So this was our Institute Opening Party - I realize that sounds dumb in English but it makes perfect sense in German.

I don't understand my 'problem' - in photos I always do this 'hang loose' sign with my hands but I never do it the 'right way'. (So what does a backward 'hang loose' sign mean anyway? Stay nervous(?) maybe...)





In classic Mormondom attire, the gym is miracuously changed into the theme of the night, i.e. Hawaii....












The lady that was supposed to be the 'bartender' (non-alcoholic of course; not meaning her of course, or that fake bartenders at LDS functions are alcoholics, but meaning of course that the allged drinks she/he/it would be making would be of a non-alcholic sort; that is, they would have no alcohol in them. Again, not to say the people who would act as the bartenders would have no alcohol in them, that is, of course they would not have alcohol in them, the people that is, but that the drinks that the non-alcoholic bartenders would make would have no alcohol in them...either....ether....hmm) didn't show up and so I was asked at the last second to step in - twas fun! (Be aware that this photo was totally staged, I did however truly serve as bartender/cocktailmaker extraordinaire...)

Here's the Reichstag at night (you can just barely see the dome all lit up)....

I just read that the Reichstag is the world's most visited capitol. It takes a while to get in, but it's cool, especially to see the view of the city (Berlin is flat country, so it's nice to get up out of the trees every now and then and see what's around you...)






This is Potsdamer Platz. This is one of the main places that the Berlin Wall cut in half and it literally was more or less a 'no man's land'. But good old capitalism conquers all, at least it would seem in our world of ours. Sony and other companies built huge, new, stylin' buildings....'isn't ironic? Don't you think? A little too ironic...yeah, and I really do think...'






There is the dome all lit up - you can go inside? Do you want to?











Okay, so as you requested, we're now inside the dome of the Reichstag looking down...you can actually look down into where the government officials do their best talky-talk...

So I was amazed when I moved to Berlin to study German refugees from former German Reich lands in Eastern Europe and saw on my little platz a memorial/eternal flame to the millions of post-WWII German refugees....

The memorial says Freedom, Right (kind of like 'give me my rights!') and Peace.






I pass by this memorial all the time, but suddenly over the weekend of September 2-3 all these flowers appeared. I still am not sure, but it could be for when WWII started (Sept. 1, 1939 and the subsequent expulsions of Germans from Eastern Europe after the war) or something else, but all those flowers are from different German groups who were formerly from Romania, Poland, Czech Republic, etc. And some still 'want to go home...'





This wreath is from the Pomeranian Society - my meeting a Pomeranian in Colombia started all of this 'studying German refugees' thing....














And this one is from the Chancellor, Angela Merkel!

So, I finally did it. Up until now I had left most of the 'Nazi' history of Germany alone, just getting to know earlier German history, but here is Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It's about 30 minutes north of Berlin and was one of the first concentration camps - built in 1936.







I felt this note was significant. When...I think...they were building the Visitors' Center they found this note inside a bottle. The guy who wrote it talks about how he got to Sachsenhausen on 9 March 1937 and that now it was 19 April 1944 and that he still had hope..... ......









I don't know if this door is original, but it says 'Work makes (you) free' just like other concentration camps have.











These prisoner barracks were newly built by the Germans in 1944 - Sachsenhausen saw upwards to 200,000 prisoners come and die in a multitude of ways. The one that just left me cold was the description of SS military types bringing prisoners into a room. They had white 'doctor' coats on and would act like they were giving the prisoners physicals, when in reality they were just looking to see if the prisoner had gold in their teeth. The prisoner was escorted to another room (all the while loud music is being played) and the 'doctors' line the prisoner up against the wall acting like he'll measure how tall the prisoner is, just then another SS guy shoots the prisoner in the back of the head through a hole in the 'height strip' on the wall....yeah...I just sat there thinking 'I can't think....I don't know what to think right now...what? Huh?' Truly dumbfounded. And as if that wasn't bad enough, after the war the Soviets then used the camp to hold 60,000 German POW's, political prisoners, etc. A guy wrote that in these barracks at night they could hear the 'thump' from the bodies being thrown into the mass grave just a little ways away.



This was a bit of a shocker as well....that's a shooting range....where the Nazis would just shoot people, especially Russians and other Slavs. Pretty much if you had Slavic ancestry you could know fairly well that you'd be dead.
















This is the memorial to the victims of Sachsenhausen that is right by the crematoria. I don't know....what else is there to say? It's all true and I don't know what to do with it...