Berlin tour

Yesterday, Lilly (Australia), Peter (North England, near Edinborough), Shuna (with Peter) and I went on a tour of East Germany.

We went on the Terry Brewer tour which is the longest one available (10 hours). Terry is an older Englishman with some old fashioned ideas about women and Germans (bloody stupid this and silly those) so it was a bit of a challenge to have to spend the whole day with him and some of his condescending affectations. Overall though the tour was very educational and we all learned alot.

Saw the berlin wall. Most of it is all gone. It is marked in the street with cobblestones though and some places, protected by some fences (you can buy chunks of it for a couple hundred euros if you want). Also saw checkpoint Charlie, which is completly gone, and now put back there (staged) by the museam to make it look like it used to.

Interesting highlights for me of the tour was the amount of security around the Jewish buildings here (each with at least 2 army people and some barricades and cameras.). This was nothing compared to the amount of security around the American and English embassys : At least 6 soldiers with closed streets with huge concrete and iron barriers preventing anything large from getting near the structures at all.

Also what was interesting was the idea of a partitioned Berlin - deep within the Russian occupation zone of Germany. For me the partition did not make sense, but apparently Communism was so clearly wrong for people there was a duty of the Allies to save the East Germans this way. It was an issue of duty according to Terry. I don't like foreign manipulation of sovereign states so I was not ready to give in to his rationale - but I can see his side of the story at least.

There is no evidence presented for Communism and Soviet Communism as being a benefit for the people of Germany.