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Blocker Blog - Entry 8: Closing Remarks

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  A semester seems like a long time where many things can happen, but in retrospect, I could only do so much where I am left with a yearning to do more. A semester abroad in Germany was an incredible eye-opening experience where I was able to learn so much about Berlin as a city as well as about myself. In having the intentions of majoring in Art History, being able to visit so many institutions in a short amount of time left me with incredible insight on how much of a world it is where many works of art, historical or modern, have made a home in renowned organizations. Nevertheless, it has also been a great opportunity to be critical of their practices or at least to question their motives and how such motives maintain certain institutional legacies. Upon first glance, I was not really knowledgeable about Germany’s history, my education up to this point only taught me turning points that lead to what we know of the country today. However it was through my classes at my program, IES,
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Blocker Blog - Entry 7: Reichstagsgebäude

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               Near the end of my time in Berlin, I was able to book a tour of the Reichstagsgebaude , also known as the Bundestag, the government building where the German parliament meets. Though the tour itself was free, it was difficult to find a time slot for it because it is a heavy tourist attraction and spots were taken fast. Nevertheless, I was able to book a tour in English on a Tuesday afternoon. The building itself is smaller than the Capitol Building in the United States but still no less important for having a long history. Like the Capitol Building, the Bundestag has extensive security, all visitors had to go through a bag check; no food was allowed and only light small bags were permitted. Though it was like going through TSA at the airport the aura was rather calm, at least in comparison to the time I visited the Capitol, perhaps it was how laid back all the staff was, they were not wearing any type of visible protective armor, nor were there was not any firearms prese
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Blocker Blog - Entry 6: The Case for Munich

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  According to our itinerary, a weekend trip to Munich would be our last IES trip of the semester and I was thrilled to be a part of it. However, there were a couple of obstacles that delayed our trip to the city in Bavaria. As I have seen a couple of weeks before, there have been protests from the workers of Deutsche Bahn, a.k.a. DB that can last a couple of hours of which in turn can affect the efficiency of public transportation. The Friday that we had our trip planned was the same day that another protest was scheduled to take place; therefore as a consequence all of the train trips were canceled in the morning and we ended up taking a late night train to Munich. We arrived at our hotel around 2 in the morning; just like in Dresden the ride felt shorter than it should be because of the high speed train we were in. Despite those setbacks, we were able to make the next two days worth it!; Early the next morning we were given the option to visit one of two museums, one containing
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Blocker Blog - Entry 5: Sachenhausen

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            I have been focusing on how Germany, especially Berlin, has started to acknowledge its deeper past before the 20th century. What took me to focus on Germany’s acknowledgment of its actions during the 20th century, particularly during the Nazi era and WWII, was our trip to Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp turned museum and memorial. In this place being just on the outskirts of Berlin, it made me realize how close I was from one of the many places where so much violence happened. The way to get there only consists of taking the S1 to Orarienburg and then taking a 15 minute walk from the station. The scenery around the place is green, like many places around Berlin. However our tour guides would drill into our heads that that would not be the way that many people would feel during the Nazi regime. Though initially small, the work camp would eventually have 3 times more people that it was initially designed for. Although not a death camp, since those were built in w
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Blocker Blog - Entry 4: The Case for Dresden

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          On one of our trips scheduled and organized by IES, we went to visit the city of Dresden for the day. We took the train, as one does here, early in the morning so that we would make the best of the day; despite the fact that it turned out to be one of the coldest days of the season by far, I was still very excited for the journey. According to Google Maps, the journey by train would take at least 3 hours; however in the train that we were in, time went by fast, which was something new for me since the US does not have the same capacity to have trains at high speeds, let alone a intricate railway system. Anyway, the journey was smooth and the views were interesting in the sense that it made me realize how this region in northern continental Europe was relatively flat to its southern side; also the flora was different from what I am familiar with, with an example being pine forest being bare on ground level. Once we made it to Dresden we were given a brief tour of the city wi
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Blocker Blog - Entry 3: The Humboldt Forum

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The Humboldt Forum upon first impressions for me was a new type of museum institution in comparison to other museums that I have been to. Upon its many controversies I have built an increasingly critical view of the Forum in a way that helps me create a type of ideal space where reflection and action that can be done in a museum setting, particularly in a setting that holds various archeological artifacts. Now, the Humboldt Forum in a broader sense holds space for conversations that are other than just acknowledging colonial and imperial history that I also enjoy to see. For context, the Humboldt Forum hosts different exhibitions that have different categories of items that ranges from the sciences to the humanities and the arts in its different levels. A particular space that really holds the space to start deep conversations about various topics is the Humboldt Lab. The Humboldt Lab, located on the first floor is a 1,000+ square space where, in partnership with Humboldt- Universität,
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Blocker Blog - Entry 2: First Impressions of the Museuminsel

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  After a couple of weeks exploring the streets of Berlin, I have had a chance to get a first impression of the museums at the center of Berlin, Museum Island, otherwise known as Museuminsel. Even though I had previous knowledge about one of the institutions of the island, the Humboldt Forum, I knew nothing about the other museums. Starting from the north of the island, the museums consist of the Bode-Museum, Pergamonmuseum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, James-Simon-Galerie, Altes Museum, and finally the Humboldt Forum. There are other museums and galleries around the island but for the moment, I will talk about these main institutions for now. Upon first glance, the buildings of many of these institutions are grand in size and can be classified as Neoclassical, Baroque, and modern. However, beyond that, there are visible signs of damage that can be clearly seen all over the island. Most of these damages are bullet holes; as told by multiple tour guides, these holes come from th
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Location: Museum Island, Berlin, Germany
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