Berlin in a Day

Today was Berlin and the big question as I meandered through Wolfsburg (must visit some day, great architecture of the 60's industrial variety) was what I should see, the list is not endless but Berlin has been, and is destined to remain either a catalyst of European history or the heart of it. Passing Berlin Spandau that seems worth a visit, and at one point was on the list along with Potsdam, in the end I chickened and decided to see what I bumped into on a stroll around.

Walking aimlessly is not an efficient strategy for a day visit, but it worked for me - bumping into the Humboldt University, the Berliner Dom, and Alexanderplatz was more than enough for me. Walking down Unter Den Linden with the smell of flowers wafting through air - honest I smelt flowers - was a chance encounter that I could not have planned, along with the view of Alexanderplatz with the the Telecom Tower ands the Church in the foreground almost emphasising the changing history of this city from the centre of decadence to terror, to repression to liberation with the fall of the wall./

More than anything I didn't really do the sights of Berlin, but I tried to contextualise you, to get to know it for myself, to make sense of the history - it is a city with a 'past' - and try and make sense of how other people see it, how Berliners see it. I tried to see how the remains of its grandeur - its old railway stations at Fredricrtrasse, Alexandraplatz and Ost Bahnhoff run through to Berlin Hauptbahnoff and Leherter Bahnhoff like an artery through its history; the solid high level stations that ran through Berlin during Communism missing stops out because they were in the wrong Sector to Ost Bahnhoff which the link to Eastern Europe and to the East the new Hauptbahnoff built as a monument to reunification. In a testament of defiance the wrought iron roofs of the old stations stood as testaments to the 'old Berlin'.

It is hard for me to write definitives because it is not my city, not even my country, but I can say this is my impression of what is there, and how I interpret it - whether that be wright or wrong.

My major confusion was the street hawkers selling 'genuine' Russian armed forces hats, and the odd Nazi hat, it was this that made me stop and think about Berlin and the changes that have been made, and it interprets its history - for the me the war is over and the lessons learnt, so move on, Communism has come and gone - but I find it peculiar and disturbing at the trivialisation of these momentous events, as if the memories are there to be sold; I am not sure what I feel about the hats, its strange one trivial thing can have such a profound effect, I am sure that when I last visited back in the late 90's there would have been such a trade.

Berlin in day took me from the Bundestag via the Brandenburg Gate, to Alexandraplatz, but in time it took me from the 1920's to the 2010''s a roller-coaster ride that is still running .

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Berlin

Why I am proud to be Gay

In a moment of Cocktail induced euphoria (aided and abetted by Sun and too much Lady GaGa) I 'tweeted' that I was proud to be gay, and now I am wondering how many people have tweeted 'I'm proud to be straight’. - not many I'll wager ya'

So, if I am searching for acceptance and equality, why am I 'proud to be gay' and not just content with ‘happy’?

There are many reason but one must be solidarity with my 'tribe' and our history, against all odds our society has developed from dictatorship to limited democracy, the universal suffrage and within the past 40 years (and I am talking about Europe) through to some form of gay equality.  I am proud of my history, not what I have done, but for what others have done for me, even in my lifetime.

The history of gay repression started with the enlightenment of society and the dawn of the 'scientific age' of the 1900's, social scientist wanting, as scientists are want to do, to label everything, everything must be explained and so the homosexual was born.  All of sudden we became a sub-class not fitting into the 'norms' of the nuclear family we were outsiders - the gay brothels of London in the 1800's quietly disappeared along with the gay man and woman.

By the time I was born in the sixties, amid the sexual revolution, it seemed time for a complete sexual revolution and time for Stonewall to kick start the fight back, by the time I was at school in the 70's a prototypical sub-culture had developed, by the time I had left school in the 80's we had had our first heroes, Quentin Crisp, Peter Tatchell, Tom Robinson (who strangely turned 'straight'), by the mid 80's we had AIDS and the battle to educate and refute the tide of anti-sentiment (and I remember the jokes, and the headlines - 5 Million to die o AIDS in the UK by 1990) and take our role as educators.  By the 90's we were becoming very public, a few politicians raised their heads above the parapet - with Chris Smith (Labour MP) coming out with the quote 'I am a Gay MP, now let’s talk politics' - throwing away the gay label to be accepted for he was elected to do.

In the 90's I came out at work, even though I could still be sacked for being gay, I wasn't sacked and accepted for being myself - a privilege I have experienced throughout my working life -and then came the 21st Century.

The 21st Century has given us acceptance, and its dawn Ben Bradshaw, Labour MP for Exeter, an openly gay candidate ousted an openly homophobic Tory - more than that on becoming a Foreign Minister on a trip to Indonesia he insisted his partner be treated equally against the protests of the Indonesian government.
I am proud not of my own achievements but of the scattered and indistinct and diverse community I belong to, being gay does not define me as a person as it did my those who protested in the 70's, but I am proud to be able to have such a rich heritage, and I am proud to stand alongside though gay people in Zimbabwe who have been facing violent discrimination, and proud to have seen the proposed death penalty for being gay in Zimbabwe rescinded, I am proud of my heritage.

As a Gay Civil Rights campaigner said in the 60's 'the only difference between Black and Gay is that you don't to tell your mother your're Black'