First Day Summary

Challenging first couple of days here for Group 1. Despite several challenging traveling issues, all made it here safely and on-time except one group who, due to a flight cancellation, will arrive tomorrow morning. Thankfully, we were able to make adjustments to the schedule and we are very hopeful that all scheduled events will still take place.

Highlights of the day – safe arrival at the airport and transportation to our hostel (Ibis, Mitte Berlin); walking tour of Museum Island and Hackescher Markt, a visit to the famous East Wall Gallery, and a group dinner at Vapiano’s (thanks, Prof Manieri, for finding this spot!). We experimented with different foods, flavors, language, and customary interactions, and also began to interact with the horrible history of the holocaust as we went for a walk through the Mitte district and saw a Jewish graveyard desecrated by the Nazi’s and found several Stolpersteine (stumbling) stones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein) along the way. Here are some pics from the day:

Tomorrow morning our remaining six team members are due to arrive and in the afternoon we will travel to Brandenburg an der Havel and be led through the Aktion T-4 Memorial there by Dr. Christian Marx, director of the memorial.