A Thought Provoking City

We went to the Parliament house, as well. It has this really cool dome-sculpture thing. Basically, there is a glass dome that people can walk up that is right above the parliament room. The basic idea is transparency. The people can look down and see their MPs at work, and the MPs can look up and see the public and remember that the public comes first.

Berlin is a city with very thought-provoking (sometimes borderline controversial) public art. On one of the buildings (once the Ministry of Ministries - Orwell's 1984 anyone? - for Soviet-era East Berlin/East Germany, now the ministry of finance) there is an old Soviet mural of the idealism of communism. Everyone looks happy, there is gender equality, everyone is well-fed and not overworked. This is contrasted with a large photo from a Berlin protest (in the '70s, I think) against communism. Work quotas went up and pay went down and people were extremely unhappy. This direct contrast between idealism and realism is fantastic. 

Another one is an anti-war memorial. It is a sculpture of a woman holding her son, who has died in war. Then buried beneath the memorial is an unknown Nazi soldier and an unknown Holocaust victim - the artist said to show that war affects both sides of a conflict. While I don't really know how I feel about it, the public memorial is very interesting.

Berlin food is really good, too. I lived off of pretzels and streusal for days. And of course, we had bratwurst for dinner one night.

Overall, Berlin is a really cool city. It is interesting to learn about it's troublesome past.