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

We're in the UK!

Sorry we haven't been writing much lately! We've been expoloring the UK.

We spent a week or so cruising the streets of London and Cambridge - London is great, and Cambridge is absolutely beautiful! It was great to see our friends Rick, Alison (and meet a new one, little Isabella!), and also see that Keiran is settling in comfortably :) Your hospitality was wonderful, thanks again for having us. x

After a week of waiting, the bike finaly emerged from a non-descript warehouse full of similiar worthless treasures. It took us three hours to put it together, and we rolled it to the nearest petrol station just as the long weekend started and headed out for Wales and southern England ...

What a treasure! We rode through rolling green hills (green like we're not used to at home), and were blown away by the absolute care taken in the villages and towns. Every building is a delight.



































Despite the huge population of these islands, we managed to find beautiful places to camp












Stonehenge. A beautiful and powerful place.

(And made more accessible by the hand held tour guides).

















What a beautiful island! Now we're on our way to Belgium. Hope to be a bit more regular with our posts. Hope all is well back in that sunny (sun! we dream of it!) land of ours.

Much love E and A xxxx

....we're sorry to be leaving soon!

Vieng Xai - Pathet Laos caves.

Laos has a very interesting history. The local people, made up of a number of ethnic groups, have suffered colonisation by the French (who left a legacy of great architecture and awesome coffee) and the Japanese (who were quickly kicked out after WWII).

What was fascinating to us is that Laos communists have also defeated the might of the US and the US-supported Laos capitalist regime (the 'US imperialists and thier puppets', according to the current official interpretation) in a brutal war that lasted 9 years.

While the US were waging their war against Vienam, they were also bombing the hell out of Laos in what they called 'the secret war'. Laos has the unfortunate distinction of being amongst the most heavily bombed country in the world (see our UXO entry) - the American bombing was equivalent to dropping a planeload of arsenal every 8 minutes for 9 years (1964 - 1973) !!!

High in the mountains, and in a remote corner of the country, the city of Vieng Xai lies in a valley of massive limestone outcrops. In each of these outcrops are a network of huge caves. It was from here that the Pathet Lao - the Laos communist army - coordinated thier resistance.

It was an amazing feat - more than 20 000 people at a time hid out in the caves during the war! They built a sophisticated wartime city, complete with houses for the Politburo, a market centre, a printing press, a textiles manufacturing house, and a theatre! People hid out in the caves during the day, and many came out to farm by night, when the air raids had stopped. Each cave was equipped with an emergency room to be supplied with filtered air in case of gas attack. Anti-aircraft guns were positioned on the mountains above, and many US planes were brought down. Otherwise, all evidence of habitation was hidden by the jungle.

Dignitaries from other (communist) countries came for meetings and to offer support, and performances were conducted for the people. Imagine, the US didn't ever twig on to the fact that there was a city hidden in the mountains! Even the identity of the leader was kept secret to all but the other members of the politburo!

The people of Vieng Xai are staunchly proud of the fact that they, fighting for such a small country, were able to defeat the US and all its 'might'.

The visit was made even more special by the fact that the caves have only been opened to visitors for 9 years, and appaerently only 5 - 10 people from outside the region visit daily. We were the only two people on our tour, and so had full access to Mr Bumisai, our guide, and all his local knowledge.

We couldn't help thinking of the contrast with the organised tourism of, say, Uluru or Angkor Wat, and were very grateful to have had the opportunity to visit the caves in such a low-key way. We highly recommend a visit to anyone who'll be in the area.