I will retire in Bamberg, Germany and also some words about Berlin

There is a small town called Bamberg in a Germany that has miraculously survived both World Wars 96% intact. And it seems few people know about it.

The town is all twisting cobblestone streets and quaint buildings.

It is incredibly picturesque. However the medieval feeling isn't just due to the buildings and streets. There are dozens of breweries here still practicing their original recipes. Nicolette and I drank at a 600 year old brewery that still served its original smoked beer using an old Bavarian recipe.

It was interesting tasting. It's strange to know I'll most likely never have it again.

We thought that Bamberg was going to be a little side trip on the way to Berlin and it was. But it was such a memorable place and in berlin we had terrible luck.

To begin, the place we were staying was a little out of the city center, which would've have been fine except the tram to the center was out due to construction. Also a lot lf museums and attractions were under renovation or construction due to Germany expanding its Metro. It was very difficult to get around. We couldn't do berlin justice unfortunately.

In Berlin though, we would see the beginning of just how much WWII and the communist occupation has shaped Europe.

The above is the memorial to the Jewish victims of WWII. There is no absolute meaning. The artist has left it ambiguous. It's hard to tell but the ground is wavy and has kinds of dips so those stone rectangular prisms get up to 14 feet tall. It's easy to get lost, and, more importantly, to lose others.

That building is one of the only remaining Nazi buildings left. It is designed to make one feel small and weak.

Above is the current Russian embassy, former Berlin USSR HQ. It retains all of its Soviet propaganda.

That is a segment of the Berlin Wall that has remain preserved. One can see No Mans' Land and a soviet watch tower which were positioned every 200m or 650 feet. It's incomprehensible to imagine a wall just going up literally overnight dividing you from friends, family and loved ones.

The grass is where No Mans' Land was, the lines on the floor represent tunnels and the rebar looking poles is of course where the wall used to be. The metal outline is where there used to be buildings before the wall.