On a Floating Bridge

I woke up as the sun rose this morning in my middle bunk in the couchette of an overnight train from Brussels to Berlin. I changed and went to the dining cart where a large, somewhat genderless looking woman found me a coffee and croissant. As I tucked in, fields of wind turbines past me by, unending for several minutes. A gentle reminder that the energy I’m burning to move eastwards while here at ground level is dependent entirely on the makeup of each country’s electricity mix, on these electric European trains. I’ve expended much less carbon in crossing through nuclear France and high-percentage-renewable Germany than perhaps I will in Poland & Belarus.
At Berlin main station, an enormous glass structure about 5 stories high, I put my heavy pack in storage and headed out in to the cool and cloud covered German capital. I followed directions to an illustration exhibition only to find the building all closed. Swiftly moving on to make the most of a mere 7 hours in Berlin. I paid a visit to the nearby Berlin wall documentation centre with preserved piece of the wall and hallowed memorial church on the site where the previous church of reconciliation had stood on an awkward boundary between East and West until it was demolished.
Leaving the museum, I tried and failed to follow tram protocol, and so had to get the metro to Checkpoint Charlie instead. Here a strange replica tourist attraction has been made on the original point on the street – swarming with tourists, to the infuriation of Berlin�s drivers. The wooden hut was the scene of 2 fake guards in US army uniforms carrying US flags. They were French. And, they charged �1 / person for a photograph. I followed the wall along until its remnants were only under the pavement then cut through the park back to the station. My mini-guide of the wall explains �The frontier between the 2 German states mirrored the division of the European continent and later of the whole world into East and West� So, having flirted with Eastern Europe at the dummy checkpoint it was time to actually cross the Iron Curtain.