reflections...still

Feeling more melancholic than I have in a long time and seeming unable to kick myself out of it no matter what I try I've decided that reverting my mind back to Berlin and catching up on what I should have written a couple of weeks ago may help. (phew...long sentance)

Berlin came as that other piece of bread which made up the serbia-copenhagen-Berlin sandwich. Berlin felt much more like reality. There was grafitti on the trains,we could afford to eat and our youth hostel...was...well...as you'd expect.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the morning(having got in late) was a balding ginger man with a beer gut and tight grey underpants. Yes he was supposed to be there and no it wasn't a dream. I don't dream about things like that, that's more nightmare material. After returning from the shower I discovered that the grey underwear he had laid out all along the rail of his bed had plopped off into my luggage. nice. Not being in the best of moods, having been kept awake by another snoring 40 year old I suggested to the others we try and change rooms...

Berlin is one fascinating city, again, ripped apart by war and communism and yet becuase of the millions of pounds poured into the east you would hardly know. Only the museums cataloguing the atrocities, the wall implanted beneath your feet and the bullet holes and fire damage on pre-war buildings give it away.


The museums tell stories of courage and destruction. And building after building that has been blown apart and restored. The skyscrapers and super squares of the east give away it's short history of peace and it's one of those cities that just screams of the frailty of life. The museums and post-war photos of bombed out buildings reminded us time and time again of those verses in Isaiah 40 which talk about the smallness of man compared with the bigness of God. That the rulers are like grasshoppers and can be swept away at a moment. Blown away like chaff. As we stood on the top of the cathedral looking down on the people we contemplated the need to tell the nations that it's our God that reigns. The governments and authorities have covered over the scaring, the atrocities with bright new shiney buildings but the history can't be covered over. Especially the destruction in our own hearts that the berlin wall points to.