I am a sausage

as JFK so eloquently announced as he addressed the German people from the Brandenburg gate in 1962.
Well today was my first real full day somewhere where I have never been before, so I reckon that I have stepped over the abyss into the unknown. Although Berlin is pretty easy. My hotel is right beside the TV tower which is the largest structure in Germany and is lite up at night, I have no chance of getting lost.
I walked to the Brandenburg gate today down Unde de Luden about 2km and then got an open top bus around the city. Why do these open top bus tour guides insist on making half jokes and stupid comments, they're not funny. Stop it.
As I sat shivering, I forgot my jacket, it struck me as totally ironic that of all the cities that i have visited which Hitler wanted to raise from the face of the earth, Warsaw, Vilnius, Paris, Prague, Budapest; with the exception of Warsaw, Berlin is the most badly damaged. At first it is difficult to get your head around how such an old and historic city can look s0 truly modern, almost futuristic. Scattered here and there there are examples of prewar Berlin but not many. And although the Reichstag building is beautiful my jury is out on the glass dome in the same way as it is out regarding the pyramid in Paris. Some of the modern building is beautiful it is only when you have to juxtapose it with the old that it can begin to jar.
I love these central European cities, the people are so handsome, the women are tall and elegant, finely featured never cheap looking or tarty, and the men are so masculine. There is always a grungy feel, a lived in feeling, a feeling of worldliness, of love and history, decadence and some dirt that you just don't get at home.
I visited the memorial for the murdered Jews, it really is moving. Up stairs there is a field of 2711 stelae some are flush with the ground and others are over 4 metres high. The ground slowly undulates as you wander through the stelae you become at once cold, lost and mesmerised. I felt very small and insignificant, I felt tiny between the tall stelaes and like a giant amongst the smaller ones. When i didn´t see anyone I felt a terrifying loneliness and sadness i could still hear voices but i was still all alone. Downstairs there is the museum. there´s no pussyfooting around the subject matter here, no use of euphemisms, and no coyness, no swapping Nazi for German in an attempt to distance the crime, this is full on; it is sobering and somber and cathartic. Whereas when I visited Auschwitz it was just numbing, this is a true reflection of the modern German state that they have left its history open for all to see and all do judge, and all to learn. I am sure that I can expect the same levels of openness and honesty when I visit Moscow and Beijing.