Today, it's possible to see where the bridge was patched up. Moreover, there's an un-reconstructed griffin along the shore on the north bank of the river. A memorial to the violence of the fighting.
This set the stage for the next few hours. I worked my way south into the Tiergarten, which is largely fenced off right now. I snuck into the first of three Soviet memorial sites that I would visit in the course of the day--these are all characterized by a similar kind of bombast and monumental neo-classicism.
It was at Soviet Memorial in the Tiergarten that I got a tip from a German to visit the Global Stones Project currently underway nearby. He marked in on a map for me, which was good since the Tiergarten is big. I found Wolfgang polishing one of the stones and even took a brief video of him at work, but then I deleted it by mistake later.
I then ran across the Homosexuellen Denkmal (memorial to gay and lesbian victims of the Nazis) as I walked back towards the Brandenburg Gate. Like most other holocaust memorials, its basic shape is... well... monolith-esque. This one is interesting because it integrates video as well. Visitors look through the window to see a pair of men kissing. When I was there I saw a steady stream of visitors stopping and looking.
But the lesson of the morning was--Surprise!--that knowing a local language makes all the difference. I struck up conversations with locals who were excited at the prospect of helping me learn more about Berlin's memorials and public art. I tell my students that they need to commit themselves to a year abroad once they attend college. This is the reason why. My German, while certainly rusty, has opened many, many doors for me.
