Sometimes, I need to pay more attention. The arrival time was 8:30 not 9. So much for breakfast. I was there on time, but it involved some jogging. The Reichstag is amazing building mixing historic and modern styles. It was gutted in a fire in 1933 and not fully restored until 1991 when the Berlin Wall came down. The fire was pinned on the Communist Party was the excuse that enabled Hitler to assume unlimited power. Members of the Reichstag that objected, ultimately ended up dying in prison or a concentration camp. History repeats itself when you don’t learn from what happens. One the things that brought Hitler to power is the conservative party thought it could control him if they included him in their coalition. Trump is not Hitler, by the story of the Republican ... read more

We started our day with a tour about the history of the Nazis led by a young British man, John, who is doing a post-doc here in mid-20thcentury German history with a focus on the history of the Jews in Germany at that time. As anyone who has been in Berlin knows, much of the city was destroyed so many historical sites don’t exist. When you visit the site of Hitler’s bunker, you visit a parking lot. The government does not want to memorialize Hitler, so the only there is only a small plaque noting the spot. We visited the Reichstag where John explained the political history leading up to Hitler seizing power. He described that the Conservatives had invited Hitler’s party into the government thinking they could control them. We all know how well that ... read more

Our day started with another early morning tour of a Gaudi building. The last residential building he designed, Casa Mila or as it is known by local, La Pedrera, the quarry. The building was innovative for its day with the first elevator in Barcelona. When it was working which was infrequently it took 7 minutes to get to the 5th floor. The building had underground parking for autos and horses, intercoms and an attic designed to enhance air flow to dry clothes quickly. By the end of his life Gaudi had moved from being anti-religion to being devout. He took private commissions to create buildings to honor God’s natural world with a caveat that he had complete artistic license. Toward the end of the construction of this building he decided he wanted to put a statute ... read more

The highlight of today was the Spanish Civil War tour…. all 5 hours of it! The guide, Frank Lloyd, is a Scotsman married to a woman from Barcelona who several years ago became completely focused on/obsessed with the Spanish Civil War. Several years ago, when he was at loose ends living in Barcelona, he noticed a plaque being installed near his home. When he investigated he saw it was to honor Francisco Boix. As a young man, Boix photographed the Spanish Civil war, was recruited by the French Foreign Legion, captured by the Germans and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. While in Mauthausen the German used him to develop the photographs they took of the prisoners who were generally worked to death. He made copies of 20,000 negatives that were smuggled out of the camp and ... read more

Our stopover was Heathrow, which is a fantastic shopping mall, it's also an airport but that is secondary to the shopping. Our Aeroflot flight from Heathrow to Moscow was an older plane (so much for what I read that Areoflot has one of the newest fleets. The breakfast was inedible, but at least we got little salt and pepper shakers with the hammer and sickle. We arrived in Moscow about 2:30. As the plane pulled in, it was apparent that 80-90% of the planes on the tarmac were Aeroflot and unlike airports in the US a lot of the operational equipment like empty luggage carriers were sort of piled up in plain site. had read that passport control could be a mad-house. Instead, there were at least 24 queue and 20 of them were empty. Needless ... read more