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The Smile Game

Sunday, August 13th, 2006

48 hours till I get to see Camilla, my friend who lives in Denmark, the one I met in New Zealand. This makes me so happy!!!

Today I took the S-Bahn back and forth and all around Berlin. As I was heading west, a man and little girl sat down across from me. The little girl was smiling and laughing and her dad couldn´t stop hugging her. They were playing some sort of game. I can only guess what it was as they talked in German. She would point to his cheek, then sneakily kiss it, and he would point to her nose and sneak a kiss on her nose. And as she sat across from me, she would look at me, and when I looked at her cute brown eyes and as she smiled at me, I couldn´t help but burst into a smile myself. Then she´d smile and cover her eyes and look away. And then she´d wait for me to smile at her again. She covered her eyes and turned her head into her dad´s arm. He looked up at what she was hiding from, and we smiled at each other. As they waited for the doors to open at Friedrichstrasse, he knelt down to fix her sock. I couldn´t help smiling to myself for the next hour.

Sachsenhausen

Saturday, August 12th, 2006

I stared at the graffitied wall on the other side of the river. This part of the world wasn´t as grey as it seemed to be in all the movies. I had just come from Sachsenhausen, in Oranienburg outside Berlin, where it was too sunny not to squint and the clouds puffed out low above the treeline. A few scattered birch trees weeped and swayed in a breeze I couldn´t feel. It carried no odor. The world within the concrete walls and guardtowers was silent except the crunching of gravel underfoot. I was standing in a concentration camp on the same earth where 12,000 people were effectively murdered.

The Germans and the victims have worked hard not to forget the horrors of their past. I walked through the compound which is now mostly grassy fields- most of the barbed-wire and bunkhouses have long been removed. The few that remain are well kept. Arcs of numbered concrete blocks mark where the other bunkhouses used to be.

The memorial is as peaceful as a graveyard. It is a graveyard. A mass grave lies just outside its triangular walls, an execution trench and burial ground for the ashes of the victims.

Would I have ever been able to survive the humiliation of having to relieve myself in a bucket that was passed around while I was forced to stand from dawn to dusk? Could I survive on one meal of cabbage soup a day? Could I survive walking 25 miles in one day in shoes that were too small? What about the psychological devestation of having absolutely no control over anything in my life? No hope of ever seeing the outside world or my loved ones? Could I survive the diseases? Sleeping in a room with three-hundred people? Could I even survive the smell? Or would I end up in the gallows? Shot in the back of the neck? Beaten to death like so many others? Or would I be one of those who ended her own life on that electrified barbed-wire fence?

Could this, something so horrific I cannot even describe it in words, ever happen again. I hope not; with every cell in my being, I hope not. But I know it can and it does.

Too Many Goodbyes

Friday, August 11th, 2006
from my journal today 11 Aug.  Written on the train from Stuttgart to Berlin.  Edited here. No, I´m in Germany.  For a moment I thought I was back in England, but no; I´m not.  Last night I couldn´t sleep.  It was ... [Continue reading this entry]

Heat Wave and Children’s Art Day: Trafalgar Square

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
London on Sunday 012.jpg London on Sunday 005.jpg London on Sunday 006.jpg London on Sunday 008.jpg London on Sunday 012.jpg

Windsor

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
IMG_1892.jpg IMG_1880.jpg IMG_1882.jpg IMG_1883.jpg IMG_1884.jpg IMG_1885.jpg IMG_1888.jpg IMG_1890.jpg IMG_1892.jpg IMG_1893.jpg[Continue reading this entry]

Oxford and Stratford-Upon-Avon

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
London 0161.jpg London 003.jpg London 004.jpg London 005.jpg London 007.jpg London 009.jpg London 011.jpg London 012.jpg[Continue reading this entry]

London Miscellaneous

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
FleetBlenheimBlunt 006.jpg View from my flat Dreas Wimbledon 002.jpg IMG_1851.jpg IMG_1853.jpg Dreas Wimbledon 015.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 001.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 002.jpg [Continue reading this entry]

Edinburgh, Scotland

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
... on my top five list for places I want to live. (And happens to be one of the many places that's in my blood... Wallaces, Scots, Campbells, Andrews, Stewarts and the like) Edinburgh 012.jpg [Continue reading this entry]

Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
I was having too much fun blowing my money to take many pictures... London 020.jpg London 015.jpg London 016.jpg London 017.jpg London 018.jpg [Continue reading this entry]

James Blunt Concert at Blenheim Palace

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
FleetBlenheimBlunt 017.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 008.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 009.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 010.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 011.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 012.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 014.jpg FleetBlenheimBlunt 015.jpg[Continue reading this entry]