Hello to Germany...Berlin

Berlin is a familiar city to me. I have had the privilege of visiting before so it was an opportunity to explore some different parts of the city. One of the familiar things about Berlin is being able to catch up with my very dear friend Stephanie. We have been friends for many years but we have not seen each other for perhaps 10 years but it was wonderful to catch up and have long and deep conversations about life, politics and everything in between. This time in Berlin I spent more time in the west of the city and enjoyed exploring, visiting galleries such as the Neue Nationalgalerie designed by Mies van der Rohes (the glass building below) and walking along the river. 

My one trip to the east was visiting the Stasi Museum. It was a well constructed museum but quite confronting. The museum was in one of the original Stasi buildings (it originally took up an entire city block). For those who don't know, the Stasi is the name for the State Security (police and intelligence) for the East German government during the Cold War. At one point in the 1980s, and this is my interesting fact (I can't call it a fun fact because it's not really fun), the Stasi had 90,000 employees and 180,000 informants. People were cajoled, manipulated or intimidated to inform on co-workers, friends and family members. Some of their tactics even included breaking into people's houses and simply shifting things around to make them paranoid or they might discreetly sabotage their work or relationships to isolate them. Nobody has been charged for these crimes and I admire how the German people have been able to emerge from such a dark time and can talk about it as a warning of how easily a modern government can become so corrupt. 

I don't want to end my Berlin post on such a dark topic so instead I will say the overall Berlin was wonderful and I loved the company, the food and being able to walk around the beautiful parks and walkways that have been established around the city. It was only four days but I could have stayed longer! Also, just to explain one of the pictures, the reason that I included a photo of the pedestrian light is that this is a legacy of East Germany which I really like and wanted to include it. They are not exclusive to Berlin (I am posting this from Dresden and have noticed the same lights!) but they remind me of Berlin.