The Germany/Poland Trip Philip McClory

As all students who go on a school trip know, it’s not what is organised in the itinerary that usually counts. For most trips, students couldn’t give a damn where they’re dragged to or what monotonous tour guide they have to endure. Their moment is at two o’clock in the morning where they get to relive their childhoods by knocking on the doors of people they’ll never see again, causing as much hassle for hostel staff up to the point where someone makes a formal complaint, lying low till three, and doing it all again. This trip may not have been an exception (let’s be honest) yet, despite ourselves, we actually enjoyed the tours, the museum, even the concentration camps. Learning, as embarrassing as it is, can be fun after all.

After what was a long journey, we arrived in Berlin (the bus to Belfast was somewhat lengthened by a woeful rendition of Aero smith’s “Don’t want to miss a thing”. For legal purposes I’m obliged to omit the name, but for personal satisfaction, it was MARK QUINN and by (EXPLETIVE) it was brutal).

We checked into our hostel, and that night did what all students do on school trips; stay up to a god-forsaken hour of the morning, talking about nothing in particular, and my personal favourite of “ pretending to know how to play poker until you go all in with “all reds, lads””. In the morning, the trip’s activities proved their worth. No one can forget our guide around East Berlin Richard, who by his attitude was the only man in history who wanted to climb over the wall into East Berlin. Stopping up the road from a gothic beggar, he lamented to us how this financial sponge and others like him got paid more for doing nothing than getting a job (although it didn’t have the desired effect; a few in the group considered giving him applause on the way back). While we agreed that the state paying for the medical well-being of the beggar’s dog (that’s right) was excessive, there was no real room for debate if we hadn’t concurred; Richard looked like he’d handled his fair share of piano wire, and even with the American accent his constant negativity about re-unification was…unsettling. In Berlin, there were a few highlights, such as the national museum (containing all the Nazi paraphernalia that Mel Gibson could ask for and an impressive array of weaponry from the Medieval ages), Checkpoint Charlie, McDonald’s binges, bowling, and the “mindless shopping” hour. The capital was impressive, and the dedication to which the Germans honestly recorded the best-and worst- moments in their history was impressive.

Poland was even better, in my opinion. The hotel was great bar the food, and the huge number of Liverpool students made Abbey behaviour seem better by comparison (although I could never open our room’s door, and was shamefully humbled when both an attendant and a friendly english woman managed it without a bother). Krakow was beautifully designed, as opposed to the grey flats of East Berlin, with Italian architecture everywhere. The Poles take their Catholicism seriously, and the national spirit of a country accustomed to being the punch bag of Europe throughout history touched a chord; we saw in Poland values much the same as our own.

It was the concentration camps that defined the trip. In both camps we visited, the sheer scale of murder was beyond normal comprehension. In Ireland it’s known that 6 million Jews died, yet our tragedy of the troubles takes precedence despite the fact that that entire conflict spanning three decades racked up the death toll of one day in Auschwitz. Our guide there was a Polish Jew by descent; a soft spoken man who made us realise as we gazed on the countless photographs of victims, the room containing 2 tons of hair, the corpses being bulldozed into mass graves, that such atrocities could have happened just as easily to us. The aura of the camp at least has ensured that our group can never forget to remember the lesson of Auschwitz to humanity…