Germany part 1: Berlin

**NOTE**

The good news is that we have gotten around China's Great Firewall, which means we can update the blog.

The not-as-good-news is that we are doing it with a program that pretends to be from all kinds of countries, and that slows down the internet quite a bit. Therefore, we'll have fewer pictures, and mostly of lower quality. (Berlin pics coming up.)

Cheers,

GG

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After watching some wailing at the Wailing Wall, we've gone on to see the next Wall -- the Berlin Wall. (The next Wall for us is the Great Wall.)

We began at Checkpoint Charlie, a museum documenting the various attempts of both Germans and Russians to escape from the East by crossing the Wall (not so much the other way around). The museum features life-size mannequins tucked under car engines and inside audio amplifiers, as well as pictures of Easterners who dug, kayaked, and even tricked their way out (the latter using fake military uniform and passports). Noticing the minor attrition of their Berliner bretheren, the Soviets installed movement-guided guns on the wall (shooting metal cubes however, not bullets) and dispatched over 800 guard dogs to deter future plotters. Yet, the escapees kept coming: one comrade just hopped the wall, getting shot some-teen times in the process; another put together diving gear from old war equipment and dove through; yet another drove a concrete-reinforced car past the guards. All in all, Checkpoint Charlie was the perfect introduction to Berlin, as the city is still healing from its past partition.

Despite the terror threat, promised by every single media outlet in the US, we also went to the more touristy Holocaust Monument, shaped as a grid of grey coffin-like marble stones, slowly rising out of the ground higher and higher. On the second day, we biked around the town, got Spaetzel, and finished off with some sort of a German pastry. Spaetzel -- for those who are not sure whether it's a disease or a Polish relative -- is a type of a contorted-looking thick noodle from Bavaria. It is usually served with other German delicatessen, such as red beets, cabbage, and sausage.