15.07.16 - set dunkirk

Pictures from Berlin, most from the wall, last one is a building at Stasi Museum. They didn't allow me to take pictures in the Museum!

The former Berlin wall was a marred copper line stretching in the ground for many kilometers, marked as a memorial in a thin line separating east and west. It was a sad little line, understandable and one that made people thinkg  until suddenly, with an alarming arc, it lanced up into old, rusted poles, wicked spikes shooting into the air. Not a wall, but a marking, a memory of a time long past. They poles were spaced so that they could be seen through, passed through, but they were there, crouched and menacing and putting a venom into the very air. And then the wall! A portion of it remained, concrete and rough and filled with blood and tears from an era that had seemed long passed until the wall itself was looming, still present, still standing, marred with writing and the wear of years. Remnants of guard towers and houses and graves stood somber around the great, looming barrier. The air felt heavy, cool but stuff, dark but clinically light. A path led along the wall on the side of the east, a street ran on the side of the west. The east side was the site of tragedy, though both sides seemed cruelly divided. The copper lances split the sky. The wall was resolute. It felt painted with generations of sorrow. The green grass and wood were silent. No birds called. The people around shuffled silently, with their heads bowed, eyes on the wall and the broken foundations of destroyed houses. The wind made mournful whistles as it passed through the rusted pipes. Memorial statues and plaques stood, as did the wall. They served as grim, grim reminders of days past. Kilometers to the east stood the old headquarters of the orchestrators of the wall and the subjugation that east Germany suffered for so many years. The Stasi building. It was a dark façade, the paint was white but sloughing off in great sheets, like scales, as if the very paint itself could no longer bear to be a part of the great, featureless walls, listening in a deep, sinister silence. The streets seemed to be almost deserted. The windows were barred. Everything seemed to be hushed and angry. The city around seemed as if it had never recovered from the reign of the secret police, even though the time of surveillance and informants was long passed. The streets, the courtyards, the walls, they all remembered in their silent, gray, sullen presence. The people felt it too, and they hurried past the neglected buildings, sparing only furtive glances. Inside, the walls were white, the employees were grim, and the visitors were silent. The furniture itself was stiff and very much a throwback to an earlier decade, with blue and tan and brown furniture, thin rugs, wood paneling, and secret safes in the wall. Concrete floors and sinister closets dotted the halls. Information on misdeeds was plastered on the walls, but they could have easily spoken the things they had seen for themselves. They were faded, painted strangely, and there was something very dark about them, despite their light colors and open windows. Seeing kitchens, and lounges, and poker rooms, all while reading about death and rage and deceit and treachery was jarring. There was something deeply wrong with the building, with the rooms and offices, with the entire dark complex. The secret police. What a sinister title, with many dark deeds and condemnations. The tension in the very walls remained from when the wall fell. Speeches of excuses echoed in the stairwells. The displays seemed to be part of the building itself. And the records! tomes and tomes of information that have been crystalized in time. Kept deep below, in the basements of other buildings, on thousands of people. It was shocking to see the old propaganda, preserved and displayed like it was still relevant, still necessary. The feeling of hopelessness pressed through the air. This place was once of death and tricks and darkness. The wall, the Stasi. Still heavy with the burden of atrocity and tragedy, it was much like a garden with soil that cannot support life. It was enough to crush a spirit, if one lingered too long.  

1. Had an awesome cardio workout. 2. had a very chilled and lazy rest of the day. 3. Made a berry cobbler. It's tasty and worked better than my one attempt before which turned out like a strange looking cake lol.