Dem Deutchen Volke

It's been a long time since the 1990 Ontario High School German Contest. Looking back, it's astonishing how well we were taught, and how much we had learned in only two years. It was a unique time, heady days filled with words like die Mauer and Wiedervereinigung. In retrospect, much more optimistic than today.

One of the reasons that I chose to study German was because my grandfather had taken a doctorate at the university in Darmstadt, many decades ago. One of the reasons I did not take OAC (Year 13) German was that everyone else in the class would actually have been to Germany at some point. That discrepancy has finally been corrected.

Reconstructed Reichstag

The stories told in history class about "democratic" Berlin and free Berlin were not ancient and forgotten ones. Even within my recent memory, walking along certain of these streets would have been difficult, if not impossible. It's been 17 years of rebuilding, with much to show for it, yet still so much to repair.

East Side Gallery

Broken Through

Former path of the Berlin Wall

There is a sense of sadness, of the gravity of history. Yet also some leftover optimism, amid current economic and social concerns. The deserted Olympic Stadium embodies some of this feeling, as the site of both the infamous 1936 Summer Games, and the happier 2006 World Cup.

Olympiastadion