not taking as long to make it anymore, so I was done in about 25 minutes. ‘Twas delicious, and I feel somewhat ashamed to say I ate all of that for dinner. ☺
We only have another week and a half in Marburg, so we’re going to have to cook the rest of the food we bought. I have a bunch of pasta left, but I need to buy a few more veggies to go along with it. Last night though, Brandon, James, and I ate another pasta dish that Brandon made up. That was pretty good too.
We then watched the second installment of Winnetou, which was even more hilarious than the first film. From the first scene where Winnetou attacks a huge brown bear (man dressed in bear costume and waving arms back and forth), we could tell it would not disappoint us, and surely, it did not. We are going to watch the third and final film of the Winnetou series later this week.
I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve actually been in German class, since we had our high school field trip last week, and then I missed class on Friday with an appointment. Should be fun as we get ready for our radio program next Tuesday. Once I get the recording, I will try uploading it on the blog.
Probably nothing exciting to post about this week, so I may not have an update till Saturday. I plan to head down to Mannheim in Baden-Württemberg to visit a friend on Saturday, so I should have some good pictures and stories.
Until then,
Sam
P.S. Go Team USA! Just watched them beat Turkey in the FIBA World Championships. Man, I love sports. Almost as much as Justin Timberlake.
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