Just another brick in The Wall

I fell in love with Berlin. I fell fast and hard from the very moment I got off the platform at the train station to the final moment when I got back on to leave. The city was full of energy, youth and excitement. Getting off the train we were greeted by a crowd of people walking around with beers in hand (thanks to no open liquor container laws) enjoying the music of singing buskers. Turns out we stumbled into the city right during an outdoor music festival, in which street performers took up whole blocks playing music. The next day we also wandered into the gay pride parade and walked through the packed streets as food trucks, beer gardens and scantily clad (albeit gay) men danced around.

Besides the lively atmosphere of Berlin there was also a deep historical and cultural side. Visiting the broken wall and the East Side Gallery of portraits painted across it was truly humbling. To visit the sites where Adolf hitler and his dreaded SS once occupied, and to walk through the holocaust memorial site where moments I will never forget. Sites like these are important because they raise questions and leave you wondering about the world you live in. For me, the question remains how could a country, a city, a people who at the present wholly embrace liberal opinions and minorities, discriminated against them in the past? This question is one that is sure to follow me as I explore the neighboring cities of Prague and Budapest. Above all, it is these types of questions and moments that are only permitted through travelling and through walking, even for a day, in someone else's shoes.