Fallen leaves.

So yes, we enjoyed Berlin, largely for the view of 20th-century history that it gave us. We were visitors, after all, from a land that claims to have escaped the horrors of war, persecution, genocide, oppression.

Germany has got many hard truths to face up to, and face up it does. Em and I visited a number of museums during our days in Berlin, and some of them had real impact. I won't bang on about them, but a couple warrant and effort at description.

Mostly, the Jewish Museum at Berlin presents - brilliantly - the long, proud history of the European Jewry. Besides anything else, it's a bright and creative museum. There is an installation artwork called fallen leaves in there; I'll try to relate my experience of it here.

Despite the artist's invitation to walk on his or her work, you ask yourself whether it is really OK to accept and proceed. A sea of human faces is before you, expressions of anguish carved into their faces by the heat of a blowtorch. Walking on faces, people looking up at you, pained. Is it really alright to ignore their plight, add to their burden?

In taking my first step amongst the fallen leaves, i realised i was having trouble choosing wihch face - which anguished individual - to step on. and in trying to decide, my attention is all the more focused on the faces, leaves, pain. I was being asked to decide which of the mass of rusted steel people to disrespect more than the others.

Or ought I simply to march roughshod? With a little imagination - or just an inspection of human nature - I might be in the position of the jailer, the soldier, the monster whose job it was to persecute and disrespect the people beneath me. Real people, represented by the hundreds - or thousands - of rough-hewn, rusted steel faces beneath me. I felt I was asked to decide to ignore the humanity beneath my feet, to pretend that all of them deserved the same level of disrespect.

As I walk on them, the solid steel face-discs clang and clink against each other. Each step is advertised, there's no escape from the noise and no option but to admit that I am the perpetrator. Sure, I was one of four or five making the noise, walking over humanity, and I'm not sure whether that made it easier to commit the deed or not - we sure made a lot of noise. Certainly on reflection I realise that the first step onto the field of victims was made easier by others' presence on them. It's easier to be one of a crowd.

And that horrible noise! Reminiscent of nothing more than chains, haunting, heavy, sharp. The path of people narrows, leading into a gloomy corner. A one-way road, but one from which my position allows me to return, provided I maintain my uncaring air, and keep stepping on people.

I stoop to touch one of the faces, choosing a small one, and lift it in my hands. It is heavy, imperfect, one of a kind. Thick, cold steel rests uneasily in my hands. The person I'm holding shrieks. Anguish.

Berlin Berlin

There is much to be said about this beautiful, artistic, organised and reflective city.

As we are running out of time, I`ll post part of an email I sent my Nanna Win earlier this evening.

...this city has been carefully reconstructed after the War, and every free space seems to have been utilised for art or a positive message.


For example, today we walked past the Parliament (a magnificent building) and they have constructed a glass wall down one side with the 12 árticles´(I believe equivalent to a bill of rights) engraved into it.

Andy translated, the first begins with ´the worth of no person may be diminished...´.

Of course, they have some huge legacies to get over. Today we went to an open air museum, constructed in the ruins of the old Secret Police headquarters. It gave very specific information on the organised regime of murder that Hitler, Himmler and the other top men organised.

It is amazing to think they had the whole German population fooled into thinking they were doing the right thing. Without being dramatic, from my perspective, it seemed clear these men were all very sick, at the very least, psychopaths. The regime of terror and cold blooded murder they ran is absolutely horrific, and it is stunning to think they got away with it for so long, and on such a huge scale.

In cotrast, yesterday we went to the largest Jewish museum in the world. Firstly, the building is beautiful, a modern design based on acute angles, ánd even the floor isnt flat. It is big and grand, and impeccably laid out and presented.

The exhibition presented Jews as a very proud and talented people, and also a people who have been repeatedly persecuted, right back to the middle ages!

However, I got a sense they are not a race easily beaten, and manage to move with the times to make solid communties in many different situations and areas of the world.

We also visited a museum relating to the Wall, and the many attempts (some sucessful, some not) to get through, under, over or around it. ...

Not all glamour and glitz

Our enjoyment of our beautiful campspot in the Hartz mountains was (only just ever so slightly) marred by weater, which came down in buckets!

Free camping

There don't seem to be too many 'no camping' signs in Germany. Maybe this is because I can´t read them, or because the locals wouldn´t dream of camping in each other´s fields, but I´ve chosen to believe it means we can pitch a tent anywhere we choose.

Last night, as we have on many other nights, we left looking for a camp a little late. Instead of stopping in the national park we were heading for, we took refuge in small forest on the edge of a field.

Just after sunset, as I was cooking dinner (pumpkin and lentil curry - it´s pretty simple fare out here) and Andy was setting up camp, a huge tractor crept over the horizon, heading straight towards us, clunking away and lit up like Christmas.

While we were safaly hidden in the forest, we had left the bike in the field and thought we were surely sprung. I swear the lights shined straight on the huge regulation Áus´sign on the back of the panniers. The tractor, however, just slowly turned around and started crawling back up the hill.

Maybe it is German humour. He was spraying shit behind him.

They do things efficiently here. The manure created when animals are kept in barns over the cold winter is mixed with water and sprayed over the fields in summer. Our timing was impecable!

He sprayed and sprayed, and we ate our dinner to the aroma of horse-shit.

ahh! free camping!

(despite this, we had a lovely night in the forest, and fell asleep to the rhymical ´whoosh ... whoosh ... whoosh´of the wind turbines that towered above it :)

Much love, E and (on behalf of) A xxxx