Visit to German Chancellery and Foreign Ministry

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to get the chance to visit the German Foreign Ministry due to fact that my teacher is a foreign German diplomat - he's pretty awesome! It was really cool to get a tour of the foreign ministry and see where all the meetings are held. Later we had our last mandatory excursion to the Bundezkanzleramt, aka the Chancellor's Office where Angie hangs out. It is the equivalent to the White House so it was awesome that we got a private tour! Unfortunately, my tour started at 7 PM so Angela Merkel was already gone for the day. It was so cool to be in there and see where she holds her press conferences and the Cabinet meetings. You know how heads of governments will give presents to other foreign heads of government? Well apparently Chancellor Schroeder (the previous Chancellor) gave Bush a chainsaw. Because he heard that Bush's chainsaw broke. After living here in Germany for 3 months, that choice of present does not confuse me at all. And I got to take a picture where Merkel gives her press conferences and where just a few hours previous, she held one with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Sadly, my camera ran out of battery in the morning so I will have to borrow some pictures from my friends. While I was there, we watched a film of a brief history of the federal government in Germany. 


One of the images I saw was West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt of his famous Warschauer Kniefall. Seeing this image gave me the chills because I have actually visited the site where Brandt spontaneously knelt down and asked for forgiveness from the Polish people, in regards to the horrors of the past that Hitler and the Nazi regime inflicted upon Poland. On a tour in Warsaw, our tour guide took us to this memorial. She told us that the material it is constructed out of was originally intended for a monument to Hitler, but before the Nazis got a chance to build it, they had been defeated. Instead, the Polish people took the material and built a memorial to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Pretty bad ass if you ask me. Brandt's actions was an act of atonement to the Polish people and was a huge step in furthering his easing of tensions with the East. I definitely feel lucky to have been able to visit a place like that and learn about it.

Willy Brandt's Warschauer Kniefall

My visit to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial

After this nice distraction, I should get back to finishing my two term papers that are due on Monday and Tuesday - I'm almost done! Once I finish these, I will only have my finals and then I will be DONE :]