Checkpoint Charlie, Bike riding in Berlin ...

Yesterday was a highlight. The day started with a blue sky we hadn´t seen in Europe since our arrival. We walked to the old Check Point Charlie, the place where East met West. Strange to realize that we are staying in "East Berlin," in one of the world´s most well-known hotel chains and names associated with capitalism ... The Hilton.

As a teenager in Holland I had often wondered about going to Berlin. I remember a well-known movie about heroin use and teenage prostitution in Berlin. I forget the name, but it played in and around Zoo Bahnhof (maybe that was the name). I never felt a particular drive to go to Berlin. Riding a train 300km into East Germany somehow didn´t appeal to me.

Now, standing at the old "point of no return" into the Iron Curtain, I felt I had missed an incredible opportunity. Embarrasment is what I feel. How can I have not gone there to personally experience this failure of German history and in some sense German society. Today, the day after going to Checkpoint Charlie, Megan and I met this wonderful couple from Norfolk, VA., who had been to East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie in 1962, the year I was born. They had been there, but I, who grew up in Europe, never experienced this divide between East and West.

We went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Well worth the time. I remember the stories in the news about people fleeing East Berlin over or underneath the wall. Amazing this human drive to freedom.

Then, on advice by Oma Sierhuis, we rented bikes near Checkpoint Charlie. We spent the afternoon riding our bikes through Berlin. The weather was good, and it was a great experience. We biked by the Reichstag, through the Tiergarten to the Zoo. Then around Kurfurstendam all the way back. I even got a flat tire at the Potzdam, but a extremely nice German with a bike taxi helped fix the flat, and we were on our way within 10 minutes. What a random act of kindness. Thanks to this nice guy.

Today we spent the entire afternoon roaming the German History Museum. Wow, what a history these Germans have had. We wonder how it feels to be German with this kind of history. I often feel bad about being Dutch and the "invention" of slavery, but this seems small against the start of two world wars in less than 20 years ... it is not a nice picture, and it makes us wonder how the German youth of today feels about their country´s history.

Tonight is our last night before we go back.