Berlin, Germany

A city with quite a past and quite a future. My first full day I set out on a walking tour of the city center. I had such a great experience in Prague, I decided to go with the same company in Berlin. It was just ok and confirmed my feeling that it really is the guide that makes or breaks the tour. This guide, Rob, was from Great Britain, and while the tour itself was good, I just didn't get much of his humour. So a lot of what Rob was trying to achieve was lost on me. Plus it was really hot and muggy. So much for heading north in search of cooler weather.

The next day was rainy, which only added to the mugginess, so I hit the museums. I made it to 4 before I crashed. I visited the Pergamon (lots of classical antiques focusing on the Greeks), The Neus Museum (home of the bust of Neferiti), The Altes Museum (lots of archeological treasures), and The Old National Gallery (paintings). It sure made for a busy day!

The next day I took a walking tour focusing on The Third Reich. The guide was very much an intellectual, which is fine except that the 4 hour tour took over 6 hours!! And it was supper hot. We saw some great sights and the guide was really knowledgeable but half the things he was talking about went over my head. We did visit The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It is a maze of over 2,000 concrete blocks of various heights. The architect (apparently the same one doing the Twin Towers Memorial) designed this memorial to be open to your own interpretation. It's meant to be a place of reflection.

The blocks were highest in the middle and lowest on the outside. My toughts: the middle felt very dark and depressing, like the whole world was closing in on top of you. But as you made your way to the outside, a sense of light and hope came over you. Almost as if you were overcoming the darkness that had just enveloped you. I have no idea if that is what others felt, but that was my interpretation.

We also visited the square of the notorious Nazi book burning in 1933. It was here that staff and students from the university threw 20,000 books the Nazis claimed were forbidden ina huge bonfire. On the square hangs a plaque with a quote from 1820 by a German poet Henrich Heine, "Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people." Those words were spoken over 100 years before the book burning. Kinda creepy.

Berlin was great with so much to see. I felt it was kind of like Rome in the sense that it is impossible to see everything in one trip. Berlin is definitely a place to keep coming back to. Now it is time to check out Poland.