Berlin

So my favorite stop on the bus tour was the so Memorial to the Murdered Jews. You see this sea of concrete slabs arranged in rows. They are a dark gray and spaced just far enough apart to walk through them. They are slightly askew and you walk on cobblestones. Both have the effect of putting you slightly off balance. As you walk further into the memorial you ever so slightly descend until you are at a point where they are taller than you. There are lots of people walking through on other paths. I found the effect to be like in a horror or thriller movie. There are these flashes of people and sounds but not quite enough to process them into people that you know. You also have no idea what will come from where. The whole thing is this gradual descent into a very confusing situation.

So then the next day we go to the Reichstag (equivalent of the Capitol) - see the photo at left - to meet with a member of their Bundestag (equivalent of Congress) . We finished the day with a panel discussion by a group of people that REALLY were not very impressed with the US, but made their criticisms in a classic underhanded German manner - "you (Americans) are way to cockey and competetive with us, but will never be quite as good as Europe, so just try and be very multilateral and let us catch up with you." But at least they fed us a bunch of beer after beating up on us for a while.

Tomorrow its off to their Bundeskanzleramt (equivalent of the White House).