Wednesday, August 6, 2003

Well Berlin sucked the first half and has not been too bad since. First, the hostel was not where it said it was on the internet, so I walked for 2 hours before finding anybody who knew what the hell I was talking about. Then this morning, I got a ticket for the train. The bus driver last night said you did not have to stamp it, so I did not. Got checked once on the first train, nothing happened. Got off and got on another train and got checked again. Guess what, you need to stamp them. That would have been a 14 Euros fine, but I did not have 14 Euros. I had 20 dollars, more than enough, but the police would not take it. So I got a ticket. Had to go to a bank and pay 40 Euros.

That was the last of the bad stuff so far, but that is the way I started my vacation. Christen and I took a walking tour of Berlin. Second best tour guide I have had, after Dillon. It was very interesting and lasted almost 5 hours. Had smurf ice cream, saw the Berlin Wall, all the touristy stuff, and walked over the place where Hitler shot himself. It is a parking lot now, on purpose, but it reminded me of something.

Bear with me. This explanation will take a while. In one of the sequel parts to Star Wars, the books, Luke’s X-Wing stales on him and he is just floating in space. He does some kind of Jedi sleep thing to pass the time and then wakes up because he sensed some sort of evil. He was passing through the space where the Second Death Star had been and where the Emperor had died. It was many years in the future, but the evil was still in that spot. I did not feel any evil but you definitely feel something walking over the place where a man that took so may lives, took his and the easy way out. When you think about all he accomplished, how smart he was, it is sad to think how much he could have done if he had not been a complete maniac.

Of course, if he had not been so crazy a few of the decisions he made might have turned things for the worse for the good guys and it might be a whole new world. Off to Frankfurt tomorrow. We will see more of the German country side, which does look a lot like home, except the houses look different.