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May 2008
The Reichstag in Berlin
After leaving my London buddies, I wandered around Berlin a bit, then decided I had better go get my bearings. I went back to my hostel and grabbed my backpack from the luggage room to move it upstairs to my room. I opened the door to my room and shut it again quickly without going in. I was confused. Why was there a guy standing in the middle of my room? There was also a girl, so I thought maybe they were a couple and that he was just visiting her. I stood in the hall puzzling over this new development and finally went into the room and claimed a bed.
The girl greeted me warmly, while the boy went into the bathroom and shut the door. “It’s a mixed dorm,” she said quietly with a little laugh. Apparently we had both booked ourselves into a mixed dorm without realizing it. Nadia and I began talking, and it turned out she was from Amsterdam.
We talked about our travels and about our plans for Berlin. She asked if I was going out that night. I said I wasn’t sure. I knew I would be ready for sleep after riding the night bus into Berlin. A little later, I went out alone and wandered around the city centre. I found a park and took some pictures. I went into the Rathaus (which in German means “council house,” like a city hall) and looked around. When I came back to the hostel, Nadia said she had found a fun, reggae music place to go the next night and asked if I would like to join her. I agreed.
My second day was full of sightseeing in Berlin. I awoke early to go see the Reichstag, but wasn’t early enough to beat the crowds.
The Reichstag building was opened in the late 1800s to house the German Empire’s first parliament. It is the building that Hitler used to take absolute control in 1933. When “Communists” burned it down in that year, he asked the Parliament for powers of war and then was virtually unstoppable. He used those powers of war to annihilate the Jewish race in many places and to persecute and murder many others he deemed unfit in his new world order.
I waited in line for three hours, but I still think the view was worth it. Something amazing happened while I was waiting in line. I have been reading through the beginning of the Bible, very slowly. I came into Exodus while I was standing on the steps of the Reichstag. Exodus is the story of God freeing his people, the Jewish people, from Egyptian bondage.
The story of Exodus is a true one. I have no doubts that the God who freed the Jewish people in Exodus is living and active today. I have no answers for why the Holocaust happened. I can only say that standing on the steps of that historic building, many things came home to me. I know there are stories of hope scattered throughout the Holocaust, but those do not recount for the mass tragedy of the lives that were taken.
What came home to me was the knowledge that I will never understand. I cannot give an adequate answer to the suffering in the world. I cannot say why some are rich and some poor, why some survived and others were murdered.
But I can trust in a God who is bigger and who sees the mass plan. When I was in Amsterdam, I visited the home of Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom. She and her family sheltered people during the Holocaust and were caught and sent to an interment camp. They were devout Christians who shared the Hope of Christ while in the camp. Two weeks before they were released, her beloved sister died in the camp. After Corrie was released, she helped rehabilitate others who experienced trauma as a result of living in the camps. Then she toured the world calling herself a ‘tramp for Christ,’ sharing her story and the hope she had despite the horrors of her past. Wherever she went, she took a beautiful embroidered crown with her.
Let me pause to say I am oversimplifying Corrie’s story for the purpose of this blog, but highly recommend that you read her book, The Hiding Place. It is well worth your time.
Wherever Corrie went, she would take out this bit of embroidery and show the crowd, saying that we only see the backside of the embroidery, the threads as they are being knotted and tied and nothing makes sense. It is a jumbled heap. But God sees the front side. Oftentimes, the worst times in our lives are the jewels in the crown of our lives.
I respect Corrie Ten Boom for saying this and feel it might sound cliche coming from someone else, but she lived through hell. That moment at the Reichstag taught me something.
My God stands the test of time.
Standing on the steps of the Reichstag, I realized history will make itself everyday. We have a choice how we will react or if we will take a stand when troubles come into our lives.
Unfortunately, it isn’t in only the big things that we must take a stand—it is also in the everyday acts of taking out the trash for our moms and feeding our sick neighbors that create in us the character to change the world when our time comes.
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BERLIN TOUR
My adventures in Eastern Europe are well under way. The first stop on my journey was Berlin, Germany. I took an overnight bus from Amsterdam and arrived at 9 a.m. Miraculously, I found the hostel with no difficulties. I stowed my luggage and came to the receptionist desk just in time to catch the free tour of Berlin at 10 a.m. Tours are done by an international company, and all the people converged at the Brandenburger Tor to be split up into groups by the language they spoke. My group guide was a hyperactive artist from Maine.
He was knowledgeable and entertaining as he gave a fantastic tour of all the main sights in the city. We went to the Holocaust memorial and walked amidst blocks of concrete, remembering those who died. We stood on top of Hitler’s bunkers, in what is now just a parking lot. We went to Checkpoint Charley and to the Berlin Wall. So much history was in every building; it was hard to take it all in. Berlin was nearly obliterated in World War II, so much of what we see today is rebuilt to look like the original. The city is still beautiful in its own right,
For the first part of the tour, I walked, listened and didn’t talk to anyone. When we stopped for lunch, I had to find an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM). As I went off to find a bank, a voice behind me asked if I was going to look for money. I said yes and realized I was talking to one of the guys from my tour. We found an ATM and got to know each other a bit along the way. He was from London traveling Europe with his friend. When we got back to the Schlotsky’s where everyone was eating, he introduced me to his friend, and we all ate together. They asked what I was doing in Europe. I explained I was studying missions and had done an internship in Amsterdam.
Jackson asked what missions entailed. I explained I wanted to be a missionary. He asked if you had to be a nun to be a missionary. They had these really confused looks on their faces. I gathered they didn’t hang out with many girls like me.
We started the tour again, and my two new friends were hilarious. They were really chill London boys with no plans in life. I don’t think that is a virtue, but they were definitely peace-loving and friendly. Their next stop was Amsterdam, where they hoped to get as high as possible and stay in a coffee-shop all day. I encouraged them to see the sights instead.
When the tour ended, I pulled out my map and started planning my next thing. The guys were talking about going to a cafe near their hostel, so I went with them. We talked along the way as they asked me about Christianity and about church. When we got to the cafe, they asked questions about Jesus. Why did Jesus dying on the cross magically erase our sins? Won’t being good and following the Ten Commandments get you into heaven?
We talked awhile. They were serious. They said they didn’t know anyone in London who goes to church. There are churches, and they don’t close, but nobody they know actually goes. This was discouraging to me. How can we be so disconnected?
After we ate, I left them and went back to my hostel. I had learned a lot from them. Europe is in deep spiritual need—even as they have so much in material goods.
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Reflecting on Amsterdam
My time at the Shelter Jordan has officially ended. I am onto a new journey. Over three months ago, I arrived in Amsterdam with all of my luggage and a bit of a naive picture of what lay ahead of me. These past few months have been amazing and I wouldn’t change anything about them because I have learned so much.
One of my friends at the Shelter, Elizabeth, has done a lot of traveling. She and I came in and left at the same time. She taught me a lot about adjusting to a new place and keeping a firm grounding even when everything around me is changing. Elizabeth was reading a book on World Religions while we were at the Jordan, and she found a quote that really portrays one of the main lessons we both learned. “If you never mix with people from different races, you will have no eye for detail.”
Before I began working at the shelter and meeting people from every walk of life, I would put them into general groups. Japanese tourists go to Disneyland with cameras strapped to their necks. Hippies smoke joints and are peace-loving. Those are just a few of my narrow-minded categories. Now I have faces and names and personalities in my mind who are Japanese, Italian, French, Spanish, but that is only a small part of their identity.
I can no longer put them into general groups because they are all so beautiful and unique. I have memories with them. I built card castles with Baptiste from France, reminisced about favorite Mexican food with two medical students from Mexico, talked about tulips with Chiang from Japan and have even been invited for a visit to her home.
I am not defined by my American passport, though being an American definitely has an impact on who I am and how I grew up. I am fortunate to have been raised by parents who taught me the importance of learning about the world. My mom used to say that everyone should take a semester and travel the world. I now whole-heartedly agree.
There is a movement in the youth, the idea that the holocaust never happened. This makes me so sick to my stomach because one simply has to cross the border into Europe and they’ll see the aftermath of it everywhere.
I believe coming here has taught me to appreciate my family and to appreciate communication. I have gotten to know my grandma better through this experience because she is pretty hip and we get to talk on skype.
In high school, I hated history class. Here, I eat it up. I will go to museums and read historical markers and investigate random statues all day long. Everything has a story, and many of those stories form the foundation for the story of America.
God has taken me on a long spiritual journey through my time at the Shelter. I am still processing it all. I have learned about moral relativism and about loving people even when I wholeheartedly disagree with their theology. I’m still learning to love actually-I think that will be a lifelong process.
I have learned to listen, and continue to learn to listen, to people when I really want to talk. People are so hungry to pour out their stories and to be reassured they are worth something to someone else. Some days all I did was sit and listen. Oftentimes while ordering a hot chocolate or a tea, someone would just pour their story out over the counter. I haven’t the wisdom to deal with the issues many are going through, so I gingerly take in their story, massage it for a bit, until it feels better and a bit more manageable, and give it back. Sometimes an opportunity for the Gospel would present itself, and sometimes not. That wasn’t really the issue. I am learning that these are people, not just possible converts.
The next journey is Eastern Europe. I have 20 days, from May 1st to May 20th, to travel some of Eastern Europe. I’ll be alone, so your thoughts and prayers are appreciated. The first stop is Berlin, Germany, and then on to Krakow, Poland. I picked Eastern Europe because it is cheap, because I think my heart has been leaning toward this direction for a while, and because Western Europe is so.. Westernized. Eastern Europe has a unique culture. I hope all of you have a fantastic summer and continue reading the blogs I post from my Eastern Europe adventures.
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Painting the Town Orange!
Goede Middag! This is Kelsey Hitzfelder, your Longview Queen’s Day correspondent, reporting to you from the lovely Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam. (Jordaan is the Dutch word for garden.) Thousands of Dutch nationalists have gathered to the streets of this beautiful city to celebrate the birthday of their Queen’s mother, Juliana.
Orange Day, known as such because of the royal family Orange and the color that paints the streets on this day, brings a party for all ages and a spirit of congeniality to all cultures in the great nation of The Netherlands.
In Amsterdam, the party began last night, when street vendors, hippies, and otherwise thrifty folk packed the sides of the streets to claim a spot for the all-city garage sale and flea market that took place today.
A stroll through the Jordaan this morning brought a feast for my senses. Orange balloons were strung everywhere and every costume imaginable was to be found on people of every culture. There were some incredible bargains as well. I was lucky enough to be accompanied by two Dutch friends, so I had quite the authentic experience. Bars brought their business to the streets where drunken costumed men sang Dutch national songs and enlivened the spirit of the day. In contrast to the drunken liveliness of many in the older generations, children filled the sides of the streets, hawking their toys and their talents. Many played piano or sang to make a few euros.
Gradually, my friends and I made it to Vondelpark. This large park in the Centrum of Amsterdam is usually an oasis of green. Today is was a sea of bodies and children selling everything from a dance show to a plastic white board that was passed and sold continually from person to person.
The sheer number of people was overwhelming. There wasn’t ten feet anywhere without at least one body on it. Hippies with dreadlocks were selling jewelry, and their children were sleeping on the blow-up mattresses behind them.
As the afternoon draws to a close and the night nears, the beer flows more freely and the children disappear. The city will take on a whole new look for tonight’s festivities. Much like New Year’s Eve in a big American city, trash now fills the street as many have been indulging in the alcohol a bit all day and the remnants of the street market have been left for people to pick through. The music of free street concerts fills the air and dancing mobs are everywhere. The culture is that of youth, vitality, flippancy.
Tomorrow will be a bit rough on many of the celebrants of today’s festivities, but for now- Long live the Queen! Hup Holland Hup!
