Beinn Dorain in Winter

Unusually this post features a photo of me, rather than one taken by me (above). I'm on the right looking Southwards towards the summit of Beinn Dorain, admiring the significant cornices on the ridge.

Anyone who has driven Northwards from Glasgow to Glen Coe will recognise Beinn Dorain. As the A82 runs from Tyndrum into Glen Orchy it fills the view ahead, towering above the West Highland Railway line, like a giant cone, which in summer looks like this:

My previous ascent of this peak took place on a warm, cloudy, rainy, day on which my slogging over Dorain and the adjacent Beinn an Dothaidh was rewarded with precisely nothing in terms of views. Yesterday's climb was quite different, and a first for me - a Winter Munro ascent, over snow and ice, in high winds but with magical views over all the surrounding mountains. My family had bought me a pair of crampons for my birthday in February, and I had been keen to give them a try, only lacking some suitably experienced people to walk with in these unfamiliar conditions. This all changed last week with an unexpected phone call and invitation to join a couple of friends on one of their regular Winter walks.

Looking down to Bridge of Orchy Station and Hotel from the Coire an Dothaidh

The track begins at the Bridge of Orchy Station, where an underpass takes pedestrians between platforms and provides access to the far side of the line - where the track continues Eastwards and upwards into Coire an Dothaidh. In summer, I had continued to the cairn marked on the 1:25000 OS map at the head of the col before turning Southwards onto Dorain's main ridge; but seeing this in deep snow, we turned right 'early', and approaching the ride up a little valley, meeting the 'path' at around 900m.

The snow-blasted summit cairn.

The valley also provided some shelter from the wind which was powering into us from the NE, and really began to hit us once we made the Am Fiachlach ridge itself. It was here that I saw for myself, many sights which I had only previously read about, or see photos of. White spirals of snow being whipped up into 'twisters' by the ferocious winds glinting in the sunshine in front of blue skies; previous walkers boot-marks standing like little towers above the rest of the snow, great cornices leaning madly over precipitous cliff-edges beckoning the foolhardy into their avalanching grip; and the sight of countless peaks in snow - viewing not from the floor of the glens - but from above: all this was breathtaking. 

It was also absolutely freezing! While the air temperature was below freezing point, the wind-chill factor reduced this to nearer -8'C. I discovered that some of my hillwalking gear wasn't really up to the job. Some of my stuff (from the discount end of the market, it has to be said), did not perform as well as expected or marketed in these more extreme conditions. Of particular concern were my hat and gloves which while they provided sufficient protection for safety purposes certainly didn't satisfy the desire for comfort.

The crampons were a different matter. Having never walked in them before, I was amazed at how effective they were. I probably delayed putting them on for too long, hoping they would not be required; however strapping them onto my boots on the ridge, increased my range considerably. The funny part was that on the way down, as soon as I took them off - I took one step and fell straight over as my un-spiked boots slid away from under me.

I'm looking for an excuse for another Winter walk soon; but some new pieces of equipment will be needed first.

(Final photo also taken by one of my walking companions)

Kinnoull Buzard

The difficult job of saying goodbye

On Monday we faced the difficult job of saying goodbye to a dear friend, felled in his prime by a brain tumour which had pursued him for six years and finally overtook him last week. We stood together on a cold morning, as his body was lowered into the sandy Nairnshire earth, and commended him to the God he had loved and served during his time on earth. His wife, surrounded by the love and prayers of family and friends led us to the burial with their three young children, and together we ached, and prayed and sang and said our farewells.

I struggled to hold my thoughts together coherently, both at the quiet burial and then at the large thanksgiving service which followed. My restless mind like a camera struggling to focus, zoomed in and out between the thoughts of the burial itself and what was carried in that beautiful banana leaf coffin, and the family standing without him; then onto memories of him past - of hills we climbed and places we went, and on to the hills we left unclimbed but had promised we one day would like Lurg Mhor, and Maoile Lunndaidh. My emotions likewise rose and fell, as I experienced alternating waves of accepting what God has allowed to happen and railing against it; from finding God's comfort to being like Job of old, and 'placing my hand over my mouth' wanting to but yet aware that I am not in any position to interrogate Him.

The injustice of a world in which the likes of Mugabe reach 90, and this humble, gentle man who loved the outdoors, who loved his family, who served in his church, who was a Dr who had taken his family to the developing world to work in a hospital there as an expression of his deeply compassionate Christian faith, and whose family depended on him; is simply ghastly. There are no definitive answers given to us, as why these things happen as they do. Even godly Job, whose sufferings the Bible records so carefully, and who asked God for answers was not given them; and neither are we. The Biblical worldview provides a powerful macro-explanation for suffering and evil in a world alienated from God. Likewise it presents a view of the end-of suffering and evil with the advent of a new heaven and a new earth and of hope of it grasped by faith and tasted in the present. What we do not have is a micro-explanation of the way in which suffering and evil are distributed now; why one good man dies, while a wicked one is allowed to live. And yet this anguished-mystery is not an affront to the biblical world-view, but embedded in it notably in the Psalms of 'disorientation'. 

At the graveside on Monday morning I was reminded of a talk by Prof NT Wright which I heard many years ago about Jesus at the graveside of his friend Lazarus. Wright said that our modern translations are weak when they say that Jesus was 'deeply moved and troubled'. We all know what it is to be deeply moved and troubled at a graveside, and the first spark of hope comes from knowing that The Lord of all has shared the fragility of humanity with us and is fully with us in this. But there is more than this, Wright says. The weakness of many translations, he says, is that they tell of Jesus' being moved and troubled, but not of his deep anger. Wright says that this last act of Jesus before he went to Jerusalem to offer his life on the cross, was to rage against death, and to declare war upon it - both in the immediate case of Lazarus; and through his death and resurrection - upon the finality of death itself. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, Jesus told them. This is possible, as we were reminded at that graveside, because Jesus is the resurrection and the life. If the first spark of hope is that Jesus knows and understands the anguish of the graveside, the second is that his resurrection is a sign that death is not the end, and that we too will rise like he did. Jesus' resurrection is not just the defining centre of Christian hope, but also deeply fascinating in the form it took. The New Testament resurrection appearances present a Jesus who was at once recognisable, (physically, emotionally, spiritually Him!), yet also restored. He had been mangled by torture and and execution, but yet he was not in resurrection. To be sure, there were holes in his body from the crucifixion, but he was not exsanguinating through them - he was healed. As I stood by the open grave on Monday morning and watched the descent on my friend's body into the earth, NT Wright's words stuck me again powerfully in this way; because Jesus declared war on sin and death, and secured his victory on the first Easter; my friend will rise like Christ did. What was lowered into that grave was my friend's body complete with the legs that climbed so many hills, the arms which canoed lochs, the heart which powered so many miles on his bike, his oh-so-expressive face, and that awful tumour which took him down. The resurrection will feature all these things - except the tumour; they will not be permitted in the new creation. As Revelation puts it: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” My friend is no longer in pain, he is safe-home.

If the words of Jesus at Lazarus' grave speak so powerfully of the departed, it's Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1 which have been at the centre of my thoughts for those who have been left behind. Grief exists in concentric circles, and is felt most acutely by those in the centre circle - the immediate family; and least by those acquaintances who only feel the outer ripples of its pain. Yet for all of us, at whatever distance we are to the epicentre of loss, these words are poignant. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our troubles. Christian faith is not a dry belief-system which asks the believer to merely accept the promises of God for the future; but is a lived spiritual experience of walking with God through all the seasons of life. The New Testament vision of the Christian life is one of sensing God now, with the hope of seeing Him in the future. At the thanksgiving service on Monday, my friend's Mother-in-law spoke of the way in which this has been the experience of their family through illness, heartbreak and bereavement. She spoke about a 'wave of love', spurred by countless prayers, enveloping them - even as they grieve, even as they weep. And so while our hope for the dead is the resurrection of Christ; our ongoing prayer for those who grieve most is that they will have a deep, profound and enduring sense of the God of All Compassion with them. And we will pray without ceasing to this end.

The final text, for now, is this. James, in his New Testament epistle, warns his readers against a passive faith which he regarded as less-than-useless. The danger he saw, was a belief in the grace and power of God which failed to spur the believer into action. The actions he demanded from his readers were specific, detailed and profound, and feature things such as the quest for personal integrity and purity and careful use of words. He also makes the following direct and radical statement:  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress (J1:27). When I stop and think for a moment and realise that this text, which I have known for so many years, now suddenly applies to a dear friend, and her three beautiful little children; I find sorrow welling up from the pit of my stomach and I get a grip of myself before the welling reaches my eyes and overflows. And so it was heartening to hear that the church which they belong to, up in Inverness, has been pure and faultless in this regard. At the thanksgiving service, they spoke all manner of practical support which the family has received. And James presents this obligation to serve, as a matter for the whole Christian community - and we must rise to the challenge.

Hillwalking is a great pursuit. It not only brings us into wildplaces, provides a sense of adventure and achievement, and is wonderfully healthy; but it also pushes walkers together in cars, hostels and on long, long days together and facilitates great conversation. The hillwalks I did with my friend who we buried on Monday may have been comparatively few in terms of Munros ticked - but the conversations we had will last in my memories for a lifetime. Not all of them were sensible; and when I picture him in the hills I still imagine him laughing and laughing at the absurd and bizarre things we talked about. Yet sometimes, he would go quiet and then tell us something deep, moving, profound and wise. It was somewhere in Glen Carron that he told us what it meant to (in the words of Psalm 23) know "The Lord as My Shepherd", with a family to support and terminal illness. It was on Ben Wyvis that he told me of his trust in God's provision for his family now, and if and when he could no longer be there to support them.

Sometimes loss is accompanied by regret, of things not said or of the sense that the person who has gone failed to reach their potential or lost their way in life. In this case, nothing could be further from the truth. This man embraced life with joy and enthusiasm, with love, charisma and boundless energy. When planning outdoor adventures he would want to do the most, achieve the best, in his work he pursued excellence, in family life he was absolutely devoted to his wife and family, in church his musical skills were at the fore, in relationships with others he seemed to always pursue the best for others. He loved water too - canoeing over it, leaping in it, swimming through it! If on a walk we came to a loch, others might hesitate, but he would be the first peeling of his outer clothes and running and jumping in. He was the one who in the middle of his illness had a faith that inspired others, and an integrity that is worth imitating. While the shortness of his life is nothing less than unbearably tragic; there is no sense of incompleteness about the quality of the life he led at all. The loss which is so acute today is not that he failed to achieve greatness because he was cut off from us so young; but that we miss his greatness; his energy, his wise, gentle humour and his madcap schemes so, so very much. When I think of the great hills of Wester Ross, of Glen Affric, of Mullardoch or Torridon, and think that when I get to Inverness we will just continue North because there is no-one waiting there in Nairn to jump in the car; those hills seem so empty, so sad.

This post has been unusually long and rambling, even by my standards. It has also been the hardest thing I have posted on this blog for many years. However, I know that many people who read this also knew my friend, indeed who were there with us on Monday and so it seemed appropriate to honour him, and point to those three things in the Bible which form the centre of this post. The resurrection and future hope, the comfort of God the Father in the present, and our obligation to help the bereaved.

Happier Times: In Plockton, June 2009.
"What a headcase"

Edinburgh: Old Town/New Town

Stars and Smokes

First tripod efforts...

Well, I am finally the owner of a Tripod - after having wanted one for a long time. My family bought one for my birthday this week, and I have been trying it out for the first time. I've been pretty pleased with the extended exposures it allows me to take without camera shake all over the images. The top one is a fairly simple shot out across Perth with the tower of St John's Church nicely lit and some nice shimmer off the Tay in the foreground.

This second shot took a little more effort.. for anyone interested, the details are below:

In the dark the Autofocus wouldn't work so I did a manual focus on the little light on the right of the picture which is adjacent to a tight curve on the railway line.Then I looked up when the next train was due (on Realtimetrains.co.uk) and so was ready at the right moment. I had the camera set to Aperture Priority, and reduced the aperture to f36 at ISO100 on a 300ml zoom. This generated a 30 second exposure, and as I do not yet have a remote control, I set the drive to a 2 second delay to prevent 'trigger wobble'. Realtimetrains were spot-on with their timing, and so I was poised at exactly the moment to press the shutter-release just before the train came into view at the start of the curve. Any camera geeks want to tell me what to try next?

At Loch Ordie

Unexpected lunch guest

Book Notes: Divided City - The Berlin Wall by Jaron Verlag

This A4/50page book is a very useful introduction to the postwar history of Berlin and it iconic and divisive wall. Not a great work of academic historical writing, it nevertheless is well researched and nicely presented and is a great way into the topic. The publishers have also managed to secure rights to some excellent photos from throughout the period of the city's division.

The state of the city after the ravages of war, the combined rule of the 'Big Four Allies', the blockades of West Berlin, the Berlin Airlift, the construction of the wall, the extension of the wall, and escape attempts are all examined as is the final breaching of the wall, the collapse of communism, reunification and the demolition of the wall are all covered here.

The straightforward narrative is helpfully interspersed with eyewitness testimonies of people who experienced the wall in different ways; politicians, ordinary citizens, escapees, Westerners, and Easterners. The final chapter of the book provides a handy 'tourist guide' to where to see bits of the wall today, along with guided tour info, and where to find monuments to the victims of this fortified military border, carving its way through the city's streets.

The only odd thing about this book is the fact that it is completely written in the present-tense, even when describing events of half a century ago! No doubt the intention is to create an immediacy as it reads like an up-to-the-minute news report of an unfolding drama. Unfortunately this linguistic gimmick perhaps loses something in translation, as it distracts from otherwise excellent publication.

Book Notes: The Drowned & The Saved by Primo Levi

I came across Primo Levi's name for the first time in December 2013, at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin. I described our trip to that shocking place here. On the wall of the foyer of the information centre, which is situated underneath the memorial, there is a large quote from Levi which reads: "It happened, therefore it can happen again. This is the core of what we have to say." Returning home I googled his name, which in turn led me to this book.

There is little that can be said about a book like this, other than to urge people to read it and encounter it for themselves.

Primo Levi was an Aushwitz survivor, an Italian Jewish man, shipped to the camp (or Lager - as it is referred to throughout the book), where his skills as an industrial chemist were exploited in the Nazi slave labour system. In previous books Levi had described the events of the holocaust, documented the atrocities, given his autobiography and biographies of fellow victims. The Drowned and The Saved, is less autobiographical and more analytical than these previous works, as Levi grapples thematically with the experience of industrialised exploitation and extermination.

Levi's reflections - and attempts to understand his experiences - begin with a thoughtful look at memory, and what it can mean to sit now, in relative comfort, but with one's memory contorted with having experienced a death camp. He quotes Jean Amery, Anyone who has been tortured, remains tortured.  In "The Grey Zone, Levi reflects on the moral complexities of the reality of life in the camp in that there was not just one type of victim, but a hierarchy of victims whose usefulness to the oppressors extended their lives; but whose collaboration was required. There are awful reflections here on the effects of the systematic dehumanising process on the powerless.

Survivor guilt is a known phenomenon in car crashes, plane crashes and other tragedies. Levi reflects on survivor 'Shame', and the horror of emerging from a death camp amidst the corpses, the crematoria, and the fleeing guards. In 'communicating' he discusses language, and gives weird and sometimes fascinating glimpses into the culture that grew in the camps, and moments of humanity which were never fully extinguished.

Useless Violence discusses the purposeless suffering of the people in Aushwitz. That is, while some of what Primo Levi experienced could be rationalised (in that forced labour could at lease be seen to be in some way benefiting the Nazi regime); so much that he experienced was simply evil for its own sake. As the shackles of morality were thrown away, the SS ceased to go about their work with simply the brute efficiency of slave-masters; but made the infliction of pain, injury, death and humiliation an end in itself. It became an orgy of evil.

It was after reading this chapter that I put the book aside for a month. Frankly it was affecting me too much. My family said it was bothering me, and I was aware that I was waking at night thinking about what I had read, becoming tense and agitated. "I've never known you take so long to finish a book", my wife said.

I have finally managed to pick it up and finish it this week, and follow Levi's examination of "the intellectual in Aushwitz", "Stereotypes" and the final remarkable chapter, "Letters from Germans" in which he describes the reactions (and correspondence) he had with German people of various ages, following the publication of his earlier works in German. It is in the final conclusion that I found the quote from the wall of the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin: "It happened, therefore it can happen again. This is the core of what we have to say." It is worth reading this book and facing the anguish of so doing, simply in order to be part of that not forgetting.

This was Primo Levi's final book. Not long after completing this masterful analysis of what is arguably the central event of the Twentieth Century, Levi took his own life aged 67. 

Early Morning Kinnoull

There was a particularly spectacular sunrise in Perth last week - hundreds of photos were posted on the www from all over the town. I'm running a bit behind - but here's one I got from the top of Kinnoull Hill, looking Eastwards into the appearing sun. The land was all dark, but the Tay shone like a silver ribbon.

Rain

All quiet on the Western-blog? Yup - life has been busy lately. Still, there's all that lovely rain to watch, washing down the windows..

The Berlin Wall

Several hundred meters of the Berlin Wall still exist. While in much of the city, all traces of the appalling structure have been erased, at the East Side Gallery enough of the original concrete slabs of oppression have been left vertical for the tourist to marvel, the Berliners to remember - and the graffiti artists to paint. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like to live in a city partitioned against the will of the population. This was no 'peace wall' designed to separate warring factions, but a political imposition upon a people who neither liked it, nor wanted it.

As a child of the Cold War era, The Berlin Wall was something I was aware of from very young days. My two-dimensional hero of children's literature, "Biggles" was always fighting against equally two-dimensional villains who were invariably German. In the WWI tales, Biggles nemesis Erich von Stalhein was a nationalistic German flying ace. By the time the second war occurred he was an ideological Nazi, by the 1950s von Stalhein had morphed again into an East German communist, who also was involved in crime (to mirror Biggles postwar move into the police!). My first impression of the Berlin Wall undoubtedly involved Biggles and his team making a daring spying raid over it, under the nose of von Stalhein himself. The unsubtle cliche's of such books presented the land to the East of the wall as a shadowy world of tyranny and oppression - which history has revealed to be uncomfortably close to the truth in many ways.

To Westerners the sombre concrete division was always known as the "Wall". In Eastern political-speak it was the Anti-Fascist Protective Measure, as in Stalinist thinking (and Ulbricht was nothing of not a true Stalinist), the presence of West Berlin was a colonial threat to the peoples State. Two previous blockades of West Berlin and ensuing international crises were formalised in 1961 when during the night of 13th Aug, DDR troops rolled barbed wire and building materials out along the dividing lines between the sectors. The relatively free movement of people and goods between sectors was proving to be a terrible drain on East Germany who lost vast numbers of people in a Western migration in search of the democratic freedom and economic prosperity unavailable in the East.

Ulbricht, his deputy Honecker and his Soviet overseer Nikita Kruschev, decided to seal off West Berlin with a permanent impermeable barrier, that would make the western city imprisoned within walls, an island surrounded by a red sea of Marxism-Leninism. West Berlin would prove to be a very strange kind of prison however, as it was one which people seemed willing to risk their lives breaking into.

"One Day We'll Be In Charge"

On the East side of the wall there were the infamous kill-zones, the searchlights, trip-wires, attack dogs and gun emplacements. Would-be escapees were not allowed up to the wall itself. Not so in many places on the Western side and the squalid concrete panels were consistently targeted by Western graffiti artists who painted their pictures and slogans as fast as the authorities could whitewash them away. This fine tradition of defiance is celebrated at the East Side Gallery where artists can now approach both sides of the wall. The image above of a Trabant smashing through the wall is particularly striking. There was one successful early escape when a vehicle rammed right through the wall from the East - but it involved a digger rather than a Trab - which would undoubtedly have fared less well on impact!

"No More Walls"

An artist sketching out his lines for his panel

This piece of wall may be a bustling tourist trap today, where in summer mounds of sand are dropped to create a beach-party atmosphere by the banks of the River Spree; but in quiet moments it still has the ability to cast a sinister air over the place. It is still possible to imagine desperate people planning a way through these kill-zones in search of freedom, while the more cautious hung back and willed them to succeed.

Having recently read some moving, and disturbing accounts of both successful and failed escapees; standing under the wall and looking up at its 'anti-climb' coving at the top was as remarkable an experience as touching the wall itself. It may be stating the obvious, but this wall, and all that it represents will be mentioned whenever a history of the 20th Century is written. In my childhood world atlas there was a page in which all the western-orientated countries were blue, while all who were orientated around Moscow or Beijing were coloured Red. The whole world it seemed was red or blue for half a century of potentially terminal conflict. The most interesting points on that map were always where the Red and the Blue met, such as where the 39th parallel runs through Korea - or where a grotesque concrete was wall thrown up to keep Berliners apart. The image of the fall of communism, which will endure for centuries to come, will not be some Hungarian dictat which opened the border to Austria (which actually started the final rusting-through of the iron curtain), but of jubilant Berliner's astride this wall.

"Escape is a mighty method to destabilise dominion"

Honecker used to boast that the wall would be there in centuries to come. This was a strange boast, as it somewhat suggested that he knew that the GDR would never gain legitimacy in the eyes of its people and would have to hold them captive for generations. Surely such statements were tacit admissions or failure rather than actual belief in his own bizarre reasoning and Leninist rhetoric? In a remarkably short period of time, both the Eastern State and its appalling wall were gone. The route of the wall is largely obscured in Berlin today. The watchtowers and barbed wire are gone, the dogs and their masters have departed, the bricked-up windows re-opened; while fuelling the building boom has replaced surveillance as the occupation of choice for career-savvy Berliners. The route is marked in many places by a simple row of cobbles, which act as a reminder of the wall which once tore this city apart.

Reichstag/Bundestag

"Of course, you'll have to look at The Reichstag", my friend from Berlin e-mailed me back in the summer when we were planning our trip there. As one of the 'must see' things to do in the city we decided to go there not expecting much, but aware of its active present and turbulent past. The guide books all stress the need to book to get in, and to get there in plenty of time for your allotted slot in the schedule. They are right to as well, in addition to that, the guide books also should mention that bringing the paperwork from your internet booking and photo ID is also necessary. We had left our passports in the safe at the hotel, but thankfully had our EU photo-driving licenses on us, which they accepted despite the fact that one of them has expired!

The old building retains its historic exterior, largely intact or reconstructed after the ravages of war. The four corner towers are meant to symbolise the four main nations who came together in formal union in 1871. The interior however, has been completely rebuilt into an incredibly impressive parliament for the the re-Unified Germany.

While the great chamber of the Bundestag dominates the inside of the building, it the great glass dome which has been added to the roof which catches the attention. Early photos of the building show it with a classical dome, which is entirely absent in Cold-War era pictures, now Norman Foster is the architect responsible for re-crowning the building.

The most extraordinary feature of the dome is a great inverted cone made up of hundreds of mirrors, which appears to hang in the dome without support. Rather than just being a weird feature, it serves the purpose of directing light and heat from the glass dome, down into the chamber below.

 It has a vast sunscreen which rotates to reduce direct glare from the sun dazzling the parliamentarians below.

Visitors can walk their way up a long curving ramp which circles like a helter-skelter, up to a viewing platform at the dome's summit.

While the ramp provides views across the city, and down into the chamber below; it is actually the dome which holds the attention - its is incredible.

At the foot of the dome there is a huge circular window which looks down into the place from which re-unified Germany has been governed since 1999, when central government re-located here from Bonn. Around this there is a photographic display about the history of the Reichstag (now Bundestag). The information about the foundations of Germany is interesting, but the history becomes alarming in the 1930s, when in the face of economic collapse, and the twin threats of Communism and National Socialism; the Reichstag was set on fire. Historians disagree as to whether the Nazis themselves were responsible for the arson attack and the immense damage it caused, or whether they merely used it for their own ends. Either way, it was under the pretence that this fire was the clarion call for a full communist revolt that they were able to pass the notorious 'Enabling Act', which was the legal basis for the Weimar Republic's transformation into The Third Reich. Waverers were frightened enough of communism, or simply bullied into handing Hitler the power to end German democracy for twelve catastrophic years. Again we were struck by the sensitivity with which contemporary Germany addresses the horrors of its past. In the historical and photographic display, there was mention of Hitler, but only one photograph - and even in that his face was partly obscured as he was turned away from the camera towards a group of athletes. Denial of this era would be wrong; providing a platform for any form of veneration would be unthinkable. They have pitched it perfectly, allowing for neither.

Incredibly, this building once the playground of tyrants, is once again a symbol of democracy. The German Democratic Republic (so-called because it wasn't Democratic!), imploded at the end of 1990s, when it became clear that while Kruschev and Brezhnev would act as military guarantors for their allies regimes in Eastern and Central Europe, the new Soviet Premier, Gorbachev would most certainly not. Once this was established, the threat required to permanently allow the failing state to continue was removed and the process of its unravelling was inevitable. East Germany was effectively invited to join the West German democratic system under a formal re-unification presided over by Helmut Kohl. 

This reunification was massively popular at the time - but has not been without its detractors subsequently. There are Western taxpayers who think they are over-burdened to pay for the development of the impoverished East. There are those from the former East, who look nostalgically (Ostalgically, actually) back at the days of equal opportunities, equal incomes and full employment and forget the Stasi; while most disturbingly the last communist ruler of the East, Egon Krenz, described Re-Unification as an "Anschluss". Yet despite these minority voices, and the inevitable hurdles to face, the Re-Unification of two states who for half a century had parallel, but totally different and incompatible systems; has been astonishingly successful. They have also symbolised this process with a quite amazing building.