Munich

We have now arrived in Munich, famous for its beer halls and Oktoberfest, unfortunately its only April! The past few days in Berlin were very productive. We did a Free Tour of Berlin (which is actually not free because you are expected to tip..but the guides are so fantastic you want to anyway.) Our guide was a tiny little girl from America, with a massive voice but perhaps I repeat myself. The tour took us all around a city that has to be one of the most volatile in recent history. In many ways it seems that the end of WWII was the start of their problems rather than the end, apart from the fact of course that they were on the losing side.

Like the nighbours, Prague, Berlin became a Communist city, but not all of it. I had always wondered how it worked that Germany was divided into East and West after the War and so was Berlin but Berlin was so far into East Germany? Well for anyone else who is also wondering the story is that after the war the Allies got West Germany and the Soviets got the East and the deal was the same with Berlin. Now the West was Democratic but the East was Communist so West Berlin was an Island of Democracy in a sea of Communism.

Now if you lived in the East you could just go to West Berlin, get a West German passport and leave the Communist world behind for the McDonalds and Nike shoes and Tabloid magazines of western civilised culture. SO many people did this that the Communists had a great idea: Build a wall around West Byrlin so they couldnt do it anymore. So the wall went all the way around West Berlin completely isolating it. What a place to live!

I have seen a bit of what Communism is about now and can pretty much report that its a bad idea, the damn thing just doesn't work. And it seems Communism goes hand in hand with paranoia. The East German secret police at its height had 91,000 registered employees as well as 173,000 non-registered agents meaning there was 1 agent for every 6.5 East Germans! They knew eevrything about you. The Secret police, the STASI was actually the countries biggest employer and its biggest national revenue was selling its political prisoners to the west. So if you think about that: Its biggest employer concentrated on spying on people making sure they were good cummunists and their biggest revenue was exporting bad communists. So they existed only because they existed! If they abandoned Communism there would be no jobs and no Money! Crazy.

On the tour we met some lovely Aussie girls, Lara and Lauren, who we met up with the next night to explore Berlin's other main attraction: crazy underground techno clubs. The place we went was called Sage and it was very very cool, exactly how you expect a German club to look like. Because we had to catch a 7 hour train to Munich the next morning we left a little early. Well, we left at 3am but trust me that is early for Berlin. We will be back in Berlin in a few weeks so there is still time to do a few more day tours and see a few more clubs.

So now we are in Munich and its sunny! Thank god. Tomorrow we are off on a day trip to see the castle that Walt Disney based the design of his castle on, Neushwannstein Castle.

Hope all are well

John

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