Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin

Auf Wiedersehen, U-Bahn!

At 4:30am (Berlin time), most of our group boarded a chartered bus that took us to Tegel Airport. (Katie P. and Rose, who planned an additional week in Europe, slept in just a bit longer and then awoke to catch a train to Salzburg!)

A few hours later, we sat on a British Airways flight to London. And after a few harrowing hours at London's Heathrow Airport, we were on our Virgin Atlantic flight to Chicago.

The Illustrious Row 42: Amy, Lukas, Casey and John

Around seven hours later, we were on the ground in Chicago and boarding a hot school bus bound for Oshkosh.

"Mollz" on the bus ride to Oshkosh

Finally, after battling EAA traffic on Highway 41, we were home.

To all of our amazing students: thank you (you know, danke schoen). Thanks for embracing Berlin, for putting up with your (sometimes dorky but nearly always fabulous) leaders, for being (mostly) responsible and (always) a lot of fun, and for making the most out of three weeks in Berlin.

To the parents: thanks for sharing your kids with us! We loved every minute of it.

"Be unique. Be multi-faceted. Be Berlin."

Holocaust Memorial

Our final full day in Berlin was, for some, a highly emotional one. Thursday we visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a huge site just a short distance from the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. The memorial consists of hundreds of concrete blocks of differing heights, set into a foundation that is not level. This means that, as you make your way through the blocks, you never really have a stable footing. Under the blocks is a very moving exhibition of the Holocaust, and, despite the fact that we'd seen many memorials to the Holocaust on this trip, this one touched the students the most. It was an appropriate ending point for the trip.

Above: the "blocks" at the memorial site; Katie P. walks through the memorial.

Staush and Stacy T. wait to be allowed into the memorial exhibition.

We finished our day with a trip to the Pegasus Hostel, the place where we were originally supposed to stay for our trip. The hostel offered to provide a cook-out for our group. Since many of the students were, by this time, really tired of spending money eating out, this was a welcome opportunity. We ended up having a great time. And some of us even opted to dress alike. (!)

Staush, John, Dr. Scribner, Dr. Slagter at the Pegasus dinner.