Well, it's really really been too long.
As a brief summary: I have been enjoying my post-mono freedom and health so much that I've not found the time to sit down and write. But I have found the time to go to Berlin with the Davidson crew, celebrate carnival in Nivelles with some good Belgians and some good Americans, too, have three wonderful sets of guests visit, start working for an EU lawyer, submit a thesis proposal, get a thesis advisor and two readers, begin the RMCA renovation project in earnest, get almost halfway through a second semester of classes, survive the frozen-solid winter and welcome spring, become an almost-competent quiche and omelette maker, and become a master at getting last-minute opera, theatre, and concert tickets.
So yeah, it's been fun.
First: exams and mono. I never realized how much of an effect health had on me until I didn't have it anymore. In fact, I didn't realize how much effect non-health had until the Etangs d'Ixelles melted, the sun came out (literally), and mono disappeared, leaving me capable of climbing the stairs to my apartment without panting, capable of doing classes (and internship, and job) without passing out afterwards, able to run around Bois de la Cambre with only limited difficulty, able to wear more than PJs and eat more than frozen cheese pizza. Life is very, very good when you no longer have mono. And while I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, especially during exams in a foreign country, mono has taught me some valuable lessons about human anatomy, especially the lymphatic system, as well as about how long you can wait until doing laundry is absolutely necessary, about how many things you can put into water to get it to stop tasting so much like water (hint: not as many as you think), about the incomparable goodness of speculoos ice cream, about being vulnerable, about gritting your teeth and getting through tough things, about what is absolutely necessary in life (hint: painting your toenails is not one of those things), and about how great good health and good friends are. So yay.
Also: Belgian fries and Belgian beer are even better when you return to them after a long hiatus. You don't know what you've got till it's gone...and then returned.
Second: Berlin. What a crazy, cool, complicated city. I presented for/tagged along with the Davidson Holocaust seminar for a week, which was probably one of the best (and most intense, and sometimes most depressing) ways to get a sense for the complexity of this city's history. It was fascinating to see what's there: bullet marks in buildings; sections of the Wall, graffitied or muraled, dotting big empty streets; the pretty modernist Philharmonic (and yes, hearing Beethoven's Sixth played by the Berliner Philharmonie was pretty much a life goal and pretty much transcendent); the nauseatingly pretty villa at Wannsee, where Nazi superiors coordinated the Final Solution; the Museumsinsel, sublime by moonlight; the towering, red-triangle-dotted GDR-era obelisk at Sachesenhausen; the glowing, glimmering, capitalist-choked Potsdamer Platz (complete with life-sized Lego giraffe, which was awesome); people milling around the glass dome of the Reichstag like marbles spinning in a giant maze; the weeping grey blocks of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; the warm-lit Brandenburg Gate, and the incredible realization that for most of their lives my parents and my grandparents would not have been able to see the faces on the horses and the chariot driver up top; the armed-to-the-teeth British and US embassies; the big, weird, Jetson-y TV Tower; the nauseating feeling at the glass coverings over the former Nazi prisons; the cool, surreal U-Bahn ride across the Spree to my apartment in Friedrischain; the countless falafel stands; the equally-countless ads for hair gel (Berliners like their hair colorful and/or spiky).
But what mesmerized me even more was what wasn't there, and that's the mystery of Berlin: remembering all the many layers of dramatic history, whose drama has in many cases intentionally or unintentionally erased the chapters that went before them. And so there are gravel rectangles in place of barracks at Sachsenhausen; there are black and white photos of the SS at Wannsee, but no furniture; there are odd-shaped bricks to mark the snaking trail of the Wall, but (with a few exceptions) no Wall; there is a really inconvenient construction site (soon to be a really unfortunate reconstruction of an old Prussian palace), but no GDR-era Palast der Republik (and that's worth an essay in and of itself); there's the gold dome of the Jewish Synagogue, but no sanctuary; there's a Jewish Museum, but the part of Jewish history we (and by we I mean Americans, especially Americans who study genocide and the Holocaust, like I do) study is represented there by voids, echoes, troubling metal faces (also an essay. I have a lot of writing to catch up on); there's silvery signs showing where Bismarck-era state buildings once stood; or where Third Reich monstrosities got burned (or got converted into current offices, because, recycling, I guess?); or where Checkpoint Charlie still stands but got all covered up by the very worst of profit-driven tourism (drive a real life Trabi! Sit in a real life East German living room! There's probably some irony to the fact that those Gatlinburg-level excesses probably lead to more anti-capitalist sentiment than any GDR propaganda ever did).
And then there was what wasn't there at all: there was little or no mention of Germany's colonies. Admittedly, Germany's colonial past gets understandably overshadowed by the drama that follows; and admittedly, there was one little sign that talked about the Berlin Conference, the division of Africa, and German colonialism; and admittedly, I spent so much time at Dahlem (the ethnological museum) that I didn't make it to the German History Museum to see if there was a section on colonialism (major regret: one of many reasons to go back). But that said, as Hannah Arendt figured out long before I thought about it, the ways imperialism in general and the Herero genocide in particular paved the way for the brutality of both World Wars and the Holocaust is disturbing and compelling; leaving out colonialism is chopping the story in half. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the story of 20th century Europe can't be told without the gilded, gory end of the 19th century, full of optimism and expansionism and internationalism and humanitarianism and racism and dreams for a New World Order and worries about one's place in that order. I was sometimes sad that I didn't see those links show up at the memorial, or Sachsenhausen, or Dahlem; that I never heard the story of the ways that Westerners (Germans, here, most pertinently, but also Belgians, Brits, French, Italians, and in sneaky and unsneaky ways Americans) dehumanized "the others" and so dehumanized themselves, enabling them to do unspeakable violence with unthinkable detachment to themselves and all the "others" they encountered (and I'm of course thinking about the transport trains, but also about trenches in Ypres, and firebombings in Dresden, and blockades after the Treaty of Versailles, and torture in Guantanamo, and drones in Pakistan, too).
So yeah, I would have liked to hear that story. But there were already a lot of stories- a lot of complicated, layered stories- in Berlin (what does one do with that awkward GDR museum to political victims of Sachsenhausen, after all? Demolish it? Dismantle parts of it? Leave it intact, a museum of a museum?). So much food for thought. And also so much food. Good food. I ate apples in so many good pastry ways. (No, no schnitzel. I'm still a vegetarian, which isn't easy to do in Berlin. Also, I'm pretty sure schnitzel is Austrian).
Post-Berlin, it's been a whirlwind: the renovation project has kicked into full gear; I've interviewed a cool group of Congolese students and a few professors about what their ideal colonial history exhibit would look like; have worked on a book about the European Court of Justice; have ridden Leo all over the place; have run, picnicked, frolicked, and basked in the spring weather (which is currently hiding but which will hopefully come back soon); have bashed my head against French philosophy and criticism with increasing frequency (oh Derrida you are no more comprehensible in French than in English); have bought and wore (with trepidation) some banana-yellow pants; and have had so much fun with so many guests. It's been great. I should write more (for example, about the entirely too trippy and confusing version of the Little Mermaid-named-Rusalka, but don't be deceived, it was straight-up Ariel all the way, sort of), but it's late, and I have to go to Tervuren in the morning, and let's face it: when there are this many memories, you've got to pick and choose and eventually end your run-on sentence and shut up.
(And yes, that is probably on some level what all these memory-and-museum questions are all about.)
As a brief summary: I have been enjoying my post-mono freedom and health so much that I've not found the time to sit down and write. But I have found the time to go to Berlin with the Davidson crew, celebrate carnival in Nivelles with some good Belgians and some good Americans, too, have three wonderful sets of guests visit, start working for an EU lawyer, submit a thesis proposal, get a thesis advisor and two readers, begin the RMCA renovation project in earnest, get almost halfway through a second semester of classes, survive the frozen-solid winter and welcome spring, become an almost-competent quiche and omelette maker, and become a master at getting last-minute opera, theatre, and concert tickets.
So yeah, it's been fun.
First: exams and mono. I never realized how much of an effect health had on me until I didn't have it anymore. In fact, I didn't realize how much effect non-health had until the Etangs d'Ixelles melted, the sun came out (literally), and mono disappeared, leaving me capable of climbing the stairs to my apartment without panting, capable of doing classes (and internship, and job) without passing out afterwards, able to run around Bois de la Cambre with only limited difficulty, able to wear more than PJs and eat more than frozen cheese pizza. Life is very, very good when you no longer have mono. And while I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, especially during exams in a foreign country, mono has taught me some valuable lessons about human anatomy, especially the lymphatic system, as well as about how long you can wait until doing laundry is absolutely necessary, about how many things you can put into water to get it to stop tasting so much like water (hint: not as many as you think), about the incomparable goodness of speculoos ice cream, about being vulnerable, about gritting your teeth and getting through tough things, about what is absolutely necessary in life (hint: painting your toenails is not one of those things), and about how great good health and good friends are. So yay.
Also: Belgian fries and Belgian beer are even better when you return to them after a long hiatus. You don't know what you've got till it's gone...and then returned.
Second: Berlin. What a crazy, cool, complicated city. I presented for/tagged along with the Davidson Holocaust seminar for a week, which was probably one of the best (and most intense, and sometimes most depressing) ways to get a sense for the complexity of this city's history. It was fascinating to see what's there: bullet marks in buildings; sections of the Wall, graffitied or muraled, dotting big empty streets; the pretty modernist Philharmonic (and yes, hearing Beethoven's Sixth played by the Berliner Philharmonie was pretty much a life goal and pretty much transcendent); the nauseatingly pretty villa at Wannsee, where Nazi superiors coordinated the Final Solution; the Museumsinsel, sublime by moonlight; the towering, red-triangle-dotted GDR-era obelisk at Sachesenhausen; the glowing, glimmering, capitalist-choked Potsdamer Platz (complete with life-sized Lego giraffe, which was awesome); people milling around the glass dome of the Reichstag like marbles spinning in a giant maze; the weeping grey blocks of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; the warm-lit Brandenburg Gate, and the incredible realization that for most of their lives my parents and my grandparents would not have been able to see the faces on the horses and the chariot driver up top; the armed-to-the-teeth British and US embassies; the big, weird, Jetson-y TV Tower; the nauseating feeling at the glass coverings over the former Nazi prisons; the cool, surreal U-Bahn ride across the Spree to my apartment in Friedrischain; the countless falafel stands; the equally-countless ads for hair gel (Berliners like their hair colorful and/or spiky).
But what mesmerized me even more was what wasn't there, and that's the mystery of Berlin: remembering all the many layers of dramatic history, whose drama has in many cases intentionally or unintentionally erased the chapters that went before them. And so there are gravel rectangles in place of barracks at Sachsenhausen; there are black and white photos of the SS at Wannsee, but no furniture; there are odd-shaped bricks to mark the snaking trail of the Wall, but (with a few exceptions) no Wall; there is a really inconvenient construction site (soon to be a really unfortunate reconstruction of an old Prussian palace), but no GDR-era Palast der Republik (and that's worth an essay in and of itself); there's the gold dome of the Jewish Synagogue, but no sanctuary; there's a Jewish Museum, but the part of Jewish history we (and by we I mean Americans, especially Americans who study genocide and the Holocaust, like I do) study is represented there by voids, echoes, troubling metal faces (also an essay. I have a lot of writing to catch up on); there's silvery signs showing where Bismarck-era state buildings once stood; or where Third Reich monstrosities got burned (or got converted into current offices, because, recycling, I guess?); or where Checkpoint Charlie still stands but got all covered up by the very worst of profit-driven tourism (drive a real life Trabi! Sit in a real life East German living room! There's probably some irony to the fact that those Gatlinburg-level excesses probably lead to more anti-capitalist sentiment than any GDR propaganda ever did).
And then there was what wasn't there at all: there was little or no mention of Germany's colonies. Admittedly, Germany's colonial past gets understandably overshadowed by the drama that follows; and admittedly, there was one little sign that talked about the Berlin Conference, the division of Africa, and German colonialism; and admittedly, I spent so much time at Dahlem (the ethnological museum) that I didn't make it to the German History Museum to see if there was a section on colonialism (major regret: one of many reasons to go back). But that said, as Hannah Arendt figured out long before I thought about it, the ways imperialism in general and the Herero genocide in particular paved the way for the brutality of both World Wars and the Holocaust is disturbing and compelling; leaving out colonialism is chopping the story in half. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the story of 20th century Europe can't be told without the gilded, gory end of the 19th century, full of optimism and expansionism and internationalism and humanitarianism and racism and dreams for a New World Order and worries about one's place in that order. I was sometimes sad that I didn't see those links show up at the memorial, or Sachsenhausen, or Dahlem; that I never heard the story of the ways that Westerners (Germans, here, most pertinently, but also Belgians, Brits, French, Italians, and in sneaky and unsneaky ways Americans) dehumanized "the others" and so dehumanized themselves, enabling them to do unspeakable violence with unthinkable detachment to themselves and all the "others" they encountered (and I'm of course thinking about the transport trains, but also about trenches in Ypres, and firebombings in Dresden, and blockades after the Treaty of Versailles, and torture in Guantanamo, and drones in Pakistan, too).
So yeah, I would have liked to hear that story. But there were already a lot of stories- a lot of complicated, layered stories- in Berlin (what does one do with that awkward GDR museum to political victims of Sachsenhausen, after all? Demolish it? Dismantle parts of it? Leave it intact, a museum of a museum?). So much food for thought. And also so much food. Good food. I ate apples in so many good pastry ways. (No, no schnitzel. I'm still a vegetarian, which isn't easy to do in Berlin. Also, I'm pretty sure schnitzel is Austrian).
Post-Berlin, it's been a whirlwind: the renovation project has kicked into full gear; I've interviewed a cool group of Congolese students and a few professors about what their ideal colonial history exhibit would look like; have worked on a book about the European Court of Justice; have ridden Leo all over the place; have run, picnicked, frolicked, and basked in the spring weather (which is currently hiding but which will hopefully come back soon); have bashed my head against French philosophy and criticism with increasing frequency (oh Derrida you are no more comprehensible in French than in English); have bought and wore (with trepidation) some banana-yellow pants; and have had so much fun with so many guests. It's been great. I should write more (for example, about the entirely too trippy and confusing version of the Little Mermaid-named-Rusalka, but don't be deceived, it was straight-up Ariel all the way, sort of), but it's late, and I have to go to Tervuren in the morning, and let's face it: when there are this many memories, you've got to pick and choose and eventually end your run-on sentence and shut up.
(And yes, that is probably on some level what all these memory-and-museum questions are all about.)
