This is the last blog entry from Berlin from me, as I move to happier places.
My lovely hotel is situated in the old Jewish Quarter on Friedrichstrasse. The very large breakfast room has lovely old buildings on one side, but 1960s stuff on the other three sides. With the Manchester Arena Outrage fresh in my mind (15 killed as I write this), it made me wonder how many people had died where I was eating my muesli.
First, the children were "taken on holiday" to be followed shortly afterwards by their parents. Then came the Berlin bombings which caused firestorms so great that people died because all the oxygen had been used up. Then the Russians arrived, who raped and pillaged everyone and everything in their way.
How many people had died where I was eating my muesli?
All of them.
Today I'm off to the station to reserve my seat on the Berlin to Hamburg ICE, the German high speed train, that will take less than two hours to complete the journey.
Back in 1963, when I fell in love with Hamburg, a train journey to Berlin would have taken seven hours, if you were lucky, and held a passport, a visa, and a change of currency. Now it's 250 to 300 km/h all the way.
Some things change for the better.
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