Feelings about Berlin

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Gave our selves a break--took a taxi from the airport with our cases, straight to the door of the hotel--we did try to go by public transport but ken was finally beaten by some new changes which we could not translate from the German--good excuse for me to get a taxi organised!!
The hotel was very good--we had more vertical stairs-6 flights this time-but then a lovely apartment and at least the hotel guy caried a case up the stairs, no lift. The apartment had a kitchen so we chased down a supermarket and very slowly identified things that we were able to cook--this saved a lot of dollars. We went to the Jewish Museum next day which was the most amazing moving place. Spent 4 hours or so there and just scratched the surface of it. The best of all was the architecture-the modern building was highly symbolic--eg no visible entrance from the street , meaning a hidden community, then 3 corridors--one the coridor of the holocaust which ended in a huge dark empty bleak void like space, the next one was the corridor of exile which led to a garden with vertical columns but a sloping floor, so when walking round you felt off balance and disoriented and alien--this was such an example of architecture giving a message and emotions. The last corridor was continuity an this one led up stairs-again- to the rest of the museum which showed what life had been like over the centuries for the jews here, and also a very interesting bit about how they lived in Germany after the war.
We also had an odd experience where we had just stepped out of the apartment and heard a noise and there was a bomber flying over head , apparently it is a tourist trip, it does this every day and is commemorating the food drops when the russians blockaded berlin and the americans had to drop food for them. Wierd though when we were thinking about the fall of the nazis.
then we went to checkpoint charlie which was where the americans checked people going acrtoss into east germany´´the wall is actually quite low but chillingly efficient, planned to be easy to build and to resist people climbing over it. The germans seem very open about the evilness of the war and the nazi regime. We also saw lots of photos of the topography of terror where the SS interrogated the prisoners etc. Also a very famous church with a broken spire--they have left this for a monument. The pastor here was involved in resisting the nazis wheras the traditonal church supported them-i think it would have been very hard to see the evil coming when it just gradually happened, its only in retrospect that it is sure that he was right to do this.

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Photos

Berlin - Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
Known as the Broken Tooth - the tower of the new church is in front.