The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugresic Publisher: Yunnan People's Publishing House

Introduction · · · · · ·
Berlin is a city of museums.

In the summer of 1994, the Unconditional Surrender Museum closed and tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers left Berlin. Soon after, there was an exhibition called "Russians in Berlin" with a long piece of paper with the name of every Berlin street destroyed by the Russians.

At the Berlin Zoo, next to the pool where the live walrus lives, there is an unusual exhibition showing all the items found in the stomach of the walrus Roland: lighters, baby shoes, children's water guns, beer openers, plastic cars...

Berlin's flea market is an open museum, exhibiting the daily life of the past and present, and reconciling different periods and ideologies. Each item costs no more than a few marks. Various surviving military uniforms and epaulettes are harmoniously stacked together. The owners have been dead for a long time, and moths are their only enemy. People from all over the world can do business, including Pakistanis, Turks, Poles, Gypsies, former Yugoslavs, Germans, Russians, Vietnamese, Kurds, Ukrainians... The daily life that has passed, the garbage of time, are all sold here as souvenirs: other people's photo albums, broken watches, broken vases...

The story of a life shattered can only be told bit by bit. Things outlast people. Photo albums outlive their owners. Long lives are hidden in old coats, in meaningless objects. When a country disappears, collective memory disappears too. When objects disappear, so do memories of everyday life. But I remember everything. The first can of Yugoslav washing powder. The first Yugoslav TV series. Gavrilovic meat sauce.

——"All of us here are just walking museum exhibits."