The Berlin Wall

The East Side Gallery is number one on the "Things to See in Berlin" from my guidebook. As a tourist I dutifully marched out into the -5 Celcius degree cold. The famous tourist spot is not so much a gallery (a building with heat would have been nice) but a stretch of the old Berlin Wall about 400 meters long, preserved as a memorial for the barricade that stretched across the city by East Berlin to prevent its citizens from escaping to the West.

Now, the roughly 5 meter wall serves as a mural collection espousing freedom and human courage. The art works are amazing, but the historical accuracy of the gallery is deplorable--it gives the false impression that East Berliners should have just crawled over the wall into West Berlin. No barb wires or the "death strip" between a double wall remain.

If only I were Yao-Ming...

"Brotherly love" between DDR and Russia--caption translation: My God, help me survive this deadly love. When Berliners refer to the "brotherly" relationship between Russia and DDR, they are usually being sarcastic, since Russia always took more than its share.