Not even a week ...

We have been here in Berlin for not even a week. There has been a lot to discover: Kastanienallee and surroundings; IES; the Reichstag; the KaDeWe; the best döner stand in Berlin (as some claim); the ornate Berlin Cathedral; the subway and tram system; the ins and outs of weird hotel wifi; the food; and, most of all, each other. Here we are, on Wednesday, four days into this adventure, just before we climbed the narrow stairs leading to the dome of the Dom.

That's what it looked like from the top:

Actually, it looked much better than this. The horizon was not washed out, and the view was perfect. The weather has been ideal, mild and dry. That's supposed to change this weekend.

We'll be posting thoughts, impressions, images, observations—things that have interested and puzzled us. For example:

Brian was as startled as the rest of us to find what looked like a cross hanging on the otherwise bare wall of a large meeting room in the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament. Our guide insisted, vociferously and repeatedly, that this was not — repeat: NOT — a symbol, let alone a religious symbol, but an artwork, chosen by the members of the Christian Democratic faction to decorate their assembly room. (The CDU is Angela Merkel's party, which holds by far the largest number of seats in the Bundestag.) He also said that there were, of course, members of other religions in that faction. 

We found the distinction he made between art and religious symbol to be interesting, and some of us wondered if it was able to bear the weight he was loading on it. We found artworks all over the Reichstag that were doing a lot political and cultural work, some in quite abstract ways. It is hard to imagine most of these artworks (or artworks like the ones we saw) finding their way into the US Capitol, say.