Touristing in Berlin

Ul is appalled at my whipping my camera out at every opportunity unless he's allowed to control it. But it's also freezing and not particularly happy to linger.

It's our 3rd trip to the German historical museum, our second this week. My knowledge of German history is only marginally better than Ul's and neither of us has a clue how the German state is formed. We're advancing very very slowly. 1520 - 1680 on Monday (in 1680 the "previously insignificant" electorate of Prussia (or Brandenburg?) makes a late entry in the general mayhem of central Europe), and today 1680 - 1850, being thrown out for closing time as we get tantalizingly close to the final birth of the German state. It's a protracted painful process. And full of the Enlightenment, French, Habsburgs, Ottomans and lots and lots of violence.

All anyone does is carve each other up or scrape to survive in utter misery. About every hundred years there is a 20 year mass bloodletting, and then 70 years to get over it and start again. The states in central Germany are a fluid morass and every time anywhere is vaguely weak (usually Poland) the others (countries, states, princes, anyone with a horse) carve them up. Quite interesting that the Bonaparte wars were recent history in 1914 and that whilst everyone else had to maul each other regularly, Britain dabbled and got ahead on industry. Britain a leader in technology, social reform and even fashion at the time. . .

The neighbours here are Poland, the Ukraine and Russia, to mention a few. It's not quite how we see the alignment in the UK. Cameron currently finding excuses not to make his "big speech" on Europe. Ul's default mode is incensed every time I mention "Europe".

I love the Alexander Turm, visible, as intended, everywhere and plain mad. In the sun a cross is refracted on its globe: the soviets were furious to find they were inadvertantly promoting christianity and spend many a happy million on trying to alter its surface.