Few final thoughts on Berlin (though we're in Prague now)

Hallo, everyone! There's been a bit of a pause in our postings, sorry. We had a full day in Berlin on Wednesday, then on Thursday drove 600 km to Krakow, Poland (which took about 10 hours because of construction we hit coming into Krakow), and yesterday we visited Auschwitz and Birkenau. It's been a busy few days.

But let's start with the end of our time in Berlin. On Wednesday morning we had a program with representatives from the World Food Programme and the Global Public Policy Institute. The subject was food aid and food assistance, and a look at how the U.S. and the European Union handles such a massive challenge. I won't go into all the details here, but surmise it to say that the desire by people working in these programs is to move toward empowering people to becoming more self-sufficient, but what tends to happen is food is given as a stop-gap measure to prevent starvation, or in cases of disasters and emergencies. For me it was a topic I care very much about and the presentations, even when gently critical of current U.S. policy at times, were very interesting.

After the morning's program we were given an option of going to the Russian War Memorial in Berlin's Tiergarten. There simply wasn't enough time in Berlin for us because we also wanted to visit Museum Island and see the wonderful artwork they have there, but in the end we decided to view the memorial. I'm going to turn it over to Gianfranco to talk about the memorial ...

When we arrived, there was a large stone gate we passed through. The path was made of cobblestones, and trees lined the path towards a statue of a grieving mother. As we entered the main area, the ground changed to tiles of stone, and we could see a large reddish passage with Soviet symbols on it. It framed the way forward, and we could see two large Soviet soldiers on either side, kneeling to honor those who had fallen.

Passing the soldiers, we could see giant wreaths in the center leading towards the far end of the memorial. The walkways on either side used giant mosaic tiles now, and each side had relief sculptures depicting scenes from the war and the sacrifices Soviet families made. One side had quotes from Stalin in German and the other in Russian.

At the end of the monument is a staircase leading up to a dome topped with one of the most impressive statues I've ever seen in real life. A larger-than-life, caped Soviet soldier stares into the distance while standing over a destroyed Nazi swastika. He is wielding a sword and carrying a rescued child. There is no mistaking how proud the Soviets are of their accomplishments during World War II and their fight against German forces.

When you reach the top of the stairs, you can see into a small circular room decorated with mosaics depicting the war effort and victory. In the center was what could have been a small altar or fountain, but the gate prevented us from entering and seeing it up close.

The long walk back through the monument and to the exit leaves you time to contemplate and revisit the depictions with a clearer sense of what happened during and immediately after the war.

It was an impressive memorial and he describes it perfectly. I'm glad we were able to see it.

After that trip, the larger group gathered again to drive about an hour out of Berlin to the Oder-March region near the border with Poland. This gave us an opportunity to see some of the German countryside on our way to a restaurant for that evening's meal. The restaurant was the Briers Krautergarten und Hofcafe. It was charming. The restaurant is part of a food cooperative, and they prepared a traditional German meal for us: pork, mashed potatoes and red cabbage for the meat-eaters in the group; and a savory dish of shaved cabbage, onion, zucchini and almonds for the vegetarians. Everyone, even the non-cabbage lovers, agreed it was an amazing meal.

This might also be a good time to point out that the beer in Germany is cheap. Really cheap.

We all had an evening of good food and a lot of laughs at Briers. After driving back into the city a handful of us, because it was our last night in Berlin, decided to go out. We ended up closing two German pubs. ;)

The next day, Thursday, March 17, we spent on that long trek to Krakow. There was a lot of sleeping on the bus, despite some ambitious plans to party for St. Patrick's Day. ;) Upon arriving at the amazing Andel's Hotel, however, we all decided to go out for food and many stayed out to celebrate the holiday a bit! We'll have to talk more about that next time, though. This post is already plenty long and my battery is just about dead.

So, today we leave Poland for Prague. Our love to everyone and we'll write more soon!

Post note: the computer DID actually die right before we were able to post this this morning. It's now about 7:30 p.m. here and we're at the Jury's Inn in Prague. It was another long drive, but the countryside was beautiful and Franco and I got a lot of reading (and a little napping) in on the bus.