Watching crazy Americans running through the capital of Germany

Cindy and I had stopped watching The Amazing Race on Sunday nights. Listening to the contestants as they maneuvered the journeys around the world became boresome. I was tired of hearing their schemes and their problems and whining. But tonight was different. We went back to last week's episode, the one we missed on our journey from Bayou Lacombe, Louisiana across the coast of Mississippi to Mobile and up through the darkness of South Alabama to a motel room just east of Montgomery. What a long, unpleasant journey, losing an hour because of an accident on I-10 and an hour in Wentzell's Oyster House on the north side of Mobile for our last Gulf Coast seafood supper for awhile. Boy did I eat a lot of seafood in those four or five days. Anyway, it just so happened that last week's episode sent the contestants from Switzerland to Dresden, Germany and on to Berlin. I have always wanted to visit Berlin. Despite the negative connotations, I have always wanted to visit Berlin. So much history. So much meaning for my world. I am a child of the 50's. I was born before the creation of the Berlin Wall became a physical symbol of the chasm between the East and the West, Russia and the United States. I could sit in my room and dread the dropping of atomic bombs and the quick end of our world, but the concrete and barbed wire and machine guns and soldiers. The grey and brown and lack of color. But now it includes an end to that struggle and the joy of freedom that led the people to dance and sing and drink and chant and take sledge hammers to the wall and destroy that terrible symbol of an inability to communicate and get along. What joy. What a moment of release and fun and victory over the desire to control people through force. Anyway, we watched the episode and you could see a modern, vibrant city which seems to have overcome its black history. I want to go and see myself. I want to place a physical connection to the history of the twentieth century and the ultimate victory of peace and freedom and joy. I want to go. I can't wait. Tonight was just a taste.